The Man That Hacked NASA and Found UFOs [Interview w/ Gary McKinnon]

Summary

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American Alchemy with Jesse Michels

Episode: The Man That Hacked NASA and Found UFOs [Interview w/ Gary McKinnon]

Date: March 1, 2026
Host: Jesse Michels
Guest: Gary McKinnon

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Episode Overview

In this fascinating deep-dive interview, Jesse Michels sits down with Gary McKinnon, the British hacker famous for breaching U.S. military and NASA computer networks in the early 2000s in search of evidence regarding UFOs and free energy technologies. The episode explores McKinnon’s motivations, the technical and personal realities of his now-historic hack, the most unusual files he claims to have found—including photographic evidence of unidentified craft and a list of “non-terrestrial officers”—and the years-long international legal battle that followed, during which McKinnon faced possible extradition to the U.S. and a potential 70-year prison sentence. The conversation also delves into wider UFO lore, anti-gravity research, government secrecy, and the human toll of confronting entrenched state power.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

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Gary’s Early Interest in UFOs and Hacking (07:10–14:46)

• Origin Story:
  Gary’s fascination with UFOs began in childhood, influenced heavily by his stepdad and stories from the Scottish “UFO hotspot” of Bonnybridge. He personally witnessed a strange light as a child and joined the British UFO Research Association.
• Technical Background:
  Started on Atari in the late ‘70s, self-taught programmer, worked in basic IT gigs, and gained network admin skills. Not a “super hacker,” but knowledgeable enough to exploit weak security on early military networks.
• First Steps in Hacking:
  Used Perl scripts to scan networks for blank or default passwords.
  “If you cast far enough a wide net, you know something’s going to come in.” (13:12 - Gary McKinnon)
• Scope of Access:
  Uncovered access to 97 sensitive sites: NSA, Fort Meade, Army, Navy, Air Force, DOD, NASA among others (14:57).

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The Hunt for UFOs and Exotic Tech (15:47–22:56)

• Search Methods:
  Automated tools like LanSearch allowed broad keyword sweeps of tens of thousands of files for terms linked to UFOs, ET tech, and energy research.
• Priorities and Hopes:
  Focused on "free energy" and propulsion technology, driven by a sense that such secrets were being withheld from the public for control (21:20–22:00).
• Rumor Control:
  Gary dispels the “Solar Warden” myth, saying he never found any evidence supporting it and that such rumors likely distract from real evidence (18:04–19:24).

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The "Eureka Moment": The NASA UFO Image (26:14–35:00)

• Following a Lead:
  Inspired by NASA whistleblower Donna Hare’s testimony about airbrushed UFOs at Building 8, Johnson Space Center, Gary located Building 8 computers and accessed image folders.
• The Image:
  On a painfully slow 56k dial-up, Gary remotely opened a proprietary NASA-format file:
  “There’s like slowly a hemisphere started appearing and I’m thinking, fuck, that’s a planet...And then suddenly there’s a big straight kind of silvery line. A cigar shaped object.” (31:30 - Gary McKinnon)
• Interrupted Download:
  Before he could see the full image, the system’s user noticed him and disconnected the session.
• Description of the Object:
  • Smooth-sided, silvery-white, cylindrical (“Tic Tac”/cigar-shaped) object above the planet, possibly Earth.
  • Featured geodesic domes at both ends.
  • No apparent seams, rivets, or antennae.
  • No known man-made vehicle matched its appearance (33:24–35:10).
• Significance:
  Jesse underscores the uniqueness of Gary’s corroboration of Donna Hare’s claims, achieved completely independently (34:10).

“It wasn’t a rocket, it wasn’t ISS, it wasn’t like a space lab or...satellite...No antennae either. There’s nothing. No like telemetry sensor looking stuff.” (35:00 - Gary McKinnon)

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The Spreadsheet: "Non-Terrestrial Officers" and Exotic Materials (51:25–65:39)

• Discovery:
  On a Navy system, Gary found a spreadsheet entitled “Non Terrestrial Officers,” listing names, ranks, ship names, and materiel.
  • About 30–40 names listed (54:42).
  • Ship names did not correspond to known sea vessels.
  • Document tabs included officer names, ship names, and inter-fleet transfers.
• Materials:
  • Items like molybdenum, barium, strontium—rare metals used in advanced alloys and dielectrics, possibly relevant to propulsion technology.
  • Theorized the spreadsheet logs space-based military logistics: materials and personnel for secret orbital assets or manufacturing (54:06–65:31).
• Interpretation:
  • The “non-terrestrial” label likely refers to human (not alien) military officers operating in space.
  • Jesse and Gary speculate these could be logistics for a classified space manufacturing program—making exotic metamaterials impossible to produce on Earth (65:04–65:39).

“It was one spreadsheet, but it had tabs. So there was the officer names, there was ship names, and there was a material transfer... ‘non terrestrial officers’ — not on the Earth, which isn’t necessarily alien. It could just mean space-based marines.” (51:25, 54:32 - Gary McKinnon)

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Government Response, Legal Aftermath, and Human Toll (47:10–53:06, 111:22–118:12)

• Charges & Threats:
  U.S. prosecutors claimed up to $5,000 damage per hacked computer and sought 70 years in prison.
  UK and US authorities used extremely aggressive rhetoric: “We want to see him fry. Electric chair reference.” (48:45 - Gary McKinnon recounting Ed Gibson, U.S. Embassy)
• Extradition Battle:
  Gary fought extradition for 10 years; suffered depression, considered suicide due to the stress (116:27–117:35).
  Extradition treaty was rewritten (with US input) mid-case, with language paralleling his charges. UK Home Secretary ultimately ruled extradition would risk his life.
• Family Impact:
  The raid on his home led to the detention of his girlfriend and her young cousin, causing distress to his extended family.

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The "Implant"/Chip Incident (67:21–73:56)

• Strange Experience:
  In 2006, Gary woke with two perfectly circular holes in his heel, which later formed bumps.
  He suspects it might have been a government tracking chip, comparing it to Verichip, a real RFID microchip implant sourced from Raytheon and linked to defense work (71:49).
• Current Status:
  Bumps are still present, and Jesse encourages Gary to have them imaged and scanned for electromagnetics.

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Anti-Gravity / Biefeld–Brown Effect (86:29–100:07)

• Shared Fascination:
  Both Gary and Jesse are deeply interested in electrogravitics—specifically the Biefeld–Brown Effect, pioneered by T. Townsend Brown, which claims electric fields can induce lift.
• DIY Science:
  Gary has attempted home experiments and is working towards fabricating and testing high-dielectric capacitors in a shed, aiming to repeat promising anti-gravity results.
• Historical Context:
  They discuss how the U.S. military investigated anti-gravity and advanced propulsion with cyanide-level secrecy in the Cold War and beyond.

“What attracted me was the fact that you can do this in your, you know, home, garage or shed. You don’t have to be a scientist...you don’t have to be a scientist to do it on the bench...I really want to see it float.” (88:49, 99:04 - Gary McKinnon)

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Unpacking Rumors, Disinformation, and Real Secret Space Programs (18:04–19:24, 76:49–85:28)

• Secret Space Programs in History:
  U.S. classified “Manned Orbiting Laboratory” (1960s) and military astronauts were real programs, not just science fiction.
• Military Culture & Psyops:
  Discussion of how intelligence agencies may intentionally “flood the zone” with outlandish tales to cloak genuine, sensitive technology (18:58–19:24).
• Stargate, Ben Rich’s Comments, and RAND:
  Ben Rich and RAND Corporation’s ambiguous hints toward advanced American propulsion and manned space capabilities are discussed as further circumstantial evidence (79:22–82:00).

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

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The Hacking Experience

• “I was in my dressing gown up to like 4 in the morning, smoking weed, drinking beer. Ride of my life, really.”
  (12:26, Gary McKinnon)

• “Some of these extremely sensitive American military sites had blank passwords—big time.”
  (11:15, Jesse Michels)

The UFO Image

• “It was very, very slow. I was on a 56k dial up… There’s like slowly a hemisphere started appearing and I’m thinking, fuck, that’s a planet…And then suddenly there’s a big straight kind of silvery line. A cigar shaped object.”
  (31:30, Gary McKinnon)

• “I see the mouse move and someone else is at the computer themselves. They right clicked, disconnect and boom. That was it. I was cut out.”
  (31:48, Gary McKinnon)

The Spreadsheet

• “This spreadsheet was titled Non Terrestrial Officers. So not on the Earth. And that was incredible. It had ship names, it had materiel—the military spelling, not material. And it was transfers... Ship to ship transfers and fleet to fleet transfers.”
  (51:25, Gary McKinnon)

Government Pressure

• “When they [DOJ] came back, the tone had totally changed...We want to see him fry. Electric chair reference.”
  (48:45, Gary McKinnon)

The Human Impact

• “I bought potassium chloride and I was just going to swallow it and have a heart attack and die.”
  (00:36, Gary McKinnon)

On Modern Anti-Gravity Research

• “I want to stand there in my shed, turn the on, switch on and see this thing rise.”
  (99:04, Gary McKinnon)

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Timestamps of Important Segments

00:00–01:16
Opening, summary of arrest, and the infamous UFO/NASA hack.

07:10–14:46
Gary’s personal background, childhood sighting, and technical skills.

14:49–18:04
Technical details of the hack, scale of intrusion, and method.

26:14–35:00
Building 8, the eureka moment, and the loading of the UFO photo.

51:25–65:39
Discovery and interpretation of the "Non-Terrestrial Officers" spreadsheet.

67:21–73:56
The “implant”/chip experience in Gary’s foot.

86:29–100:07
Discussion of Townsend Brown, anti-gravity/propulsion research, and ongoing DIY experiments.

111:22–118:12
Legal fallout, extradition battles, and the psychological toll.

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Notable Connections and Wrapping Thoughts

• Why Pressure Was So Severe:
  The hosts speculate that the hack hit "trigger points"—particularly the photo and the logistics spreadsheet—causing an outsize legal response compared to more conventional cybercrime cases.
• Implant/Surveillance Paranoia
  Gary’s suspicious double-hole bump in his heel is framed as possible government tracking, echoing the episode’s ongoing theme of truth bordering on high strangeness.
• Human Cost and Public Support:
  Despite immense pressure, Gary became a people’s folk hero, supported by musicians and activists, and ultimately shielded from extradition by British public opinion and a key decision from then-Home Secretary Theresa May.

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Final Takeaways

• Supply Chain Hypothesis:
  Jesse and Gary’s real-time discussion reframes the “non-terrestrial officers” document from outlandish “secret space program” rumor toward a plausible scenario: a human-run, off-planet logistics network for materials and personnel, hiding in plain sight under highly classified cover.
• Personal Toll:
  “Next thing you know, boom, it just blows up... David and Goliath, the whole thing.” (58:07, Gary McKinnon)
• Ongoing Curiosity & Science:
  Gary continues anti-gravity and free energy experiments, exemplifying the undying curiosity that first led him to hack NASA.
• Broader Message:
  The episode functions as a meditation on curiosity, government secrecy, the boundaries of official science, and the precarious status of those who wander too far into the forbidden.

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For more deep dives, subscribe to American Alchemy on Substack and follow Jesse Michels on social media.

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Transcript

[Jesse]

There's a live arrest warrant out on you now, right? You can't go to the US Now.

[Gary McKinnon]

I'm on the Interpol Red List, the

[Jesse]

biggest military computer hack in all time.

[Gary McKinnon]

We talked about the case of computer hacker Gary McKinnon, on which the Prime Minister has expressed very clear views. Well, I'm Mr. McKinnon.

[Jesse]

We have proceeded through all the processes required under our extradition agreements.

[Gary McKinnon]

I was just a guy, normal Guy, interested in UFOs, happened to have some IT skills, nothing genius level. You hacked into the army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Department of Defense and NASA.

[Jesse]

They wanted to put you in prison for 60 years. So 70. For 70 years.

[Gary McKinnon]

And I bought potassium chloride and I was just going to swallow it and have a heart attack and die.

[Jesse]

Oh my God. Mr. McKinnon is accused of serious crimes. The reason that you are here today on this show is because what you

[Gary McKinnon]

found, he found, he says, photographic proof of alien spacecraft and the names and ranks of something he called non Terrestrial officers. I was in my dressing gown up to like 4 in the morning, smoking weed, drinking beer. Ride of my life, really. The first one I looked at was the one where I saw the picture and so I double clicked this,

[Jesse]

but

[Gary McKinnon]

it was very, very slow. I was on a 56k dial up and I was just thinking, my God, this is my eureka moment. Then there's like slowly a hemisphere started appearing and I'm thinking, fuck, that's a planet.

[Jesse]

What the hell?

[Gary McKinnon]

And then suddenly there's a big straight kind of silvery line. A cigar shaped object. I see the mouse move and someone else is at the computer themselves. They right clicked, disconnect and boom. That was it. I was cut out.

[Jesse]

What do you think photographed it?

[Gary McKinnon]

Very good question. This spreadsheet was titled Non Terrestrial Officers. So not on the Earth. And that was incredible. I had one very strange experience that I can't explain to this day. I was suddenly woken up by a really sharp pain that immediately I just went, oh. In my left heel there were two perfectly circular holes.

[Jesse]

Wow. Weird. Explain what's going on quickly. I can't turn my phone off. You can see my finger is on the power button and both. This is like a hard reset.

[Gary McKinnon]

That's never happened before.

[Jesse]

Absolutely. It's never happened before, but you're with Gary McKinnon. Ignition sequence five. How is this possible? Nothing too unusual about that. Their existence cannot longer be deniable. Before we dive into the incredible story of Gary McKinnon, I want to shine a light on one thing his story reminds you of instantly. Online privacy. Gary is a brilliant, self taught hacker who pulled off what the Pentagon called the biggest military computer hack of all time. All from a bedroom in London. In this interview, Gary goes into extreme detail about what he found in some of the world's most sensitive files. And I still can't wrap my head around what about to hear. After hearing what he found, you might think he hit the ultimate UFO disclosure jackpot. However, the moment he went online, a digital trail started forming. Think about the moments most of us could get exposed. It won't look like Gary's story where he broke into sensitive government systems, saw something truly unbelievable floating in space, and then had his access cut off mid session. For most of us, our risk exposure is usually much simpler. Like joining hotel WI fi, airport WI fi or, or even your office network. Going incognito doesn't hide your browser from the WI fi owner. And your Internet service provider can just log what you do online. That's why I use Express vpn. It encrypts and reroutes my traffic through secure servers and masks my ip. I literally turn it on before doing sensitive research for the show. Like looking into whether mid century scientist Thomas Townsend Browne cracked antigravity in the 1950s. That's exactly when I want my browsing to stay private. So if you're like me and you like going down crazy rabbit holes, make sure your research isn't exposed on whatever WI fi you're on. Thanks to our sponsor, ExpressVPN, you can now get up to four extra months of your ExpressVPN service by clicking the link in the description [e-mail] americanalchemy that's ExpressVPN.com americanalchemy to get the privacy you deserve. Thanks again to ExpressVPN for sponsoring today's historic episod. If Gary's story teaches us anything, it's that your online privacy matters. Legend has it that in 1943 the Navy tried to teleport a ship in what's now known as the Philadelphia Experiment. And it kind of worked. It disappeared, reappeared, and then half the crew got atomically fused into the ship's walls. Others just vanished. No one was where they were supposed to be. Talk about a breakdown in communication. And you know who was leading the whole project? My favorite? The mid century antigravity inventor Thomas Townsend Brown, who literally had a nervous breakdown that year due to the very poor communication among the team members. You know what that sounds like? Your team before you had quo this year upgrade your system to a workspace that keeps your team from shattering across dimensions. If you've ever tried to schedule a meeting across five time zones and six platforms, you know the absolute horror of losing people, people to the ether. That's why today's episode is brought to you by Quo, spelled Q U O. The smarter way to run your business communications. It's a single streamlined command center for calls, notes, transcripts, chats, even AI summaries. An all in one shared reality. Yours. No vanishing, no fusing into calendars. Just your team fully entangled and synced across time zones, timelines, even caffeine levels. Make this the year where no opportunity and no customer slips away. Try Quo for free. Plus get 20% off your first six months when you go to quo.com Jesse. That's Q O.com Jesse Quo. No missed calls, no missed customers. Now back to the show. This is such an honor. I am here with. He's been at the top of my list of people I've wanted to interview for years now. And I'm so lucky to have this opportunity through James Fox, the great documentarian Gary McKinnon.

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh, thank you. I'm glad to be here. I love your channel. I've been a long term subscriber, so yeah, I really like a lot of the interviews you do. And I'm glad to be here too.

[Jesse]

Let's just go back to the early 2000s. Tell me the year and the day and tell me about your life at the time and then I want to get into the actual event.

[Gary McKinnon]

Okay. I can't remember the day, but the year was 2000, early 2000. And my life pre to that. I'd always had a deep interest in UFOs, mainly for my stepdad. He used to live in Falkirk, which is near Bonnybridge, which is in Scotland. And it's like a Scottish UFO hotspot. Many, many sightings, almost like a tourist attraction. People go there to see UFOs. And I had one sighting myself when I was about 12 and I was looking out of my bedroom window and I saw this kind of reddish orange glowing light. And it was moving in an arc from there to the horizon, but it was like Brownian motion. It wasn't a straight line. It was like wiggling around and. And just thought, what on earth is that? And I was also a member of BUFORA at the time, the British UFO Research Association. Yeah, I was hooked from an early age. And so I guess it only made sense that eventually I'd try and do something to further my own interests and find out More, but unfortunately it involved breaking the law, so. Sorry, Mum.

[Jesse]

So. So you already have an interest in UFOs? Had you seen a UFO or like, you know, one sight, just that one sighting. Okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

But I had my stepdad's stories. He'd seen them. His brother, my step uncle had seen them.

[Jesse]

Yeah, and, and, and so you have this personal interest and then do you have like a hacking background or like, do you have any sort of like cyber background? Are you really good with computers?

[Gary McKinnon]

No hacking background. I used it. I was good with computers. I had. I started off an Atari games console in like 78, 79 and then eventually got the Atari computer, learned to program in BASIC at first and then machine code assembler language, moved up from that and then eventually got jobs in computing. Very low level jobs to start off with network installation, Windows configuration, then did computer science degree, which I eventually failed because I spent too much time in the student bar. But yes, so I eventually ended up contracting, but at banks, quite high level stuff, but doing very basic sort of networking stuff. So I had a good background in networking, especially Windows, knew how they communicated and some Linux, Stroke, Unix, Solaris, stuff like that. So when, I mean the Internet came to Britain in 95, I think I first had the Internet and the first thing I searched for was UFOs. And it was very popular. Loads of websites, loads of information. And fast forward about five or six years, I read the disclosure project book to Stephen Greer and his team and they told you installations, locations. And I thought, I've got to have a look at this. I wanted it from the horse's mouth. I didn't want to just believe, I wanted to know. And so I thought I could use my basic networking skills just to do a scan, you know, a light scan on American military networks, which is mad now, but back then it was just kind of like a playful idea. And I wrote a Perl script. Perl is a programming extraction, reporting language, just a scripting language. And I could run that across thousands of machines in minutes and find blank passwords or passwords that were either blank or password admin, a basic list. And when you do like wide scale phishing like that, you do, you know, some fish bite. And that was my basic method to getting entrance to these places.

[Jesse]

And so some of these extremely sensitive American military sites had blank passwords big time. That's crazy. I mean it. Although that seems beyond belief, it also makes sense like the, the government's way more incompetent than often, especially people in UFO world give them credit for, because we assume they have workable reverse engineered crafts that they know how to use at will or whatever. So like why you would of course would have passwords set up, but 2000 is early Internet. We were still worried about Y2K, you know, so like we didn't really understand how a lot of this stuff worked. It was this big experiment and so w. Wow. So that, that sort of phishing thing came up with some, some fish. Yeah. And, and as you said, the government

[Gary McKinnon]

really isn't tailored for this, especially the military. They don't. Well, they didn't then employ specialized IT workers. They trained up existing military employees in the, you know, basic techniques to run a network. So there weren't advanced security aware guys running government networks on military networks.

[Jesse]

And are you, so while you're doing this, are you just like sitting in an apartment or something?

[Gary McKinnon]

It's a bit embarrassing. My girlfriend and I at the time we were living in her auntie's house on the ground floor and I was in my dressing gown up to like 4 in the morning, smoking weed, drinking beer. Just ride of my life really for, you know, a youngish guy. I think I was 36 at the time.

[Jesse]

So yeah, I, you know, I don't think that's embarrassing for you. I think it's embarrassing for the, the sites you hacked into. Okay. So you're, you're, you're getting a little late night buzz and you're, you know, you're at your, your girlfriend's aunt's house and you're just like, I want to find, I want to know for myself what's going on in UFO world. You do this blank password search, you actually come up with some results as far as sites that you can get into. What do you look at first?

[Gary McKinnon]

Well, the first thing I had to do was test my method. So I did that on British sites. And we're currently in Cambridge, home of the famous university. I had Cambridge's FTP server file transfer protocol server and Oxford as well, and a couple of polytechnics at the time, which are now universities. And I realized the technique worked. If you cast far enough a wide net, you know something's going to come in. And then I thought, okay, let's go for the locations. And my list of locations all came from the disclosure project book. And also there was a, I forget the title of it, there was like a hackers network document going around of a list of potential UFO secrecy sites. And I took some of the names from there. But all that told you was the network names or the particular Department of Defense, like sub department that owned that network. So I used a site at the time which was called NIHE's IP index. And this guy had done some work. He'd used like domain search tools and built a huge list of who owns what subnets. So I could just grab a block, plug it into my script and scan like a quarter of a million computers in eight minutes. Typically 5% would respond, and then from that 5%, a further 5% would have blank passwords.

[Jesse]

Okay, okay, got it. So you do this like narrowing process and you end up with, what is it, like 97 sites that you can get into or something like that?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, that was the end result, which

[Jesse]

is a lot of sites. And what do the sites include as far as acronyms that people would be familiar with or program names people would be familiar with?

[Gary McKinnon]

Okay, so NSA. I got into Fort Meade, Deezer, Defense Information Systems Agency, DoD networks, basic army networks, Navy networks, USAF, US Air Force networks.

[Jesse]

Okay, wow. So, yeah, those are some pretty intense organizations that at the very least, we know, hold the keys to, you know, all sorts of, you know, military technology secrets that confer a tactical advantage to the US if not some of these deeper, you know, more interesting mysteries that, you know, you and I share an interest in. So what do you do next as far as your search and what do you find?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, okay, so I'm one guy. I've got potentially thousands of IPs to search the individual computers. And once you find a blank password, and these are Windows networks, you need to become the administrator, which is like, you know, the highest local account and eventually the domain administrator, which controls the entire network. So once I was on one PC or a network, I then attack the domain server and get that password, and that's through dictionary attacks, password cracking. I actually used a tool called loftcrack. I don't know if that's still around. And once I'd done that, it's a huge job for one person. Huge job. So I found a program called LanSearch. This is all commercially off the shelf available software. And what land search enabled me to do was to type in a search term and it would search every file and folder on all the local PCs that I had control of, which could be, I think the largest I did was 5,000 at one time, which took hours. You know, it was a whole like. So, yeah, that's how I. That was my system for making it doable for one person. And also, it depends on your search terms. These files aren't going to be called UFO secrets. So I had to look for things like, you know, secret, top secret, just anything just to. And PDF. PDF documents were particularly helpful. A lot of stuff was in PDF back then and the redacting they did on PDFs back then was not fully redacted. You could un redact it once you downloaded the file to your own PC. So it was a huge network wide document search and just grabbing what I could, spending hours getting it and then spending hours reading it and trawling through it.

[Jesse]

Are you, when you're spending hours reading it, is this like you backed this stuff up on a hard drive or is it just on your PC?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, downloaded to my PC.

[Jesse]

Okay, so it's just on your PC?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Wow. And so, so you're going through all this stuff. Were there any other things you saw that were interesting outside of, you know, we'll get to the, the crazy kind of UFO related stuff that you found. Was there anything else that you, that you saw while, while searching through these documents?

[Gary McKinnon]

I was looking for free energy as well. I never found anything to do with that. One thing I have to say, I never found anything to do with Solar Warden. Solar Warden is a huge rumor that was started by an anonymous poster and on the above top secret forum. So there's no evidence for Solar Warden and I have nothing to do with it. Never heard of that. Apart from, you know, rumors pertaining to myself.

[Jesse]

Yeah. For the audience. Solar Warden is, has become associated with these sort of secret space program Gaia, you know, people like Corey Good, you know that say that we have like a terrestrial, you know, we have like humans like in, in like deep space right now and they engage in these like 20 years and back missions or whatever and there's a documentary on it and it's like. It's the worst documentary I think I've ever seen.

[Gary McKinnon]

I bet it is. I believe in a secret space program, but I don't believe Corey Good.

[Jesse]

Yeah, well that's the thing. It's like Pizzagate and Epstein. It's you. The best way to debunk the truth or to pre immunize the population from ever actually looking into the truth is to kind of, you know, inoculate them. Send out stuff that is directly adjacent to the truth and then ensure that that gets debunked because it's so prima facie ridiculous.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, Standard intel technique.

[Jesse]

Yeah. So I. Yeah. So the fact that there's some sort of. Yeah, standard intel techniques. So the fact that you know a blog, an anonymous blog post and then you have all these people kind of flooding the Zone with secret space program stuff makes me think that there might actually be something next to that that might be. That might be true. That dovetails with what you did find. Anything else that you found that was interesting before? The, the crazy stuff?

[Gary McKinnon]

Nothing to do with ET or anything like that, but it's very interesting. What? On one site I found the jailers file. Every military base has a jailer and it's just crazy. You've got guys taking LSD that work on submarines.

[Jesse]

Really?

[Gary McKinnon]

So lots of interesting human stories.

[Jesse]

You know where they're taking LSD that work on submarines?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, well, yeah, because the, the soldiers basically. Okay, oh, I'm a suburb, I'm tripping now. And like, you know, they're dealing drugs. They've got Hell's Angels gangs bringing in the drugs. And so that was interesting for a human story. It's nothing to do with what we're here to discuss today, but it's entertaining.

[Jesse]

Okay, that's fascinating. I thought, I thought for a second you were talking about like MK Ultra mind control, like taking LSD at the bottom of submarines and testing consciousness or. Okay, so just, you know, recreational. Yeah, Spice it up down there. Interesting.

[Gary McKinnon]

The nine to five. That's boring.

[Jesse]

Yeah. And so you're systematically, you're looking for UFOs, you're looking for free energy. Any other like, you know, kind of terms that are on your mind in going into the search?

[Gary McKinnon]

No, that was my main focus. And with UFOs, it was particularly the propulsion. What I was interested in was the energy and the propulsion. Aliens didn't excite me so much because I'm sure they exist because it's a huge universe. But I, I wanted something that could. That we could use, you know, as people. And I was convinced that it was secret technology, but they knew something about the populace at large wasn't allowed to have access to.

[Jesse]

Yeah, well, I think you were. You were onto something. Maybe.

[Gary McKinnon]

But in Britain at the time, we had old age, pensioners couldn't pay their fuel bills and energy was a really sad story for a lot of people. So to have something that was free.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

And. Yeah, it was just too juicy not to have a go at finding.

[Jesse]

Yeah, I mean, it would be hugely disruptive to establishment institutions, you know, if, if, you know, our energy prices dropped from, you know, 50 bucks per kilowatt hour to like 50 cents per kilowatt hour, that would be hugely disruptive. It just would.

[Gary McKinnon]

I think it's a control mechanism, isn't it? Energy as well? Just like water is Starting to be food has been for a while.

[Jesse]

Yeah. Anything that's scarce and can be accrued at the top, I think, is totally a control mechanism. Yeah. Anybody who doesn't think that, you know, having access to a critical threshold of oil has not determined American foreign policy over the last 70 years is nuts. Like, I mean, you see it with Maduro in Venezuela and then, you know, worries about what's going on in Iran vis a vis that, you know, and so. And like, it's. It's all, you know, very, very, you know, obviously interconnected. I mean, Desert Storm in the early 90s was basically pulled off because Saddam Hussein in overtaking Kuwait, controlled the fifth of the world's oil supply. And that was just unacceptable.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. And one thing about Venezuela is it wasn't just America's domestic supply. It was what foreign powers could get. China was about to do a deal with Venezuela.

[Jesse]

That's right.

[Gary McKinnon]

I think it would only amount to like, 1 or 2% of China's imports. But it's still something.

[Jesse]

Yeah, still something. They're sitting on a lot of oil there. And you see this, like, these crazy sort of game theory dynamics vis a vis China taking place with Greenland and other places. So it's. It all cuts to these. And if you look at, like, why the US had to back down off this recent, you know, trade agreement deal with, with China and kind of concede some. Some things it was due to rare earth refinement being basically a monopoly in China. And so, you know, these things are like, very real things geopolitically. And so if I, I think I agree with you. I think it's very interesting if there's any sort of novel, exotic physics that's stuck in a compartment in the government, you know, I'd like to know as well.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

And I even think they're probably interesting ways to use it geopolitically. Like if you're, if you have it where it's like it's some sort of carrot for, like, okay, maybe you don't give it to, like, you know, gross dictators or whatever, but it's like a way to, like, incentivize reform or. I don't know. But like, just keeping it to yourself. That seems wrong, maybe. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. But you're right. It's a real hard line to walk, isn't it? How do you have that public for you, but not public for other countries? Because you have spies and.

[Jesse]

Totally. And there. There are dual use implications for a lot of things. So, like, a good example would be, you know, Controlled fusion or whatever would, you know, is the really positive, you know, use of, of nuclear fusion which would allow for, you know, sort of free energy if you have over unity. But then, you know, fusion also creates the hydrogen bomb. Right. And so, so like you never know, like if you had some free energy device that you were putting in a compartment or something, if that also allowed a kid in his bedroom to blow up the world. Like you do have to like do some calculations. There's this guy, Ashton Forbes online who I don't know if you're familiar with him, but yeah, Talks about, yeah, MH370, the like these like orbs wrapping around the plane and then it zaps it and he's like, sure that there's like free energy like you know, being held.

[Gary McKinnon]

The most fascinating thing about that was where's the provenance of that video? Yeah, it's never been shown.

[Jesse]

It's never been. Yeah, we don't know. Yeah, yeah, but okay, so what do you, what do you find next?

[Gary McKinnon]

So there was a special witness for Stephen Greer's disclosure project called Donna Hair. And she said that when she worked she was pretty hard. She was a NASA launched photographic specialist. I think she had secret clearance because she'd get very close up photos of all the mechanics and engineering and stuff for launches and the launch platform, under the launch platform. And she said that she worked in Building 8 of Johnson Space Center JSC and that her colleague who worked across the corridor and this is all something he shouldn't have done because they chatted, had lunch together or whatever and one day he just beckoned her across the corridor and said, come and take a look at this. And this is the days of analog photography. And so he's got big contact sheets and slides and they used to be developed under red light and silver nitrate. And he says, what do you think this is? And there was a huge white disc on this satellite photo of the earth. And she being a photographic expert herself, said, oh, it's just a blob of the emulsion, the old chemical of the sheets.

[Jesse]

And then he's grinning and he says dots on the emulsion don't leave round shadows on the ground. And there was a round shadow at the right angle, at the correct angle. The sun shining on the trees. I saw pine trees, I didn't see a coastline. I don't know where this was. But I looked at him and I was pretty startled because I'd worked out there several years and never seen anything like this, never heard of anything like this. And, and I said, is this a ufo? And he's smiling at me. And he says, I can't tell you that. So I said, what are you going to do with this information? And he said, well, we always have to airbrush them out before we sell

[Gary McKinnon]

them to the public because they sell on the imagery to colleges, universities, you know, Earth shots and magnificent scenes from space. So, yeah, his job was to blot this stuff out and make sure it wouldn't get seen. And they didn't have Photoshop then. So I'm not sure. I think, you know, the airbrush term literally comes from a physical airbrush on the emulsion where they just blur things. And you see lots of examples on this of like, lunar photography from Clementine Mission, the Lunar Orbiter, the LRO Lunar Recordings Orbiter. So I read this story absolutely fascinated, you know, here was this highly qualified woman. She'd worked for a long time, NASA and I think the Air Force, previously to that. And.

[Jesse]

And did she say disc? She said flying saucer. Yeah, okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, she.

[Jesse]

And she said, so that shape, the circular shape.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, and the shadow.

[Jesse]

Okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

Wow. And I was already in Johnson Space center at the time, so I thought Building eight. Okay, I wonder if that's still running, because she worked there and I think the late 80s or the early 90s.

[Jesse]

So you're in the Johnson Space center files on your PC, you're going through that.

[Gary McKinnon]

I was already there when I read that.

[Jesse]

Okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. So I thought, I've got to have a look. Yeah, gotta have a look. And I thought, how the hell do I find building 8? But luckily windows has. You can do network commands in a console rather than a GUI with a mouse. And you can type it like netstat. Network status tells you all the people connected to the machine. And there's other commands whereby NASA are great auditors of their system. So they have these special commands for auditing where you see the machine, the PC, the number, the serial number, the date when it was last maintained, all stuff like that, and the building it's in. So I ran those commands that produced a list and I stripped out. I think it was about 1500 machines or maybe 150 machines. But once I stripped out the building eight machines, there was only like a dozen, maybe. And I ran the blank password script on them, and I think about half of them were accessible. And the first one I looked at was the one where I saw the picture. And it was strange. It was. I did a lot of network support before that as well. And most users, desktops are covered in Stuff shortcuts, emails, like electronic post it notes. And these were very bare desktops. All they had was like two folders, raw and Process and maybe a couple of other shortcuts. And so I thought, I've got to look at this. It's gotta be images. It's where she said it was. It looks like images, it says raw, it says processed. And I double clicked into the folders and it's a proprietary NASA image format that I can't run on my desk. Not a jpeg, not a png. So what I had to do was basically there was. What was it called?

[Jesse]

There was,

[Gary McKinnon]

there was. I basically had to run NASA's software. I had to double click on the desktop because my hacking method, although I'd get in there with a blank password, which was CLI come online. Once I was in there, I was using remotely anywhere, I think it still exists. It's like PC anywhere. It's like you're sitting at the desktop, you can see the screen on your screen. And so I double clicked this. But it was very, very slow. I was on a 56k dial up, which was to give some idea of the speed it was if you download an MP3 music file now, you've got it in a few seconds. Then it was five minutes per megabyte. And a song might be three megabytes and 50 minutes for one song. No one would even accept that now. So I double clicked this. It was taking ages so I canceled it. I turned down my remote graphical, remote control thing into like 8 bit color, then 4 bit color. Eventually, yeah, I think 4 bit color or 2 bit color. It was basically four or five different colors. So it was a shitty image. But it came on the screen like, you know, almost line by line. I think there's a few lines at a time. So it's coming in blocks and I'm looking and there's like blackness. Then there's like slowly a hemisphere started appearing and I'm thinking, fuck, that's a planet. What the hell? This could be what she said. And the hemisphere comes into view and it's very blocky, but it's kind of blue and white. So I'm thinking it must be Earth. And then suddenly there's a big straight kind of silvery line that is coming down. Then that's I guess what they now call a Tic Tac. But it's what we used to call cigar shaped object. And this thing was admittedly, it's low resolution, it's coming down slowly, but this thing looked very kind of smooth on the outside. There was no lines. Whether we'd be like plates fixed or screws and bolts and stuff. And I was just thinking, my God, this is my eureka moment. Confirmed Donna Hair's story. Not that Donna Hair story. Needs confirming.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

And it got to. I got the whole ship, you know, in view, and then it started to go below that, where I would see the rest of the. The sphere of the Earth. I assume it was the Earth. And it was just amazing. The only man made, possibly man made thing that was there was like geodesic domes, like radar stations. One on top, below on both sides. And I thought, well, that's strange. It's kind of man made looking, but not man made looking. And then I've got graphical remote control. I see the mouse move. Someone else, the person, someone else is at the computer themselves and they're moving the mouse. They right clicked on the local area network icon, you know, right next to your clock on the bottom right of your Windows taskbar disconnect. And boom, that was it. Gone. I was cut out. And I'm sitting there like, waiting.

[Jesse]

Oh, my God.

[Gary McKinnon]

Bated breath for my Eureka moment. Come on, come on, come on.

[Jesse]

Oh, my God. Anything else on the cigar? So smooth. No. It doesn't seem like rivets or seams. It's hovering above the Earth. Do you notice anything else? No.

[Gary McKinnon]

Just like a very smooth cylinder, the geodesic domes and so the little dome.

[Jesse]

Dome on top, dome on bottom.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. And either end. Yeah.

[Jesse]

And on either end.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. Well, that could just be the kind of cigar.

[Jesse]

Sure.

[Gary McKinnon]

Tube, like the closure of the cylinder.

[Jesse]

Sure, sure. That is fascinating.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

So interesting. And did you ever speak with, you know, yourself or through intermediaries with Donna Hair?

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh, yeah.

[Jesse]

And did she say, that's the disc that I saw? And I just. Because I think of disc with her and then cigar tic tac with you.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, she saw that one photo disc, but she also spoke to.

[Jesse]

Okay, so these are probably different images. You're just confirming that the same building probably has a whole lot of images that they're sitting on.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. Even though it might be 10 or 20 years later, apparently this is still the place where there's images.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

You know, UFOs or exotic craft and they're being airbrushed out.

[Jesse]

It is proof that at least. I mean, it's really interesting that you have a whistleblower come out with nobody has any evidence for her claims at this point. And she says, you know, this is where we process the images. I was shown this image Building 8, Johnson Space Center. You independently, you know, halfway across the world, hack into Johnson Space center, look at building eight and then one of the first things that pops up on your screen is an image of a UFO hovering above the Earth, which is clearly not the exact same ufo, but it's, you know, it's definitely exotic.

[Gary McKinnon]

It's nothing, you know, it wasn't a rocket, it wasn't iss, it wasn't like a space lab or.

[Jesse]

Well, it doesn't sound like a satellite to me. A cigar, like rotating around.

[Gary McKinnon]

There's no antennae either. There's nothing. No like telemetry sensor looking stuff.

[Jesse]

Yeah, yeah, that is wild. I mean. And then also now we have the lucky hindsight, you know, in, in 2026 of Commander David Friver's experience of 2004, just a few years later off the coast of San Diego where he sees a tic Tac object. And they have, you know, apparently radar. We've seen the FLIR imaging, the thermal imaging of this thing. It's for everyone to see. The Pentagon is verified that that's real.

[Gary McKinnon]

All four of us because we were an F18F. So we had pilots and W in the back seat looked down a small saw white tic tac object with a longitudinal axis pointing north, south and moving very abruptly over the water like a pingpong ball. It rapidly accelerated in front of us and disappeared. Our wingman roughly 8,000ft above us lost contact also.

[Jesse]

And then you have a lot of other witnesses. You have his co pilot, you have another plane and two pilots in that plane. You have, you know, a whole lot. You have the obviously radar, some guys on the ship. Exactly. So are you the first like other, I mean there, I think, I believe there's some other tic tac and cigar. Like there's, you know, I think flying there. There are Air Force documents from the late 40s that describe flying butane tanks. I don't know if you know about this. Yeah, David Grush, famous UFO whistleblower has talked about this. And then in Robert hastings Great book UFOs and Nukes, which talks about UFOs showing up at nuclear installations all over the world, including in the UK actually at Rendlesham Forest in 1980. Really famous case. He talks about tic tacs or cigar shaped objects often being sort of like a mothership and saucers flying out of the, the Tic Tacs.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, I think that was it. Maelstrom AFB in America as well. Similar thing happened. Yeah, like definitely a mothership kind of configuration.

[Jesse]

Yeah, a Ton has happened at Malmstrom, actually. So it's definitely likely that in certain cases some sort of tick, because a Tic Tac or cigar is one of the most common descriptions people have. There's a case we were just talking earlier, you know, thank you, James Fox, great documentarian for the intro to Gary. Great guy. And we were saying that he sort of single handedly resuscitated this obscure Brazilian UFO crash in 1996, the Virginia case. And there's a guy, Carlos de Souza, who's a ultralight pilot geography teacher, who literally saw the crash and he felt the material, just like in Roswell with Jesse Marcel. It feels the material and it feels like, you know, memory metal.

[Gary McKinnon]

I could see quite a few pieces of debris on the ground and I picked them up and it was kind

[Jesse]

of curved and then I was surprised

[Gary McKinnon]

to see how light it was, so

[Jesse]

I said, I'll keep it. So I crunched it up and so I made this kind of movement, you know, to put it in my pocket.

[Gary McKinnon]

And what happened was this foil or

[Jesse]

this sheet regained its shape.

[Gary McKinnon]

So I thought, what is this? I was completely floored.

[Jesse]

Yeah, it sprung back into its original shape. And guess what the shape of the craft was that he saw that crashed.

[Gary McKinnon]

Right.

[Jesse]

So cigar, Tic Tac. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

So, yeah, lots of synchronicities there.

[Jesse]

What was your first instinct when you saw it? How, how did you feel and what did you think? You know, often I think like if you're taking like a multiple choice test, it's like your first instincts often. Right. You know, and then you second guess yourself. So do you. Did you have like a. An on the spot interpretation?

[Gary McKinnon]

I'm not an aeronautics expert or a space vehicle expert, but to me, I watched space stuff with interest since I was a kid. And it wasn't your normal space stuff. So I knew that, but there wasn't. I didn't know if it was extraterrestrial. I still don't. Obviously it could be something man made, but it was definitely something secret because it was nothing like we already have up there.

[Jesse]

Dan, did you have any sort of instinct of. I mean, the obvious question is, is it ours or is it theirs?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, that's the big distinction. Well, I think because of Donna Hare's, my instinct was that, yeah, it was alien because that's what she described. She described unknown things in high res NASA satellite imagery that they had to airbrush out because, I don't know, maybe they thought it would panic the public or they had no explanation for it.

[Jesse]

And what does she Say as far as why they airbrushed it out and didn't just admit, you know, yeah, we're surrounded by these cool exotic objects.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, we shared a few emails. She's passed now, unfortunately, God ruins herself. And we had one, I think it was like two and a half hour, three hour phone conversation. And she thinks, just like a lot of us do, that a lot has been hidden. It's being hidden for reasons of control. But it's weird when you try and extrapolate from this. You think, well, wouldn't you use technology like that in a war if you had that, Would you use it openly to your advantage or so to me, that tells me that it's still unknown even to the people of the highest authority on that subject.

[Jesse]

I think that's right. If it's not well known and it's flying with impunity over our nuclear sites and insensitive airspace and in space next to, you know, our recon satellites and stuff, you would be extremely embarrassed to. You wouldn't be able to admit, you know, you know. But if, but if you did know what was going on, you would just tell the public. Yeah, we, not only do we know what's going on, but then you try to signal that you know what's going on and you've like reverse engineered it because you'd want to, you know, kind of soften, you know, the enemy sort of thing. And so I actually think some of modern disclosure might be, you know, intel tactics to try to like say that we know more than we do, but also recruit on the topic because like actually they don't really know what's going on.

[Gary McKinnon]

You're absolutely right. Embarrassment is a huge factor.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Even just my, my hacking was an embarrassment. So if they're embarrassed about something like that, can you imagine? Yeah, I mean, it's just indeterminable. It's hugely different. And also fear because we. Why you know, are they here?

[Jesse]

Lifelock, how can I help? The IRS said I filed my return, but I haven't.

[Gary McKinnon]

One in four tax paying Americans has paid the price of identity fraud.

[Jesse]

What do I do?

[Gary McKinnon]

My refund though.

[Jesse]

I'm freaking out. Don't worry, I can fix it.

[Gary McKinnon]

Fix this? LifeLock fixes identity theft, guaranteed, and gets your money back with up to $3 million in coverage. I'm so relieved.

[Jesse]

No problem. I'll be with you every step of the way.

[Gary McKinnon]

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[Jesse]

Visit lifelock.com podcast terms apply.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, what are they Doing? Why are the interest in nuclear missiles? Is it for protection of us? Is it that we destabilize some kind of interdimensional thing or. Yeah, you know, we're fucking with atoms.

[Jesse]

Did you get the sex? Yeah, right. We are. We're doing a lot. Genetics, atoms, biowarfare. So. So you, when you saw this thing, did you get the sense that it was moving in a predictable orbit? I mean, it's, it's a static image, so you have no way of knowing. But did you get the sense that it was like moving in a, in an orbit or that it was like just kind of maneuvering around or.

[Gary McKinnon]

Well, I've seen photos of Leo, low Earth orbit stuff, and this looked to be maybe. I mean, I have no idea of the scale of this thing, but with the hemisphere, it was way beyond low Earth orbit.

[Jesse]

Okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

But I don't know.

[Jesse]

I mean, you know, there's a. Actually a WikiLeaks email with John Podesta on it that's been deleted from the Internet. But still, if you go on the Wayback Machine, I think there's some Reddit forums that discuss this. Definitely a real email. And he is talking with kind of a contractor from some aerospace corporation, I think, in California. And he mentions the contractor, I think the guy's name is Bob Fish. Said they're having lunch together, and this is him recalling it in the email. And, and Fish says, yeah, we spotted some Fast Walkers today. And they were, I think this was in specific reference to the dsp, the Defense Support Program, which I think is this very deep geostationary kind of recon thing that the Air Force does. This was the Air Force at the time. Because now Space Force would do it, you know, post 2019. But I wonder if you saw Fast Walker, because also if you try to FOIA Fast Walkers, which John Greenwald did, the Space Force gets back and says, we, you know, clearly there are some records, but we can't. We can't talk about them. Yeah, yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Wasn't there a CIA foyer to do with Fast Walkers as well?

[Jesse]

Maybe, maybe. Yeah, it might be the CIA actually. It might not even be space war. I might be getting that wrong. But yeah, yeah, interesting. So, but I guess one question would be, like, was it lateral to the Earth? Like, was it moving? Yeah, lateral to the Earth. Because I think it wouldn't make sense to me if it was like vertical to the Earth. Like, if the, if the butt was facing the Earth, I'd be like, that doesn't feel like an orbit. Like it's In a predictable orbit. You know what I mean?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. It was definitely.

[Jesse]

It was lateral 90 to the earth. It was at 90. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

So that. Yeah. It's horizontal.

[Jesse]

Horizontal.

[Gary McKinnon]

I wasn't seeing it end on. So you're right. It was in a position to be

[Jesse]

rotating around possibly in orbit.

[Gary McKinnon]

Or just traveling past.

[Jesse]

Or just traveling past. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Or.

[Jesse]

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So it wouldn't be. It wasn't like going directly at the Earth. It was like moving laterally somewhat. Okay. So interesting. Any other detail? I guess you could, you don't, you don't know color. Right. Because it's silvery white.

[Gary McKinnon]

I mean it was very. I was in like I think two bit color.

[Jesse]

Okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

But. Or maybe four bit. But yeah. It was very kind of blocky. And there's definitely white. Silvery white.

[Jesse]

And did you see any sort of. I guess I don't know how you'd see a shadow, but like did you see any sort of shadow? Because this is, you know, so far out from Earth.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Interesting. What do you think photographed it?

[Gary McKinnon]

Very good question. Yeah.

[Jesse]

Now.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. So this takes me to. I referenced the disclosure project a lot because that was the root of a lot of my locations and research at the time. And one of their witnesses, I forget his name, he was dia and he got a lot of the information to do with the satellites. And he was the one that said most of these satellites are actually pointed outwards and they're not like low earth orbit communication satellites. So I assume if you've got very far out satellites looking outwards, you can also rotate them and look inwards. So that's the only thing I could think of.

[Jesse]

Okay. So that is fascinating. You see that? How are you feeling when you see that?

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh man, I was ready to inform the press, tell the world. Oh my God. Like it's true. And NASA knows and NASA has know for ages. And Donna Hayer was right. But then boom.

[Jesse]

Disconnected as it's loading.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

So it hasn't even fully loaded like too fast.

[Gary McKinnon]

I saw like, like just under the bottom half of the ship.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

And yeah. Then disconnect.

[Jesse]

And you have no reason to lie about this. You've never made any money off of this. Right. And if anything you were kind of. You put, put on a witch trial. Like there was sort of this witch hunt for like 20 years where this like, you know, blanket extradition was attempted to be applied to you where they wanted to put you in prison for 60 years. So 17 for 70 years. Mr. McKinnon is accused of serious crimes on his visit to the White House

[Gary McKinnon]

David Cameron spoke to President Obama about the case and both agreed they could

[Jesse]

find an appropriate solution.

[Gary McKinnon]

We talked about the case of computer hacker Gary McKinnon on which the Prime Minister has expressed very clear views. You said you would work together to find a solution. So have you found one?

[Jesse]

Well, on Mr. McKinnon, we have proceeded through, through all the. Processes required under our extradition agreements. It is now in the hands of the British legal system. We have confidence in the British legal system coming to a just conclusion. And so we await resolution and will

[Gary McKinnon]

be respectful of, of that process. Well, we had talks and they said, look, if we just come along, don't fight it. You do between age and 20, like that's a good deal. No, thank you. I'll fight it. And yeah, and that was actually horrible. It was very depressing. I found out my own government, because governments are made up of individuals and individuals have ties to other individuals. In the DOJ and the cps, some of them wanted me gone too. Just as a favor to the us not because of anything to do with right or wrong or truth or justice, just as a favor. Political porn. So that was awful. Not just for me, my family, your mum and dad.

[Jesse]

And it's like, oh, weren't there some allegations of a meeting that was had at the American Embassy out here where it was like, we want his head or something? Like it was very extreme language used?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. Ed Gibson, who was attache to the US Embassy in London at the time, met with my lawyer and he said, we want to see him fry. Electric chair reference.

[Jesse]

Jesus Christ.

[Gary McKinnon]

When she told me that Karen, amazing lawyer, stuck with us all through this and fought and fought and fought. Yeah, I was just. I mean, we already knew they played dirt because I mean, people have to realize, you know, politics isn't about people being safe and well looked after. It's about the state, the furtherance of the state and its objectives and the protectors, the protection of your state to foreign state.

[Jesse]

So, yeah, no, that is definitely the, the lay of the land, as is national security. And you know, I just find it, I find it interesting that, okay, you have guys like Snowden and Assange where wherever you lie with them, which, like, whether you think they're courageous and ideological in, in a way that really, you know, exposed all sorts of, you know, issues with the intel world and mass surveillance and stuff.

[Gary McKinnon]

Stuff.

[Jesse]

Or whether you think they put like, you know, Americans abroad in danger or whatever, which I think there are, like, there is some nuance there. Like I do think some people in the intel world who talk about this say, well, there, there's some real like bad effects around, around this stuff.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. But in Assange's defense, he had lots of phone calls before releasing that information. So he actually agreed it with people in the State Department.

[Jesse]

I didn't know that. That's. Yeah, well, there you go. Yeah, but, but, but I was just getting to the point of whatever you think of those cases, like, maybe there's some, you know, like more gray area or debate to be had or whatever. In your case, you're just, you're smoking weed in your girlfriend's aunt's little flat and it's like 4am and you're just like a dude who's interested in UFOs since you were a child and you want to figure it out. And so I, it's just like to me, if it's the U.S. like, get your shit together. It's. That should be your, you should be. You know, it's almost like they might have lashed out so much at you because they were embarrassed. I mean, that you literally, like, it's, it's on you. It's not on this like, poor English citizen who has. No, clearly, like, I don't, I don't think you're like, particularly ideologically set in like, destroying America. You know, I've been there.

[Gary McKinnon]

I loved it. Chicago.

[Jesse]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So anyway, well, we, we'll get to that kind of more meta conversation. But you also found some other pretty crazy things while you were, while you were searching in your girlfriend's aunt's flat. And so. Yeah. What else did you, what else did you find besides this Tic Tac?

[Gary McKinnon]

I think I was on a Navy system at the time. I can't remember. Cloud of Weed, et cetera. But there was a spreadsheet, Excel spreadsheet, and it was called. Because I was saying earlier about my search terms, it was UFOs, ET terrestrial, anything, spacecraft, anything I could think of, which probably wouldn't be in the, in the, the title of the document. But this spreadsheet was titled Non Terrestrial Officers. So not on the Earth, which isn't necessarily alien. It could just mean space based Marines or, you know, secret space force. And that was incredible. It had ship names, it had materiel, the military spelling, not materiel. And it was transfers of weird chemicals like molybdenum and other weird things that are hard to pronounce. Ship to ship transfers and fleet to fleet transfers. And at the time I looked up the ship names, thinking US Navy must be boats. Nothing, absolutely nothing.

[Jesse]

What? Do you remember the names of the people?

[Gary McKinnon]

No, I remember. I don't remember any of the names of the people. But the. There were long lists, you know, I think it was just initial surname. I don't think there were first names. And the ship names, I was expecting like USS Lincoln or you know, Navy ships, but there was none of that. Everything I. And it wasn't Google at the time. I think it was Altavista, one of the biggest search engine at the time. And none of it was seagoing vessels.

[Jesse]

So you see a list of non terrestrial officers and then you also see chemicals. What are the names of these chemicals?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, molybdenum, barium, something was in there. They were very exotic. So what does that imply?

[Jesse]

Do you remember the exact. So what, what is molybdenum? Have you looked up what the uses are of this?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, I remember, I can't say it now. Molybdenum, they're very exotic. They're used in like magnetics, lots of very kind of exotic industrial processes. A lot to do with metal hardening, if I remember right. Like metallurgy. Like you make an alloy and it makes it stronger than the original two components. So again, that time, now years later, with the research you've done, the people you've interviewed, it's all making more sense. Especially when we come to the biofuel brown stuff and dielectrics.

[Jesse]

Yeah, we'll get to that.

[Gary McKinnon]

And like nanodeposition of thin layer materials.

[Jesse]

Yes.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Thinly layered, thinner than a human hair or whatever. Micron layered. This one sample is engineered in layers

[Gary McKinnon]

thinner than microns through a process unknown on Earth and for a purpose we can only guess.

[Jesse]

Multi layered bismuth and magnesium sample. Bismuth layers, less than a human hair, supposedly picked up in the crash retrieval of an advanced aerospace vehicle. Nowhere could we find any evidence that anybody ever made one of these. Okay, this is fascinating though. So you see a list of how many non terrestrial officers.

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh man. So my screen at the time was the old like 800 by 600 monitors. I think I might have had 1024 by 768 resolution at the time. So your typical Excel spreadsheet without zooming in when you just load it up was probably 24 lines and I think there was about one and a half or two pages. So maybe like 30, 40 names.

[Jesse]

You don't remember any of the last names?

[Gary McKinnon]

No, sorry.

[Jesse]

You're killing me.

[Gary McKinnon]

I'm kidding me.

[Jesse]

You gotta give us a little breadcrumb.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. This is one of the Main criticisms of me. Why didn't you take a bloody screenshot? Just alt print, screen, alt print. But I did, actually. I downloaded that Excel spreadsheet and when I got arrested, all my data was taken to oni, Office of Naval Intelligence. So they still have my hard drives. I've tried to get them back for years and they said, no, it's still an ongoing investigation, you can't touch it.

[Jesse]

Office of Naval Intelligence is the oldest intelligence agency in the US. I think it's 1882 and it's often been deeply implicated in UFOs.

[Gary McKinnon]

1882.

[Jesse]

1882. So the National Security act, which created the CIA was 1947. And, you know, and then you had the OSS before that, which was kind of this wartime foreign intelligence effort. Yeah. But no Office of Naval Intelligence well, predates all of that. And you had Thomas Townsend Brown doing a lot of spooky science work for the Navy and. Yeah, and then you have this guy, Harold Malmgren, who kind of ended up giving me kind of a. Turned into kind of a deathbed confession at the end of his life. And it was wild. I mean, he was like, the Office of Naval Intelligence knows the most about this issue and once you go in that door, the door shuts and you can't get let out.

[Gary McKinnon]

Naval Intelligence are going to be around

[Jesse]

asking you questions about your study. They're going to get curious and if they talk to you for any length of time, they'll say, holy shit, you

[Gary McKinnon]

really know a lot.

[Jesse]

They're going to offer you special access. That's how they operate. I said, what does that mean? They'll open the doors, you'll have full entry, the doors will shut and you'll be no exit the rest of your life. That is a closed system. And he kind of implied that they approached him in certain cases and because of the fact that it was this closed system, he didn't want to engage.

[Gary McKinnon]

Wow.

[Jesse]

So very interesting. So. So they end up with your stuff.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Wow.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, they were. When the British police at the time, it was the NHTCU, National High State Crime Unit in the UK. At first they said to me, oh, you'll get six months. It's a computer. Mechiss Act 1995 in Britain and 6 bar community service. No time. And then they went to America and visited ONI and other Todd Brass and when they came back, the tone had totally changed. It was just really serious. Which of course eventually turned into facing 70 years in prison. So it was a huge. Like using a hammer to crack a Nut it was, you know, David and Goliath, the whole thing. Yeah.

[Jesse]

So wild.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, well, it's huge. Like you said earlier, I was just a guy, normal Guy, interested in UFOs, happened to have some IT skills, a little bit of hacking, blank passwords, nothing. Genius level. And then next thing you know, boom, it just blows up.

[Jesse]

Try to make an example of you. So, so. So when you think about those chemicals and, you know, we're. We'll get into our mutual interest in Thomas Townsend Brown and anti gravity experiments. This episode is brought to you by indeed. Stop waiting around for the perfect candidate. Instead, use Indeed sponsored jobs to find

[Gary McKinnon]

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[Jesse]

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[Jesse]

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[Gary McKinnon]

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[Jesse]

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[Gary McKinnon]

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[Jesse]

So you think that they could have been used to create special alloys or what you might call metamaterials and UFO world. Yeah. Which allow for greater thrust in these anti gravity experiments. Like, one thing that is true about the B field Brown effect and this anti gravity experiment is that if you use an insulator in the middle, that is considered a high K dielectric, which means it stores and discharges easily a lot of electromagnetism, a lot of, you know, electricity. It stores electric fields in it. Specifically, the thrust you see in the experiment is much greater from the negative electrode to the positive electrode. So do you think that, you know, I guess barium is actually in Townsend Brown's documents. Like he talks about it all the time. Exactly. So. And then what was the other? I can never pronounce it. And you looked into that and that's for, like, creating alloys.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, I think it's a strengthening alloy. It's been a long time since I looked into it, but I think that's what it was. It was like a strengthening alloy.

[Jesse]

Any other chemicals?

[Gary McKinnon]

It might have even had a shielding. Not gravitational shielding, but like radiation shielding or some kind. I think maybe similar to lead. But I'm not a physicist, so don't quote me.

[Jesse]

But it's super interesting if it's used on, like, current space vehicles. Like, people should go out and look that up, because if it is, you know, that might be an interesting lead.

[Gary McKinnon]

Some patent searches.

[Jesse]

Yeah. Any other chemicals?

[Gary McKinnon]

Molybdenum, barium, Strontium.

[Jesse]

Strontium.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, strontium.

[Jesse]

And strontium is also mentioned in Brown's stuff, I believe, or can't remember any others. Okay. And, but isn't strontium, I believe is one of Gary Nolan's pieces that he has at the, you know, Stanford lab that he thinks might be UFO metamaterials that come from crashes I believe has strontium in it.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, that's a good dielectric. I forget it's K constant, but I

[Jesse]

know it's high, so it's also a high K dielectric.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

This is crazy. So you have a list of non terrestrial officers?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jesse]

So, and then what does the fleet to fleet thing mean?

[Gary McKinnon]

This was fleet to fleet transfers because it was a. It was one spreadsheet, but it had tabs. So there was the officers names, there was ship names and there was a material transfer.

[Jesse]

Do you remember the ship names?

[Gary McKinnon]

No.

[Jesse]

Okay, but what, okay, when you're looking at this, what is your instinct as to like. Cause there are all sorts of wild interpretations people have, you know, and people make up the secret space program, solar ward and stuff. What was your. You're in the moment. What are you thinking when you see this?

[Gary McKinnon]

Well, that's exactly where I was. I imagine you were me, me UFO guy, you know, quite an active interest and then finding this. And so obviously that's where my first thoughts go. So I'm thinking non terrestrial officers, that's the baseline for the whole document. So they're not on Earth, but I was thinking, well, they could be, they're probably, it's probably people. They're not non terrestrial because they're not human. They're non terrestrial because it's non Earth based. So it's out in space. So space force was my first thought. Thought it's gotta be a space force, obviously secret. And then with the chemicals and stuff and the ship names then and fleet to fleet transfers. So there's more than one ship and then exotic materials. And so, you know, it's kind of two plus two equals four. Yeah, obviously it's to do with my mindset. That's what I was looking for. So that's how I interpreted.

[Jesse]

Well, you know what I would do if I was Office of Naval Intelligence and I hated Gary McKenna and you know what I would do? I'd make up some BS secret space program, call it Solar Warden, send people down the wrong trail, when actually I do have real, you know, deep space fleets and transfers of these.

[Gary McKinnon]

So.

[Jesse]

But the.

[Gary McKinnon]

And Solar Warden did come after me, so.

[Jesse]

Yeah, it did. So, so, but, but like I'm still trying to get to The. So the trans. What do you think that fleet to fleet transfer of what? Of people.

[Gary McKinnon]

I think materials.

[Jesse]

Materials.

[Gary McKinnon]

First you have the people, then you had the ships, then chemicals.

[Jesse]

Okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

Metal elements.

[Jesse]

Okay. And do we think that the material is being transferred between human. Do we don't think that the. The material is being transferred between extraterrestrials and humans, do we? Or do we think the material is being transferred between humans?

[Gary McKinnon]

I think, yeah. Ship to ship. So I guess maybe this was kind of like a logistics train, like a

[Jesse]

supply chain in space or something.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, yeah. Just a basic. Because, you know, the army's all about more. The Navy or whoever. It's all about logistics.

[Jesse]

And a lot of these materials, if they are layered extremely thinly and you have kind of atomic layer, deposition style stuff. We know that manufacturing in space and in zero G environments allows you. So a lot of these materials, they go. It looks like it was built in zero G. Like, this is so crazy.

[Gary McKinnon]

No faults. No.

[Jesse]

So like maybe they built it in zero G and then they're like conflating it with the UFO stuff, which actually just shows up around nukes and in other contexts or whatever. But like they might have built it in zero g. Yeah, yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

That's the old Cam's razor explanation, isn't it? That's the simplest.

[Jesse]

Okay, so there's like a space supply chain where humans are manufacturing these exotic materials in space that you literally couldn't.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Make physically impossible enough on Earth. Yes. Yeah, that's fascinating. I don't think has anybody ever explicitly tied together your thing like this, like we're doing now or.

[Gary McKinnon]

This is fresh and unique.

[Jesse]

I love this. This is fascinating because if you. I mean, that makes sense. That makes sense. Like the other stuff doesn't make sense. I mean, sending people 20 and back into. Through the sun into a portal or the. Maybe that's possible. I don't know.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, but super soldiers on Mars. No.

[Jesse]

Yeah, super soldiers on Mars. I just. We need more evidence. If I've all entertained, you know, whatever. But you need evidence. You know, you can't, you can't just.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, I'm open to all stories.

[Jesse]

Yeah. But this is fascinating. Okay, so you. It's like a space. This supply chain logistics, like a space factory essentially, where they're creating these metamaterials that you can't make on Earth and you need deep space to create them.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

And then so the non terrestrial officers would just be humans overseeing this supply chain. This space supply chain.

[Gary McKinnon]

Really good, because I never even saw it in that way. Before.

[Jesse]

Oh, this is fascinating. And what's ironic is they're probably making space travel that much easier by creating these high dielectric.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Which involve greater thrust in the byfield Brown effect. Yeah. So they're like making like, you know, their own program more powerful.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

With.

[Gary McKinnon]

To fit.

[Jesse]

This is fascinating.

[Gary McKinnon]

Wow. Wow.

[Jesse]

All right.

[Gary McKinnon]

I like that. I like discovery as we go.

[Jesse]

Yeah. I mean, who knows?

[Gary McKinnon]

But like that makes speculation.

[Jesse]

It is speculation, but it. The idea that we have people in deep space or we have like literal alien like men in black style, like aliens walking among us. And then we put like navy suits on them, commander suits on them. They were like, you're a non terrestrial officer or whatever. That makes less sense. Both of those make less sense.

[Gary McKinnon]

Just don't look at his huge almond shaped eyes.

[Jesse]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He'll crawl out of his skin suit occasionally. But like, you know, it's like that we're stuck between those two options. Like that. Or, you know, it's like aliens in like, you know, military garb or, you know, you know, literally humans that we've spent, that we've sent into like super deep space or whatever.

[Gary McKinnon]

I've never believed in any of the stories of alien contact with governments. I think it's just outlandish.

[Jesse]

Yeah, No, I think a lot of that stuff is pretty ridiculous. It feels like passage material that like, is meant to send people down the wrong trail or something. Yeah. At least it doesn't feel like there's a ton of good evidence. I do think there are a lot of weird abduction cases where people experience things, you know, and. And you know. Have you ever had anything like that? Better.

[Gary McKinnon]

I had one very strange experience that I can't explain to this day. It was back in 2006. My girlfriend and I are in what we call a bedsit in the uk. Tiny flat on the first floor, not the ground floor. And we'd gone to bed, we've gone to sleep and I was suddenly woken up by a really sharp pain in my left heel. And it felt like 2 or 3am felt like I'd been. I was in deep sleep. It had been a few hours, like, what the hell's that? And I kind of leaned forward to check it out, like something had bitten me. That immediately I just went, oh, it was asleep again. In the morning I woke up and weirdly, I don't know why, I'd gone to bed with my socks on or at least one sock on. And then I remembered what had happened during the night. And I pulled the sock off and in my left heel there were two perfectly circular holes, both about 5 millimeters in diameter. And one still had a flap of skin hanging off it. Like a hole punch used for paper, but about this far apart. White. I know nothing. What the hell? On the first floor, I was trying to think of every possible conventional explanation. Was it a rat with perfectly symmetrical 5 millimeter teeth had come to my bed and bit me in the lap. But I'm on the first floor, you know, not the ground floor, where like rodents could be no explanation whatsoever. I can't say much more than that because. But I did later as I got more into electronics and electromagnetics. I did like scans and stuff and

[Jesse]

then didn't come up.

[Gary McKinnon]

Couldn't find anything wrong. But a few years later I found out because this some. This is something I'm always researching and looking for an answer because I still haven't got one. There's a company, I don't know if it was VeriSign. There's some chipping, like electronic chipping company. And their process was exactly like that.

[Jesse]

No way.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. A double injection. And then years later, I've got two bumps that formed where those holes were and then moved around. And I still have those bumps. What on my hill today.

[Jesse]

Do you think a human did that? Do you think an alien did it? It.

[Gary McKinnon]

I'm thinking some kind of government tracking.

[Jesse]

Government tracking.

[Gary McKinnon]

I feel ridiculous saying it.

[Jesse]

Well, do you feel ridiculous saying. Because you had a 20 year, you know.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Prime ministers were negotiating with American presidents on your behalf because the American government had it out for you. So I don't think, you know, I think for a normal person being like, you know, they wanted to chip me or whatever, like that might be a little paranoid. But. Yeah, I think in your case, I'm not so sure, man.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, but even so, I wasn't running away, you know, I was on bail. Everything was safe. I was contained, as they would put it. But yeah, I just can't explain that. It's just weird as hell.

[Jesse]

Interesting. And do you still have that in your foot?

[Gary McKinnon]

Still have the bumps?

[Jesse]

Can I see him?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. I hope no one's got any foot fetishes. Or the opposite.

[Jesse]

Maybe you can start an only fans after this.

[Gary McKinnon]

All right. Striptease time. But you've not done this before.

[Jesse]

This is wild.

[Gary McKinnon]

Are we ready?

[Jesse]

Yeah. Yeah. So this company, Veritas.

[Gary McKinnon]

No, I think it was very sign or something.

[Jesse]

Verisign.

[Gary McKinnon]

I might have definitely began with a V, but I can't remember.

[Jesse]

And they do these little chip implants yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

So when I woke up with the holes, they were kind of round here in the corner, but now they've moved slightly. So one's there. It's a lesser.

[Jesse]

Whoa.

[Gary McKinnon]

And the other one's there.

[Jesse]

The other one's big.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Like, that's, like, very easy to spot.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. And that's the other one. Okay. I think that's shrunk over time, actually.

[Jesse]

Yeah, it feels smaller. Yeah. Whoa. Weird. The company Gary is talking about here isn't called verisign. It's called. Called verachip. And yes, it's done work in human microchipping. In fact, the company has produced a tiny RFID microchip about the size of a grain of rice that implants under the skin, transmits a unique ID when scanned, and links to a database with personal or medical information. This chip is essentially a permanent tracking and identification tool. To think. Think something so small can connect you

[Gary McKinnon]

to everything that matters when your life and all you love are on the line.

[Jesse]

The chip was introduced to the market in 2002, just a few years before Gary's experience in 2005. And according to Gary, the company's double injection method would cause something that looks exactly like the two bumps on his foot put. I'll let you decide if that's a coincidence or not. If you look a little deeper. Verichip's corporate lineage runs through Applied Digital Solutions. And prospectus filings show that the implantable microchips themselves were ultimately sourced from a subsidiary of Raytheon.

[Gary McKinnon]

What we do saves lives.

[Jesse]

It protects peace and democracy throughout the world. Yes, that. Raytheon, one of the largest defense contractors in the world.

[Gary McKinnon]

World.

[Jesse]

Deeply embedded in military systems, missile guidance, radar, and classified electronics. By the end of the 2000s, Verichip themselves had secured the rights to technology that would allow the chips to detect viruses from inside the body, including strains like H1N1. The proposal described an implant that could determine whether a virus was present, what kind it was, and how serious the threat might be. At that point, the device would no longer just be identifying a person, it would be monitoring their unique physiology and biomedical data. Completely dystopian, to say the least, and even more dystopian, knowing that this tracking technology was likely used in retaliation on an ordinary citizen like Gary McKinnon. So if that were surgically removed, what do you think you would find?

[Gary McKinnon]

Mind, I don't know, maybe two lumps of unanalyzable material. I don't know. I think I didn't have so much good equipment back then. But now I have really good stuff for electromagnetic analysis, radio frequency analysis, and I'd rather do that first before having it removed.

[Jesse]

You should do all that? Yeah, should do it like tomorrow.

[Gary McKinnon]

Okay, I'll ask my local doctor.

[Jesse]

I'm just saying, I'm just saying, you know, you don't want the names to go missing like in the, you know, non terrestrial officers. Like you want it, you get like, do it now. Yeah, yeah. Figure it out. So I joke. We're. We're in between your implant experience and then this possible space supply chain for anti gravity materials. And I don't know where to go, my head's exploding. But yeah, I mean, is there anything. Just going back to the materials thing and the, the fleet to fleet transfer. It's just so fascinating. And it's fascinating that you're into Townsend Brown too.

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh man.

[Jesse]

It's like you have this like hermetic connection to this who subject. Like you were meant to like see that or something. Like, like what anything else as far as takeaways from that document, you know, and interpreting it because it was. James Fox came out with the program and he, he, you know, did this great piece on you. But I think a lot of people do take what you found and run with it as far as just the people out there, like their interpretations of it when they see, you know, people discuss it.

[Gary McKinnon]

It. Yeah.

[Jesse]

So you're, this is your interpretation that it's some sort of supply chain in space or something or.

[Gary McKinnon]

Well, we, we stumbled on that together.

[Jesse]

Together. I guess so, yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

I hadn't really connected it in that way that it was a supply chain. It just came to my mind while we were speaking. And in light of what we both know now, it does make sense in terms of potential propulsion, the materials that might be necessary for that as a dielectric or so. It's pretty amazing.

[Jesse]

No, it makes total sense. There was a company called Made in Space that tried to do this for a while. There's now a probably more promising company called Varda Space which does this. It's like factories in space. At the end of the day, you can think of the value proposition as this is we can do special chemistry because we can essentially turn off gravity for the manufacturing engineer. And then often commercial companies are doing things that have already been done in classified settings. And so the stuff that was done in classified settings might have been this. You know, who knows knows. I mean right now I think we, it's like we have that are known like six people in space, like six astronauts, like on you know, the ISS and on various space stations, you know, Chinese space station, they have an astronaut or two. So the idea that. How many officers were on this list?

[Gary McKinnon]

At least 40 ish.

[Jesse]

40 ish. So maybe they're in space or maybe they were also. And maybe they were in orbit or maybe, maybe they were just managing this non terrestrial, you know, kind of atomic layer deposition process or you know, materials manufacturing or something.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, I've always thought there weren't aliens. I thought this is bound to be because it says non terrestrial officers, not extraterrestrial. So in other words, they're on a fleet that isn't based in space on Earth.

[Jesse]

When we talk about a speculative secret space program, we should establish something clearly there really was an uncontested, very real and now declassified secret space program. The US Air Force ran its own classified manned space effort alongside NASA's more public facing ones. In the 1960s, while the world watched Saturn V rockets rise under the banner of Apollo, the age Air Force was developing the Manned Orbiting Laboratory, a military space station designed for reconnaissance of America's enemies and other orbital operations. 17 military astronauts were selected. A modified Gemini capsule was built. Titan III rockets were assigned. Launches into polar orbit were planned from Vandenberg. And then In June of 1969, exactly one month before the Apollo mission reached the moon for the first time, the manned orbiting laboratory was canceled. Advances in automated spy satellites made human observers redundant. Vietnam was draining resources. The Apollo program was imminent, so the classified space program was folded. But in defense culture, cancellation does not necessarily mean disappear. Appearance programs are restructured, personnel are reassigned. Infrastructure is absorbed into deeper compartments. So what happened to the military astronaut program? Where did the classified orbital expertise go? And what was really going on with the classified Space program? In 1993, former Lockheed skunk Works director Ben Rich was speaking at a UCLA along alumni event. Rich had overseen programs like the U2, the SR71 and the F117 stealth aircraft that had lived in total secrecy before becoming public knowledge. At the end of his presentation, according to multiple attendees, Rich's final slide showed a black disc shaped craft flying into space. He closed with the famous words, we now have the technology to take, et cetera, home. Was he just messing with the audience? Rich would end up dying just two years later. But towards the end of his life, he would privately say things that sounded very similar to this UCLA speech. Things about prodigious American space capabilities the public could barely dream of.

[Gary McKinnon]

Just before Ben Rich passed away, when I was talking to him, he told me this is at the end of a 45 minute conversation he said, jim, we have things out in the desert. And he wasn't referring to Area 51. We have things on the desert that is 50 years beyond what you can comprehend. I can comprehend a hell of a lot. And he said if you've seen movies like Star Trek or Star wars, we've been there, done that, or decided it wasn't worth the effort.

[Jesse]

Ben Rich's son Michael Rich was the president and CEO of RAND Corporation for decades. RAND was the Santa Monica based federally funded research and development center evaluating the prospects of Project Orion, nuclear pulse propulsion craft that could theoretically carry very large crews, reach Mars or outer planets and enable long duration missions. Not coincidentally, RAND has also conducted comprehensive research on the non engineering side of deep space travel, crew psychology and isolation, life support, logistics, radiation hazards, resupply challenges, cost and national priorities. RAND Corporation also happened to be intensely interested in the gravity manipulating deep space propulsion work of towns and branches. Brown, his work going dark after he showed them a demo in 1967. President Ronald Reagan may have also inadvertently left a hint around secret American space capabilities. In his diary entry from June 11, 1985, lynch was with five top space scientists. It was fascinating. Space truly is the last frontier and some of the development there in astronomy, etc. Are like science fiction, except they are real. I learned that our shuttle capacity is such we could orbit 300 people. You read that right. Not one shuttle crew, not a single mission. 300 people in Earth's orbit in space. If you ask your favorite AI conversation agent, it'll tell you that we only have 10 or so people people in space today, but we somehow had the capacity for 300 in the 80s. In 2020, Haim Eshed, former head of Israel's Defense Ministry's Space Directorate, essentially the father of the Israeli space program, publicly claimed that American astronauts and alien representatives were operating on underground bases on Mars. These bizarre hints have stacked up over the decades. Decades. And maybe they are mirrored in one of the most famous fictional versions of a secret space force Stargate. With visible cooperation from the U.S. air Force, the production of the show Stargate leaned on real world military structures and culture. In fact, two sitting Air Force chiefs of staff, Michael E. Ryan and John P. Jumper, appeared on the show show as themselves. These guys literally ran the Air Force and were showing up for cameos on this show. The lead actor on the show, Richard Dean Anderson, was later made an honorary Brigadier General in recognition of what the Air Force described as the program's positive portrayal of the Service. The show's central premise, a classified off world program run by the Air Force from a hidden command facility. Facility. Of course, the military connection might have just been due to some fans among the Air Force staff. Or maybe it was just another tiny hint towards something really big going on in secret. Strange stories of a parallel space program are apocryphal, but they are more abundant than you might think. Like this stunning revelation shared with Ross Coulthard on Chris Ramsey's Area 52.

[Gary McKinnon]

There was a conversation I had with someone who I trust who got very emotional and described a friend of his dying on the moon. Wow. And I what do you make of that? I didn't know what to make of it.

[Jesse]

It's important to remember that the public didn't even know the NRO or National Reconnaissance Office existed for decades. The parallel classified Air Force astronaut program wasn't fully declassified until 2015. So is it so crazy to think we might have experimented with COVID human spaceflight and exotic material supply chains since then? The benefits of building materials in space cannot be understated. Matter in space, because of its lower graph gravity, environment behaves in ways that are basically impossible on Earth without gravity. There's no convection, no settling, no buoyancy, tearing materials apart as they form. Liquids stay perfectly mixed. Crystals grow with extraordinary purity. Optical fibers can be drawn with almost no internal flaws, potentially outperforming anything made on the ground. So it's also not that crazy to assume that we've experimented with the this technology for extremely high value metamaterials used at the highest levels of aerospace. Now, where would such a program be headquartered? NASA's Johnson Space center in Houston is not only where MacKinnon found UFO related images and spreadsheets, it's the NASA complex that specifically focuses on human spaceflight. The notorious line Houston, we have a problem refers to mission control at Johnson Space center in Houston. So if you were operating a manned spaceflight operation involving a materials supply chain, that's exactly where you'd put it. I should be clear too. Like both of us aren't trying to fully pour cold water on UFO crashes like I think.

[Gary McKinnon]

No, not at all.

[Jesse]

I think, like I think Roswell happened. I think Virginia happened in 1996. So it's always. Yes, and in the UFO world, like it's like all of the. But I think intentional conflations also are systematically done by the intelligence world. And it's important to be able to parse through all these things.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, and of course it's human nature to super associate Stuff with something you want to be true. So we can all fall down that hole as well.

[Jesse]

Yeah, no, of course. Well, I'm officially shocked. This is crazy. I mean, the Navy does do like the most exotic materials stuff as well. Like there's this place, Naval Surface Warfare Crane that does this. Battelle Memorial Institute does a lot of exotic material stuff as well. And so, yeah, I really, I do wonder if, you know. Yeah. Some of this is human made. And then if you say it's of alien provenance, then it's this like perfect, you know, kind of black box where like people can interpret it however they want. And.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, it's a great shield, isn't it? Good umbrella.

[Jesse]

It is. And then the fact that. And what's wild is that like you're experimenting with materials. Like you literally have materials in mind that make the Bifield Brown effect. Like you're interested in these anti gravity experiments that involve some of these chemicals that. And materials that you saw.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Which is wild.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, well, the. Yeah, It's. Yeah. Since 2007, since I first read about Bifold Brown.

[Jesse]

How'd you read about it? How'd you come across across it?

[Gary McKinnon]

I don't remember precisely, but it was.

[Jesse]

Because that's early.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, it was undoubtedly researching UFO stuff.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Anti gravity stuff specifically would have brought me to that. But yeah. What attracted me was the fact that you can, you can do this in your, you know, home, garage or shed or whatever. You know, you don't have to be a scientist, you have to be a scientist to understand the mechanism, which no one as yet does. But you don't have to be a scientist to do it on the bench and try some experiments. Because all a capacitor, two conductive plates. In between them sandwiched an insulator, a dielectric that stores electric charge. So you know what's complicated about that? And if you read all the so called research into the BB effect, none of it's exhaustive. None of it. It's all, oh, I did 5 kilovolts of DC, I did 10 kilovolts of AC. Obviously Beulah went very far. There are a few people that went far, Army Research Laboratory, but no one's done a huge battery of tests with a multitude of dielectrics, a multitude of different plates, the mass of the plates, not just the material. Is it ac? Is it dc? Do you use a sigh wave? Do you use a ramp wave or a triangle wave or a sawtooth wave? How long's your pulse? What's your delay? There's so many. Well there's quite a few parameters compared to a lot of stuff. But for a home experimenter it's doable within a few hundred hours I think. And I've probably done about 60 hours all told. I've done thousands of hours of reading, but probably 60 hours experimentation.

[Jesse]

Wild. Oh, so you've done 60 hours of running the actual experiment?

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh no, no, no, like, like research into materials. Trying. Yeah, I did try. I mean I started off with lifters, you know. Okay, yeah, try and get a baker foil. And that was. Yeah, it's interesting. Yeah, but it's balsa wood and baker foil. And there was, there used to be a website called Blaze Labs and they had some really well informed guys there, ex aerospace that knew all the like aerodynamic maths and stuff and they said just like Army Research Laboratory they said there's no way that this battered metal foil sheet which isn't even perfectly smooth like an airplane wing, there's no way that aerodynamically that can be pushed just by ion flow just away. ARL said it was like at least 10, 20% above what could be achieved

[Jesse]

by ion flow, which is exactly what Brown said. And so for the audience, Townsend Brown is this mid century very mysterious inventories who started with the Navy, then joined Martin Vega which was you know, pre Lockheed Martin merger the year that Skunk Works formed and then kind of popped up in all sorts of, you know, three letter agency contexts and was you know, shoulder to shoulder with elite American military brass. People like Curtis LeMay, you know, just this very mysterious figure who consistently claimed that he would get these positive results in these anti gravity experiments or what he called electrogravitic. There's even a video of him popping champagne from the Bonson lab at the Institute of Field Physics in North Carolina, which we know is the CIA outpost studying anti gravity and literally convening all the best theoretical physicists on the question of gravity in 1957. And it was all sponsored by Wright Airfield which is where all the UFO rumors come from. They were literally paying for this, you know, for a lot of this research. Yeah, weird connections. And so if you take what he claimed about his own experiments at face value, you'd have this crazy update against SpaceX and chemical combustion. It would be this total paradigm shifting thing. It's not a small deal, it's a really big deal. And the thing about Brown is we know for a fact that he was one of the number one radar guys in the Navy. There's an FBI file, file from 1942 or three that basically says he knows more about radar than anybody in the Navy. And that. So that's number one. Number two, electro hydrodynamics, which is not electrogravitics. It's the manipulation of airflow with electric fields, which is how that. The tin foil, you know, balsa wood, you know, DIY foilers work and fly. But it's also what made it into the B2 stealth bomber. And I'm pretty sure I kind of have the receipts on that too. So, like, that's. So you have these two things where he's like the best, like ehd, you know, electrohydrodynamics and radar. And then he's claiming that he could also merge electromagnetism and gravity, which is the holy grail of physics. And so it's like, okay, so like he's right on two out of the three things, but he's a total quack on the third thing thing. And there's so much smoke around it. And then now you have the lead electrostatic scientist at NASA who could. Is the global authority on being able to tell you that this experiment is only attributable to conventional electrostatics. And he's saying that, no, this is. It works. It works in a vacuum, so you can't do it with ionized air. Physics in its. In its current form cannot explain this. And his own experiments, Charles Bueller, who you mentioned, are derivative of Townsend Brown's work. And so I think there is so much smoke. There's a Japanese experiment that you mentioned, the Musha paper.

[Gary McKinnon]

Musha Takeda. Gary got his name wrong.

[Jesse]

They say that they get a successful result. In that case, I think they submerge the whole thing in transmission oil, which also. You can't ionize transmission oil. That's not going to work. So. Yeah. Is it. Are they coordinating with these people in the US for like, you know, are they like some deep state thing in Japan? Like, I don't think so. You know, it's like this global thing. So. Yeah, this is wild. So I. When I. We were setting this up and, you know, I was talking to you on the phone and you were like, yeah, I'm super into Townsend Brown. I was like, what? This is going to be the best interview ever.

[Gary McKinnon]

Well, yeah, it makes. I really enjoyed your. I call it your Bifield Brown special. I don't know if that's what you.

[Jesse]

I'll take it. Yeah, let's call it the Bifield Brown special. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, thank you. Well, well, kudos to you for being into townsend Brown. In 2007. Because the man who Mastered Gravity by Paul Schatzkin was this great biography that only came out in like, I think around the pandemic. And he create. He had this other version of it that wasn't really edited super neatly or concisely. I think that might have come out in like 2009 or something. And he kind of stepped away from the project. Project. But 2007, like you're talking about Townsend Brown being on the dark corners of the web. Like the, like you gotta like, you know, get the.

[Gary McKinnon]

That's where I used to live.

[Jesse]

It sounds. Sounds like it. Yeah. Man.

[Gary McKinnon]

And wasn't it Paul Leviolette who first introduced the idea of the B2 using that.

[Jesse]

Yeah. So here's where I think Paul Leviolette got wrong because he wrote this great history of antigravity and he talks about microwave beam propulsion alongside Townsend Brown's Byfield Brown effect. And you know, he's a really brilliant guy. He had his own theory called sub quantum kinetics.

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh yeah. His whole. Yeah.

[Jesse]

Which was fascinating. And he seems like just a brilliant, brilliant. I would have loved to have interviewed him. He died a few years ago, sadly.

[Gary McKinnon]

He's dead?

[Jesse]

Yeah. It sucks. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

No way. I was in email contact with him, I thought up until two years ago, but obviously got that wrong. And we were going to have a. I was going to start a podcast.

[Jesse]

Oh.

[Gary McKinnon]

And he was going to be my first interviewee.

[Jesse]

Oh, dude. That would have been the best thing.

[Gary McKinnon]

They said he had hip problems. He was undergoing hip surgery or something. So he. Oh, man. Okay.

[Jesse]

Yeah, yeah. No, it's a real bummer. And. But I think where he. And it's an amazing book and everybody should read it, but I do think he. He says that the B2 had like an anti gravity drive. And I. I don't think that's correct.

[Gary McKinnon]

I think I thought he just said the leading edge. It was like a capacitor, but the leading edge was one plate and the trailing edge was another plate. And.

[Jesse]

Yeah, so he said. And I think he's. I think he's right about that. But I think that just manipulates the airflow. Flow like that just makes the airflow. Yeah, it's like reduce the, you know, lift to drag ratio. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

It wasn't a full.

[Jesse]

Or increase. Increase the lift to drag ratio. Sorry. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

So it made it slightly faster.

[Jesse]

Yeah, it makes it more aerodynamic and faster. I mean, maybe there's some real electrogravitic thing happening, but there's no. There'd be no way to like fully say because it's happening not in a vacuum. So like maybe there is something, you know, actually happening there that is, is, you know, it's top secret and it's super. Yeah, it's top secret. But I also don't know why they would necessarily declassify the B2 if it was using electrogravitics per se. I will say there is a guy named William Gunston who is the preeminent aerospace journalist in the UK or was and you know, is part of like the Royal Air Society and has all these awards and stuff. And for I think it was like Air International magazine. He did like a history of you know, aero engine tech since World War II too. And then he gets to Townsend Brown and he goes with Townsend Brown, like, you know, I will refrain from talking about, you know, leading edges charged to millions of volts positive followed by trailing edges charged to millions of volts negative because I don't want to end up in the Tower of London. And then says that and then he caveats it a little bit more. So like, I don't know if that caveating is genuine, you know, unsuredness of

[Gary McKinnon]

what he's saying in the Tower of London, which for the audience was a place of talking. Torture.

[Jesse]

Was a place of torture.

[Gary McKinnon]

Does it mean professionally or like as a whole like giving away secret or

[Jesse]

if he's literally saying these are state secrets.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

And then I don't know if the caveats are like I don't want, you know, I really don't want to be implicated for having said this. So I'm gonna sprinkle in some doubt or whatever. I don't know. But it's interesting. Yeah, but, so, so you, you, you are. Do you want to pull off one of these experiments, sir?

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh hell yeah. I'm planning it by April the latest. I've been distracted for a while and had to do other things. I'm only doing these experiments in a 10 by 10 foot shed and they're not expensive but they consume a lot of time.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

And I have, I'm basically doing industrial processes in a garden shed. So it's a bit, I've got. But I. The first thing I bought. Cause you have to heat this stuff to a thousand degrees, the calcium copper titanate to a thousand degrees. And then I had to buy a 10 ton hydraulic press. I bought a gas furnace and then because of the geometry and stuff, that wasn't unusual. So then I bought an electric furnace which is much smaller and you know, easy to manipulate this tiny disc.

[Jesse]

So cool.

[Gary McKinnon]

It's only 40 millimeters across the. I'm starting off very small, so I've got to make that into what they call a green body, make that solid. I bought really high quality silver paste as the plates. But then after that you have to think of when you've got these two plates at 30 kilovolts or more, you get arcing currents, you get sparks basically. So I have to find a way to stop that. And my first thought was to have a very small disc, discs on top of the 40 millimeter diameter calcium cover, titanate CCTO. But there's other ways to do it as well. So I've gotta. I've got to figure out a path and then completely. Because I really want to see it float. I want to stand there in my shed, turn the on, switch on and see this thing rise.

[Jesse]

That would be amazing if you made something levitate. You would kind of. The haters would have nothing to say.

[Gary McKinnon]

Say.

[Jesse]

Yeah, what do you say? You say it's ionized.

[Gary McKinnon]

It's not real these days it could be.

[Jesse]

AI yeah, sure, that's a good point. Would you do this in a vacuum chamber?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, eventually. I do have one vacuum chamber that's for my resin and only goes down to like -99 MPa or something. But I mean Gravitech has done it in a vacuum chamber. They used to contract for NASA.

[Jesse]

Choose Gravitech.

[Gary McKinnon]

Gravitech is under a different name now, but they've got. I can send you the videos. What's his name? Not Henry Henrique something. I've had a few emails with him as well. Yeah, they've done it in a vacuum, a proper vacuum, like, you know, minus hundreds of tall.

[Jesse]

Shout out to Gravitech, I want to check them out. I've never heard of that.

[Gary McKinnon]

He's got a different company now. But I've got his email. I'll send you.

[Jesse]

Oh, please.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, get him on, man. He'd be glad to.

[Jesse]

I'd love to.

[Gary McKinnon]

And he now does stuff for satellites, I think, like private satellites.

[Jesse]

Whoa.

[Gary McKinnon]

Not using this, actually. I don't even know enough to comment. But yeah, he's done it in a vacuum.

[Jesse]

Interesting.

[Gary McKinnon]

And it is less.

[Jesse]

Why wouldn't he pursue it like, you know, more substantively after that? Sounds like he just went straight to satellite, I think.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, I think he wants to be commercial, make money, do well for himself and probably maybe that's as far as he wants it to go. But it works in a vacuum. But also you have like Jean Louis, no doubt, the French kind of YouTube scientist I want to call him. I don't know his credentials for real. He's done it in vacuum tubes. He's isolated the electrode in vacuum tubes. But I don't know what the pressure was.

[Jesse]

This is. I mean. Yeah, so you're right. There is this whole global community of DIY independent creators, aerospace professionals who in their private life just want to pursue this, are UFO nuts or whatever outside of, you know, know whatever they're doing. And most of them say that there's a there.

[Gary McKinnon]

There.

[Jesse]

There are very few people that say there aren't a there, there. The ones that do, I believe there's, you know, an Air Force. The guy, his last name is Tally and he's an Air Force guy and I think he consistently use this very low voltage and tries to explain it away. And I even. I spoke to this one Navy scientist and he was like, Tally's just a bad actor. Like he's like brought on the scene. Like he's. He's like this guy in UFO World named Sean Kirkpatrick who's the director who's like brought on to like, you know, dismiss. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

So. Well, you know, Tim Ventura or Propulsion.

[Jesse]

Yeah, I do, yeah. He's a good guy. Yeah, yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

He had that guy on that did. Had similar effects with very low voltage, like 5kV, 5 kilovolts.

[Jesse]

I think it was Bueller. No. Or because Bueller thinks it's the electric. Yeah. So this is the. The NASA electrostatic.

[Gary McKinnon]

Because there was a previous Bueller in my old documentation for like pre 2000s.

[Jesse]

Whoa.

[Gary McKinnon]

Unless that was his dad. Or maybe it was because he maybe was he like mid-50s now? Maybe it was him

[Jesse]

in your old documentation.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, yeah. I've got documents with a Beulah and I didn't think it was him, but maybe it is. We'll have to. We didn't do that doc swap. We said we'd do a doc swap.

[Jesse]

Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh yeah, I'd love to. Yeah. Do you have like a lot of compiled information about this sort of stuff?

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh, sort of, yeah. Yeah.

[Jesse]

Cool.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Interesting zip file.

[Gary McKinnon]

And in terms of free energy, there's one thing I found that I found, but I found the guy that discovered it. So Lenz's law stops the motor rotating because of, you know, the counter electromagnetic force. If you look at the formula for that,

[Jesse]

the.

[Gary McKinnon]

The strong element of that is the inductance of the core coil. And this guy found that if you increase the. His name is Thane Hinds. If you increase the Inductance of the coil, then the rise time of the opposing magnetic field that slows the turning of the motor down. When you're applying power to a load is delayed, just like delaying timing in a car engine. And he found that not only could he delay enough to stop the count, the CEMF counter electromotive force dragging, creating electromagnetic drag when it's past a certain point, phase angle, it assisted the rotation.

[Jesse]

Wow. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. So your standard electric generator is a disc with magnets and underneath it coils. And he found that when so the magnet is spinning around, it gets to what they call tdc, top dead center above the coil with his method, because it delays the opposing cause when the magnet. So let's say it's a north pole facing down and it cuts into the coil, that creates a south pole in the coil that opposes the incoming movement of the magnet. And then when the magnet's moving out of the coil, it creates a north pole which accelerates it out. And he found that when you do this stupidly simple but incredibly effective time delay, the CEMF rises in such a way, it's late on the income. So the magnet gets pulled in and it's early on the outgoing, so the magnet gets pushed out, so it accelerates the incoming and the outgoing. And he took it to such an extent that eventually there's no opposition at all and you could actually reverse. You're not reversing Lenzi's law because that's an inaccurate physics statement, but you're reversing

[Jesse]

the effect in effect. So you are. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

And I did a small experiment. I'll send you the video. I did the most simple magnetic emoji can. I had a cylinder shaped magnet which is diametrically magnetized, so it's not north on top, south on the bottom. Each curved half is the north and south poles. I had that on a vertical shaft rotating. And I show it with a normal generator coil, which when you attach it to a load, the power input needed increases to support the load and the rotation slows down. Well, when I put his coil on, which has higher inductance, when you tell that coil to power a load, the rotation speed increases and the input current goes down. The complete opposite of motor theory, motor generated theory. Whoa. That's the one and only thing I've seen I've been able to replicate that works in terms of free energy. And this guy is now he's got contracts with Siemens. Philip's with him, he's talking to China. It's about to blow up.

[Jesse]

Whoa.

[Gary McKinnon]

And I've been following him since about 2007, too, on overunity.com, the first forum I saw him on.

[Jesse]

Fast. What's his name?

[Gary McKinnon]

Thane Hines.

[Jesse]

Where is he based?

[Gary McKinnon]

He's Canadian physicist.

[Jesse]

Dude, you are deep down the rabbit hole of alternative propulsion and energy.

[Gary McKinnon]

You've got to interview this guy.

[Jesse]

I would love to.

[Gary McKinnon]

He's like your general kind of crazy, mad genius. He's not so good at social interaction.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

But he's got it, man.

[Jesse]

It's typical of somebody who makes, like, real breakthroughs like that.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

You know, for them to be not always.

[Gary McKinnon]

Like, I think he's got a lot in his mind.

[Jesse]

I think he's got a lot on his mind as well. It's fascinating. What do you think this chip in your foot, like, does it. Does it ever, like, burn or buzz or.

[Gary McKinnon]

No. Sometimes. Clothes?

[Jesse]

No. So there's nothing. Basically, you've gotten no incremental information on

[Gary McKinnon]

it outside of just a couple of lumps that have moved over time towards the inside of the arch of the foot.

[Jesse]

Strange. Have you ever had a sort of, like, any sort of Men in Black experience or experience with, you know, strange men in suits showing up at your place or.

[Gary McKinnon]

No, but my lawyer had her office and her car rob robbed.

[Jesse]

Really?

[Gary McKinnon]

Which is obviously not. Men in Black has more earthly powers. No, nothing Men in Black did did.

[Jesse]

Okay, so when. When you hacked in to all of these sensitive American military sites, how did you get caught and what happened next?

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh, man. Yeah, I got. Got lazy, got egotistical and thought I can go anywhere I like and look at anything. And I started making direct connections instead of jumping through various IP addresses. So I was making direct connections to, you know, the target, and I was using, like, free AOL signup CDs. So I wasn't being at all, you know, like a professional hacker. I was just. Yeah, I thought I could just do it. I thought, oh, these guys don't even know. Don't even have passwords. They won't even know I've been here. But, yeah, eventually, obviously, when that guy. Right. Clicked the LAN icon and disconnected me, that was Naza. And they reported to bt, British Telecom, which is my Internet service provider at the time, and said, who's this IP at this time? And they said I was. In fact, they didn't have my name at first. I don't know if my Internet account was in my girlfriend's name or if we were using her aunt's Internet or something. But the horrible thing was when they Came when the National High Tech Crime Unit came to a recipe. The warrant was for the whole house and they came early in the morning, arrested me, my girlfriend, my girlfriend's aunt's daughter who was only like 12 or something at the time. So it's quite a horrible experience. An extended family and all my fault. And why are they arrested?

[Jesse]

12 year old?

[Gary McKinnon]

Well, just to question.

[Jesse]

Sure. Not, not arrest on detained.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's still.

[Jesse]

It must have been traumatic for.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. Because they didn't know who the person was. They knew someone at that address.

[Jesse]

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

And. And unfortunately, yeah, my ex. Girlfriend's cousin. He. He was quite ant. Authoritarian and quite alternative and they, I think they thought it was him. Oh, it must be him. He's got purple hair. He must be the guy.

[Jesse]

Oh.

[Gary McKinnon]

So, yeah, I'm laughing now, but it's horrible cause it affected so many other people. You know, my stupid curiosity, but James

[Jesse]

mentioned something about guys looking over you at your bed or something. Like, like at night or something.

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh no, that's probably when I was arrested because I was arrested in my sleep.

[Jesse]

Wait, so, so wait, you were arrested in your sleep?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, the National High Tech Crime Unit. I, I'd been up all night playing Galactic Civilizations four or some big space game and probably smoking still as well and gone to bed late. So I was asleep at 8 in the morning. My girlfriend was getting ready to go to work. Knock, knock, knock. She's in a dressing gown, they're patting her down and pushing her into a room. Then they come into my room, I'm in bed and I've got this guy like Gary McKinnon, I'm Jeff Donson from the National High Tech Crime Unit. You're under arrest for Computer Misuse Act. So it's. Yeah.

[Jesse]

And then from that point onwards the UK was like, okay with more of kind of a slap on the wrist sort of thing. And then it was the US that was like, no, we need to extradite him now. And then you mentioned they changed the extradition laws to make it this sort of blanket thing that applied to you?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, definitely. So when I was first arrested, the National High Tech Crime Unit, who were the arresting body, said to me, you'll do six months inside, maybe community service, maybe no jail time time. Because under UK law all I did was unauthorized access. You know, I didn't break anything or steal anything or make money or anything like that. And. But then these officers went to America to ONI and I must say Office of Naval Intelligence, because there's another oni there's an intelligence sister, I think, investigation or something, but I don't know. Yeah. And when they came back, they had a very heavy tone, a completely different tone about them. We're very impressed by meeting with the top brass in Washington. Washington. And yeah. Oh, they say, oh, this guy caused $5,000 of damage on every PC he was on, you know, which is just stupid.

[Jesse]

How do you damage the hardware if you just do this like software hack that we're calling a hack, but you're using like off the shelf stuff.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, it's like PC anywhere.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

But I think what they call damage is the time it took them to take them offline. So the machines are unusable for a while. Investigate them. So you know.

[Jesse]

You know what feels like kind of white hack hacking to me because you didn't actually end up using any of the files in a way to hurt the U.S. or they're like, again, you can say what you will about Snowden or Disandra, any of these guys, like, there's nothing you did to like knock the US down a leg as far as their tactical ability to like, you know, do things. So it's almost like a white hat hack because the costs they incurred to take the stuff down and reset the them, they would have needed to do anyways. That would have been what if like a malicious person had like, you know.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Penetrated all these servers.

[Gary McKinnon]

State actor.

[Jesse]

That's what I'm saying.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jesse]

So they're actually extremely lucky that you did what you did.

[Gary McKinnon]

$5,000. Where are you buying your PCs from?

[Jesse]

No, they should, I mean, you literally, white hat hackers get paid. So like, I think, I think they should pay you.

[Gary McKinnon]

All right.

[Jesse]

I'm just.

[Gary McKinnon]

Please send the email.

[Jesse]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't know. I'm serious. It's like you literally, you didn't do anything showing mal intent. Once you got the info, they got the info back and then they reset ideally their computer networking and architecture in a way that, you know, these sort of phishing attacks couldn't be done. These are basic things that you're using.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

So I just like, I, I think it's like insecure. It almost sounds like somebody in, in, in like middling bureaucracy who's trying to cover their ass class. Like, this took us all this. Well, you should have done it before. Yeah. What are you doing? You're not doing your job.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jesse]

If it was some super sophisticated quantum error correction that you had figured out in 2000, that would be one thing. That would be like okay. And then you used it in this sort of detrimental way to American national security.

[Gary McKinnon]

Cryptid, nsa.

[Jesse]

Yeah. But otherwise, I mean, I don't know, man, that feels like a kind of crazy. Okay, so then what happens to the extradition law laws?

[Gary McKinnon]

Oh man. So yeah, the original extradition law, which I think was 1989, was a good basic law. We accuse this British citizen of having committed a crime in or against America. We have this evidence and it's a crime over here and it's a crime over there. So we should have him in America to stand trial. Totally fair, totally reasonable. But then, I mean, this is the weird thing in law, computer crime is a weird thing. It's a gray area. Cause it's not physical. Where's your bum at the seat when you commit the crime? There's lots of like questions that are legally intransigent, you know, like, how do you place this? So what happened was I was arrested in 2002 and in March, and then I was re questioned by the, the NHTCU went to visit the DOJ in August. Then they came back, then they re interviewed me in November 2002. And that's when their tone had changed. Very serious. You're accused of harming military systems that lurk could be used in prison. And that's when, you know, things really got serious for me. I thought, my God, this is just blown out of all proportion. But we were protected by the extradition law because there had to be evidence of mal intent, et cetera. And when I did my police interview, I completely admitted to what I'd. Because it was all on the hard drive, you know, I said, yeah, it's all on the hard drive. I went there and I got this document, went to another place, got other documents. So I was open about it thinking, oh, six months. Like they told me I'll be fine. And they said, community service, I can do both. I'll be fine. Although I wouldn't have lied. Six months in prison. But when it came to November and then they threatened extradition, then on paper it was 70 years in jail. 70 years. It was like 10, seven counts, 10 years per count. And I just, I just went crazy. I thought, this is absolutely mad. What are we going to do? And there was a lot of like the UFO community in America wanted me to stand trial in America. It's like a martyr, right? Yes, it'll be great. He'll come over, he'll. They'll open all the secrets and he'll make it after. But what America actually said, the DOJ said that I'd be tried under military order number one, which is Guantanamo status, totally secret. No media interview, no media cover, no family visits. You know, me in an orange suit with my red hair. Joking. Sorry. But, yes, it went really scary. Like, really scary. Like, over the top. Like, well, you know, Kafkaesque.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

As many people said.

[Jesse]

Damn. And you must have been. You must have felt horrible. You must have been like, the, you know, world's out to get me. Or the. The most powerful nation in the world, you know, is out to get me.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

And that must be a scary feeling.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. Well, it started in late 2002. By 2008, because we lost so many court cases and hearings, I've given up all hope. And I thought, there's no way I'm going to give my fucking life to a foreign jail. And I bought potassium chloride, one of the three chemicals in the lethal injection. And I thought, if I get that decision, I'm just going to not inject it. I. I looked up the amount, how many grams per kilogram of body weight, and I was just going to swallow it and have a heart attack and die.

[Jesse]

Since I came into office, the sole issue on which I have been required to make a decision is whether Mr. McKinnon's extradition to the United States States would breach his human rights. After careful consideration of all of the relevant material, I have concluded that Mr. McKinnon's extradition would give rise to such a high risk of him ending his

[Gary McKinnon]

life

[Jesse]

that a decision to extradite would be incompatible with Mr. McKinnon's human rights. I have therefore withdrawn the Expedition extradition order against Mr. McKinnon.

[Gary McKinnon]

That was incredible, Theresa May. So, yeah, it's heavy.

[Jesse]

That's heavy, man. That's really intense. And I'm sorry it got to that place, because that's. It's ridiculous if you look at the fact pattern. It's just insane.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

And again, I'm saying that some of these other whistleblower cases, there are nuances to them. You know, I'm. I'm saying yours, I think it's an absolute witch.

[Gary McKinnon]

That's.

[Jesse]

That's crazy.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, I agree.

[Jesse]

It's just crazy.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

I don't even know what to say. I'm so sorry. I mean, that's just awful. I'm sorry on behalf of my country.

[Gary McKinnon]

Well, you're not the government, Jesse, so that's true. I don't have to forgive you.

[Jesse]

Okay. Well, yeah, it's just not a good representation, but, yeah, well, America's A great

[Gary McKinnon]

country and the people are great. It's just there's been some very bad governance Since World War II, in my humbleness opinion.

[Jesse]

Yeah. No, and.

[Gary McKinnon]

And on this side of the pond as well, the British as well.

[Jesse]

Sure. Yeah. No, and it's crazy that you were. I mean, Gordon Brown, David Cameron, Theresa May, all of these UK prime ministers were thinking about you. You were this really important case because of the ex. You. You said that the extradition law was changed literally, like right after you did what you did.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. This is one thing I didn't mention there. We saw a draft of the new extradition treaty through our lawyers, and it was written. A British extradition treaty with America was written in American English, which is kind of a clue as to who's calling the shots. And, you know, American spelling in an English legal document. And also a lot of the phrases were almost verbatim taken from some of my charges. So I think. It's not that there's anything special about me, but. But it was what I did. And at that time, the American DoD citizens were getting like 250,000 attacks, hacking attacks at the time, if you read the General Accounting Office documents at the time, and still to this day. So I think they needed to do something and they needed to increase the punishment and they needed a poster boy. So timing is everything, isn't it? Hmm.

[Jesse]

Yeah. Because there had been big hackers before you. Right? Like, what's the name of the guy who hacked into the doe, Department of Energy and like, Atomic Labs.

[Gary McKinnon]

Matthew Bevin.

[Jesse]

Matthew Bevin, yeah. And so this was like an actual hack on really sensitive stuff by kind of a more professional hacker, is that safe to say? Or also kind of was like a vigilante?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, no, I think he was more skilled than I was. He didn't just do blank password hack. He found, you know, weaknesses in protocols. So he was more advanced.

[Jesse]

But.

[Gary McKinnon]

And yeah, and he was. Earlier, he was in the 90s.

[Jesse]

And then what happened to him?

[Gary McKinnon]

He was basically slap on the wrist. He did go through some shit, don't get me wrong, Matthew, if you're listening. But, yeah, he didn't face a long term.

[Jesse]

There were a few of these cases before you where I think in a certain case it was like a hundred thousand computers ended up with malware. Where you know who is.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, well, I mean, yeah, if you want to know who's the most successful hacker, it's not a person, it's a virus.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Like the love.

[Jesse]

Love.

[Gary McKinnon]

What's it. I can't remember the name But I'm

[Jesse]

talking about specifically there's precedent for UK based hackers hacking into US systems which.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Neither of us are suggesting anyone do. You know, it's not, don't hack into, you know, national security stuff. You know, this is, this is a lesson. But in, in, in, in those cases they did worse stuff than you.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

And, and they just got slaps on the wrist and then you're this like UFO interested. You know, you want to know if there's like free energy or whatever like for your, for your own edification.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Like not because you want to do some like, you know, terrorist thing or like undermine you know, American supremacy in any way or whatever. And like they just come after you.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

And so they change the.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah. What's, what's important to them. Is it someone like cleverly stealing money in a cyber Ford way which a lot of people have done, or is it some, is it UFO truth? Is it.

[Jesse]

Yeah, well no, it, it might show that, that actually you know, hit a trigger point. Like the, the idea, the like cigar shaped tic tac object, you know, flying in deep space, you know, that might be this really sensitive thing that they just really don't want to talk about. Then the non, the space supply chain thing, I could see that, you know, they don't want to talk about that either.

[Gary McKinnon]

But as a counterpoint to that, that information was already out. Donna Har was out. So it's kind of. If it's already out, why go so heavy on this guy?

[Jesse]

As a counterpoint to that, like there's proof that you got into these sites, Donna. Here it's always going to be this kind of like single sample size n of one story told and you can always be like that person was crazy.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

But like when you're kidding case like they have like a, you know there's a live arrest warrant out on you now, right. You can't go to the US now.

[Gary McKinnon]

I'm on the Interpol red list.

[Jesse]

You're on the Interpol reg List. That's crazy. I don't even think I knew that. Hopefully I'm good. But yeah, like, like you know, with, with. I think in your case there's no arguing with the fact that you got into these sensitive sites. Light. So the fact that you're saying you saw a tic Tac, you know, in deep space but above earth and then you saw these non terrestrial, maybe 40 some odd officers like, you know, that's, that's like pretty, that's like a little deeper, you know.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jesse]

But like, to the point that, like, you shouldn't be blamed. It's like you didn't sign something. You didn't. You didn't like, sign up to, like, you didn't weren't like, working at one of these places. You were like, high and your. I'm trying to think how girlfriend's.

[Gary McKinnon]

I would manage that if I was intel. I was like, how. How do you manage this guy? And then I think they were probably quite happy when I got diagnosed with Asperger's in 2008, 2009. Okay. He's mentally ill. He's fine then.

[Jesse]

Right, right, right.

[Gary McKinnon]

Like a put away. I would put him in the mentally ill draw.

[Jesse]

Do you ever think, like, the. The chip is somehow either monitoring you A or B is. It's like feeding you ideas or anything? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You start glitching right now.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, yeah.

[Jesse]

Do you ever think it has some sort of. I don't know.

[Gary McKinnon]

No. My mind feels the same as it always has.

[Jesse]

Okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

But I do want to do some further scanning with my more modern nuts.

[Jesse]

You should. Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

So interesting.

[Gary McKinnon]

I wish doctor. What was his name? The guy that used to scan implants. He's dead now.

[Jesse]

Roger Lear.

[Gary McKinnon]

Roger Lear.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

I wish he was around and what could come to the uk.

[Jesse]

Yeah. He'd be the perfect guy.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

I might know of somebody else who can help you out.

[Gary McKinnon]

So later.

[Jesse]

Yeah, exactly.

[Gary McKinnon]

Explain what's going on quickly.

[Jesse]

I can't turn my phone off. Here, look, look.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

Let's document all of this. You can see my finger is on the power button and both. This is like a hard reset. My fingers on the power button and volume up and volume down at the time.

[Gary McKinnon]

Same.

[Jesse]

Same time.

[Gary McKinnon]

And nothing.

[Jesse]

Nothing.

[Gary McKinnon]

That's never happened before.

[Jesse]

Absolutely. It's never happened before. It's insane. But you're with Gary McKinnon and I'm with Gary McKinnon, who is. Has a live arrest.

[Gary McKinnon]

Famously said, I didn't do it.

[Jesse]

This was the, you know, everything I'd hoped it would be. This conversation. It was so fun. And I really hope you pull off this bfield brown effect. I think it would be this beautiful kind of, I don't know, vindication, you know, I'm not saying what you did was fine, but I think you were completely persecuted in this horrible way. And I love the fact that, by the way, the UK rallied behind you and you ended up, you know, singing with, you know, David Gilmore, you know, the lead singer, the Pink Floyd, you know, and like, you have all these people you're like kind of this people's champion.

[Gary McKinnon]

Crosby, Stills and Nash, man. One of my favorite hippie bands when I was. I was young.

[Jesse]

Wait, what? Crosby, Stills, and Nash?

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

They were, like, rallying behind you as well.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, they did. They just, like, mentioned me in one song at one of their gigs, but, you know, thousands of people.

[Jesse]

I didn't know that.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah.

[Jesse]

So cool.

[Gary McKinnon]

You've seen all these bands. I'd love. When I was little, I was like, God, it was. It was crazy because you're really depressed, but you're seeing all your musical heroes.

[Jesse]

Yeah.

[Gary McKinnon]

Vouching for you.

[Jesse]

But you're also. Didn't you. You sang with David Gilmore.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, and Chrissy Hind and Bob Geldoff, but I didn't actually. Only sang in the same studio at the same time with Chrissy Hines. I didn't get to meet David Gilmore or Bob Gelder.

[Jesse]

Okay.

[Gary McKinnon]

Unfortunately.

[Jesse]

Well, wild. Thank you, Theresa May, for making the right decision and, you know, let. Letting you go. And I think the US should drop their arrest warrant. And I think so, too.

[Gary McKinnon]

That I could go on holiday.

[Jesse]

Yeah, yeah. So you can go and, you know, go on a nice vacation and. Yeah, hopefully next time I see you, it's in the States and.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, that'd be fantastic.

[Jesse]

It'd be great.

[Gary McKinnon]

Thanks for a great interview.

[Jesse]

Absolutely. Gary. No, it was an honor. It was a lot of fun and. Yeah, hopefully, you know, I think we made a little bit of progress here in terms of piecing some things together.

[Gary McKinnon]

Yeah, definitely. Yeah. Logistics, supply chain.

[Jesse]

Exactly. Oh, sweet. All right, Alchemist. Did you enjoy that? If you want the full picture, head over to the American Alchemy magazine we just launched on Substack. That's where we deep dive into all sorts of crazy topics that we don't have time to fit into. Every video with weekly articles exploring all of the strange, forgotten and conspiratorial corners of space, history, and high weirdness. So join up today at our free or paid tiers on Substack. I am including the full link in the description of this video.

[Gary McKinnon]

Sam.