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Ready to soundtrack your summer with Red Bull Summer All Day Play. You choose a playlist that fits your summer vibe the best. Are you a festival fanatic, a deep end dj, a road dog, or a trail mixer? Just add a song to your chosen playlist and put your summer on track. Red Bull Summer All Day Play. Red Bull gives you wings. Visit red bull.com brightsummerahead to learn more. See you this summer. Folks knew the colonel approved of his new Honey Chili Crisp and Jalapeno Ranch sauces the moment he tasted them and said, that's right. No notes, just absolute silence. Turns out some flavors don't need explaining, they just need dipping. It's saucy season at KFC with new Honey Chili Crisp and Jalapeno Ranch. Get dipping with a boneless bucket today. Prices and participation vary. On May 7, 2026, the United States government released 162 classified files, all about one thing, and that is UFOs. Now, inside those files is a bunch of stuff, but here are just some of the highlights. A Nazi flying disc from 1944. A diplomatic cable saying unknown objects did not originate from any known culture on Earth. Buzz Aldrin, from the moon landing, filed a formal report about a light source that nobody could explain. A 2020 encounter with an orb that split into five pieces and then outran a U.S. aircraft before vanishing without a trace. And a 1966 FBI memo describing a landed craft and a crew like literally little alien men 4ft tall in spacesuits. The government's official position on every single one of these cases is the same, unresolved. And today, we're breaking it all down. What's in the files? What is the Internet saying? And the one question that eight decades of classified investigation still hasn't answered. Well, if you're interested in these files, why Trump is releasing them and what everyone is saying about it and really what it means, this is the episode for you. So sit back, relax, and welcome to camp. What's up, people? And welcome back to camp. My name is Mark Gagnon, and thank you so much for joining me in my tent, where every single week, we explore the most interesting, fascinating, controversial stories from around the world, from all time, forever. Yes, this is the place where I deep dive on all the crazy rabbit holes going on our shared reality. And, oh, boy, do we have a fascinating episode for you today. But before I begin, I just want to say a few announcements. We need to have a better name for what we call them in the campsite. Like nature calls. Nature calls. Or Something that's. Yeah. Pretty bad, right? Maybe some nature calls. Maybe some. Maybe a bulletin, a camp bulletin. It's pretty good. Regardless, look, we don't have time to waste. There's a few things. One, I want to say thank you to you for clicking on this video. Every time you tap in and you watch a video and you support the show, comment, anything like that, it truly helps out the channel. It helps, you know, subscribers grow. It helps me, like, pitch the show to guests. It just helps keep the lights on in the tent and it helps keep the fire burning here at the campsite. Additionally, I also want to thank my good pal Christos Papadopoulos, because Christos has been here for, I mean, almost two years now. Dang near right? Little over, but sure. Yep. It feels like an eternity. And you've just always been, you know, pushing the buttons, making everything work. And I don't even really know exactly what you do, but you're on payroll and you're doing a fantastic job. As long as you have Christos, I don't want to deviate too much because there's breaking news happening in the world of UFOs and UAPs. Also, one last final thing in our bulletin, there's a secret society that you can join if you are so inclined, if you are someone that is drawn to the inner sanctum of the campsite, if you are fascinated by the mystical, like myself, and this is a very, very coveted secret society. It's very difficult and the initiation is challenging for most, and no one really knows what goes on in there. But it's@patreon.com Camp Gagnon. That is the place where you're going to get extra episodes every single month. You're going to get every episode of this podcast, plus all the affiliate channels with no ads. And on top of that, we're going to do monthly zooms where you can tap in with the squad and we can chit chat and see what's going on in the world. And furthermore, you can also talk to Christos directly. What's up, everybody? All right. Okay, that's patreon.com Camp Gagon now, can we just jump into it, Christos, please? Absolutely. We finally have a fun episode that is just cool and interesting and also kind of disappointing all at once. And it came recently as President Trump released the UFO files, is what he calls them, more or less. There's. I don't have the exact tweet, if you can even try to find that. He put it on Truth Social, where he was just like, hey, Guys, as I promised, I'm dropping all the UFO files. And the thing that I didn't like about it, the reason I felt like it was fugazi up top, was he says, this is a. A tranche of files. And I'll let you guys decide what the heck is even going on. Have fun and enjoy. The second the President's like, I'm releasing a bunch of classified stuff. Have fun. That's when, you know, see, here it is. Okay, no, this is not the one. I'm sorry, not the one. Sorry. But it's. That is a tweet from Trump. Very good. But no, the one I'm talking about specifically. He says at the very end, he's like, hey, have fun and enjoy. And I'm like, okay. The second the President's, like, not concerned, that's when you know you're not actually getting any of the good stuff. But there are some things in here that, at the very least, are interesting to look about. Yeah, this is the exact one. The people can decide for themselves what the hell is going on. Have fun and enjoy. So that's bs, But I think there are some things in here that we can kind of take away, and we can also even look at, like, the bigger theory as to why this is happening now and why President Trump is releasing all these files. And, you know, I think there are some threads in here that are kind of interesting. And for anyone that doesn't know, I am not like a. A What you would call a true believer, okay? Like, I'm. I'm what I would call a healthy skeptic. Right. I am fascinated by the affairs of the skies. I am deeply entrenched in a lot of different research, and I've read many different ufo, uap, high phenomena books, you know, high strangeness books, you could say, And I'm fascinated by it, but I'm not someone that's so, like, fully, like, yes, dude, this is what's going on. I think there's something going on, but I don't know exactly what it is. And I think anyone that's like, too sure. I'm always like, all right. Like I said, I'm fascinated by seekers and not finders, if that makes sense. I'm. I'm always drawn to people that are desperately seeking the truth and a little averse to people that have proclaimed that they have seen the light and are professing what they found. But regardless, I don't know. I also believe in aliens or. No. I believe in God and demons. So, you know, we all Believe some stuff that's hard to prove, but that's neither here nor there. Okay. If you are new to the UFO slash UAP topic, well, there is a long history, and I can just break down a little bit where this all begins. Okay. The American public has been fascinated by UFOs, or as the government now calls them, UAPs, which is like unidentified anomalous phenomena. And it's been going on for, I mean, years, literal decades. I mean, all the way back to, like, 1947, when a rancher found a bunch of wreckage outside on a field in, you know, Roswell. And the US Army Air Force issued two contradictory press releases in the same week. We did a whole episode on that, if you want to check that out. It also goes to Project Blue Book, the Air Force's official UFO investigation program that ran from 1952 to 1969 and investigated over 12,000 sightings. And of course, there's, you know, the congressional witnesses and the intelligence community whistleblowers and the declassification activists who have been pushing for a moment like this for a really long time. And the pivot that led directly to what happened just a few days ago came in 2023, when a former intelligence officer by the name of David Grush testified before Congress under oath. And he claimed that the US Government had for decades been secretly recovering and reverse engineering non human craft, and that the people running those programs had actively misled Congress about the existence of the program and of the craft that they had recovered. Now, that, like that testimony that David Grush gave detonated across the world, and it, you know, made its way into congressional hearings and then kind of forced the political pressure that is very difficult to just kind of like, you know, walk back. And then In February of 2026, President Trump directed federal agencies, I mean, the Department of Defense, FBI, NASA, State Department, Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Department of Energy, all these different people, to begin identifying and declassifying government records related to UAPs. And he cited, quote, the tremendous interest shown by the public. And as a quick reminder, here's bas. Here's what he said. Like, quite literally, based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War and other relevant department and agencies to begin the process of identifying, releasing government files related to alien extraterrestrial life, UAP, UFOs, and any and all other information connected to these highly complex and interesting important matters. God bless America. And then on May 7, the first batch is what they're calling them batches. The first one was ready, and he wrote Basically what we saw on this, you know, truth social post that I pulled up a little bit earlier. You guys can decide for yourselves what's going on and have fun. The program that he launched is called Pursue, which is a cute little name, I will say. You know, I like when like the acronyms are like a little word. And it's the presidential unsealing and reporting system for UAP encounters. And it lives at a dedicated government portal that is kind of like something like out of the X Files, right? It's like white typewriter font on like a black background. You got like military photographs of all these flying objects. And you know, it's got like a, like a bunch of like, aesthetic and like, it's kind of given Tumblr vibes. If I may, if I may say that, like, it feels like someone making like a UFO site. I mean, can you pull it up? Like, it feels very much like, oh, I'm getting something secretive. Your next chapter in healthcare starts at Carrington College's School of Nursing in Portland. Join us for our open house on Tuesday, January 13th from 4 to 7pm you'll tour our campus, see live demos, meet instructors, and learn about our associate degree in nursing program that prepares you to become a registered nurse. Take the first step toward your nursing career. Save your spot now at Carrington. Edu events. For information on program outcomes, visit Carrington. Edu Sci pool days call for cookouts and lots of laundry. This Memorial Day at Lowe's, save $80 on a Char Broil Performance Series 4 burner gas grill. Now just $199 plus get up to 45% off. Select major appliances to keep dishes, clothes and food fresh. Having fun in the sun is easy with us in your corner. Our best lineup is here at Lowe's, valid through 527, while supplies last selection varies by location. See associate or lowe's.com for details. Even the font is kind of. Yeah, it's courier, I think. Like, it just feels like, oh, what, what are we getting into? And here's what's basically in the 120 PDFs, 28 videos and 14 images. 162 total files all sourced from these different departments that we said DOD, FBI, NASA, etc. And the files span from the year 1948 to 2026. Now the Department of War, which Trump renamed back in September. If you. It used to be Department of Defense, Department of War, the. The Dow. The Dow basically said that the materials archived on the site are unresolved cases. So what does that mean? It means that the government has not reached a conclusion on what the nature of these images are or what they're looking at. So it's unresolved. It's not, you know, debunked or not explained or just not just like, you know, disregarded. It's filed, you know, in kind of like this vague, ambiguous kind of state. It's not like, oh, this is obviously a weather balloon. Like, they're basically just saying, we don't know what this is. And we also can't say that it's nothing. And now, according to the Department of War, more tranches are going to be dropping every few weeks and on an ongoing basis because of the, quote, scope of the project. Now we will be doing follow up episodes for every new tranche that's dropped. And this is, like I said, only the first batch. So Representative Tim Burchette said in a statement, I would like to remind people that transparency won't all happen at once. It will take some time. Now, that brings us to what is actually inside the files. Because, you know, buried in 162 different documents is something that, you know, most of the coverage on this is kind of like glossed over. A lot of people are just like, oh, aliens are real. Why aren't you guys reacting? And then other people are just like, yeah, this is B.S. this is a nothing burger. Which I hate when people say nothing burger, but it's like, it just, it just feels very millennial to me. Also not a burger if it's nothing. What is a nothing burger? Like, oh, it's an. I don't know. This is a digression. But what's up? Guys, we're gonna take a break real quick because I gotta tell you something kind of embarrassing. All right. I've been working out pretty consistently for a while. I love working out. I think it's super important. Part of my daily ro. And I don't really eat garbage. And I'm doing all the stuff you're supposed to do. And I got in pretty good shape. 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It really worked for like it. I still take it cuz you know I like natural supplements and it makes me feel good. Now when they ask where you heard about it, tell them the good people at Camp Gagnon sent you. It really helps the show more than you know. Now let's get back to it. Now it goes. There's a bunch of things in the files that are interesting. We're going to kind of go through the most interesting ones. And what's interesting is that the first thing in the file chronologically doesn't start in Roswell. It doesn't even start in America. It actually starts in Nazi Germany. Yes, the oldest file in the batch isn't a blurry photo of like a thing in the sky or like an alien. It's an FBI field report from 1944. World War II is still going on and the FBI just received a tip. According to the declassified report in the files, the bureau was told that the Nazi regime had built a disc shaped aircraft constructed in the Black Forest region of Austria. Now the report doesn't confirm that this happened. The FBI included a disclaimer plainly stating in the document itself that the file contained neither recommendations nor conclusions of the agency. So in other words, this is a tip that we got. We're not saying if it's true or not, we're just telling you what someone told us. But here's where it gets interesting, because this isn't coming out of nowhere. The Nazi aerospace program was by every historical measure decades ahead of the Allied forces. So the Horton brothers, Reimar and Walter had already developed a functional flying wing aircraft. Can you pull a picture of that? The, the Horton HO229 which used radar absorbing carbon like hybrid plywood to evade detection. And this was flying around during World War II, like 1944. I mean, yes, this is an image here. I mean the thing looks crazy. It kind of looks like the Delta bomber. Doesn't looks like something out of the Jetsons a little bit. And it's like this is the kind of stuff that the Nazis were cooking with on their aerospace programs way back in the day. Now Nazi engineers were simultaneously developing jet propulsion rocket technology guidance systems that the Americans and the Soviets were super desperate to acquire. So desperate that after the war ended, they launched competing programs to snatch German scientists before the other side could actually get them. Right. Like Nazi Germany falls apart, gets dissolved, and the Soviets and the Americans both want the information. They're like, hey, you guys were making crazy stuff. Like, you guys are obviously evil, but you guys are like on the forefront of a lot of tech. We want that. So the American program was called Operation Paperclip. Hundreds of Nazi scientists, including rocket pioneer Warner von Braun, were quietly brought to the United States and then integrated into the military industrial complex that built, you know, all of the technology during the space race. So when the FBI mentions a Nazi flying disc in the Austrian Black Forest in 1944, the gap between like a credible lead and like a crazy conspiracy theory is a lot narrower than it might seem like on its face. But that's not the entire thing, because the Nazi stuff in these files doesn't just stop. In 1944, in the immediate post war period, strange sightings started appearing in Scandinavia, Western Europe, and a bunch of other places that American and, you know, broadly just Allied investigators couldn't really explain. So the State department cables from 1948 included in this specific file release documented officials in Sweden and the Netherlands saying that the objects being reported, quote, did not originate from any known culture on Earth. That's literally what a, like a, like a telegram, like a cable that comes through to these, you know, different, you know, government dignitaries is saying that they're seeing sightings from something not from any known culture on Earth. Now again, that is, you know, officials in Sweden and the Netherlands that are saying this in 1948, you know, now, okay, before we go crazy off the deep end, a skeptic would reasonably point out that in 1948, the full scope of the Soviet aerospace capabilities were still largely unknown to everyone, you know, not from any known culture on Earth. That just might mean, like, we don't know if this is Soviet, we don't know what this is, but, you know, we don't really even know how to say that in a cable. You know what I mean? Like, you know, it's possible that they're just basically being like, this thing is crazy, but they're saying it through this kind of like antiquated messaging system that, you know, doesn't really come through that, that clearly. But consider what it means, if that is the explanation, right? It means that western officials in 1948 believed the Soviets might be operating craft so advanced that trained investigators couldn't assign them to, you know, one of the civilizations on Earth. Right, that's, that's not like super reassuring. That's basically just them being like, hey, this tech is so advanced. Like whatever we're seeing up here is so crazy advanced that the Soviets are cooking on something insane. So that's just like an interesting little look into that post war period and the kind of technological race that was already bubbling up between the United States and the ussr. Either way, the phrase that went into that archive is pretty significant. And the fact that it's in there I think is very interesting. And the story doesn't just stop there because the sightings from 1947 to 1968, they are probably the most heavily documented sections in the files. And one of those central documents is a massive FBI file. Hundreds of pages detailing the, quote, eyewitness accounts in public reports of UFO sightings specifically during the Cold War. Now this specific file has technically been disclosed before, but the version released in this batch features significantly fewer redactions. I mean, whole passages that were previously completely just blacked out and redacted are now visible for the first time. And 1947 is where you get the entire modern sort of UFO kind of era coming in. And this is the year that Kenneth Arnold, a private pilot, reported seeing nine crescent shaped objects flying in formation near Mount Rainier in Washington. And he said that they were moving at speeds that he estimated were over 1200 miles per hour. This is the same year that the US Army Air Forces issued a press release saying that they had recovered a flying disc and then retracted it within 24 hours and said that it was a weather balloon. And the government's credibility on this specific topic and just the Roswell topic in general, never fully recovered from that, that, you know, 48 hour reversal. So what the Cold War files show in aggregate is that this was not a fringe preoccupation. You know, these were military pilots, radar operators, intelligence analysts, and civilian aviation officials filing formal reports through these official channels describing objects that to them defied any explanation. You know, like, people always say this when they're talking about like the ufo, UAP stuff. They're always just like, oh man, it's always like a, you know, some guy out in the field in Mississippi missing a tooth, that's like, I saw something in the sky. And it's like, yeah, that's the way Hollywood portrays it. And sure, that also happens. But in these files it shows us like, no, these are some of the most esteemed and, you know, credible people within their fields that are describing and filing these things through the official channels, much to their own personal risk. Right. Like if you're a pilot in the 50s, it's like, hey, I saw something in the sky that I can't explain. You could be put on paid leave or unpaid leaves. Like, you could just be, like, pulled out of your job. And they're like, hey, you're losing it. You're saying that like you're seeing aliens. We got to take you out of the sky. You know, like, these are people whose jobs required a ton of precision and who were documenting in writing that something, you know, they couldn't explain entered into their airspace. But here's the crazy part. Buried in these Cold War documents is a 1966 FBI memo that is genuinely one of the most interesting things in the whole release. The memo documents witness accounts of what they call metallic flying objects. And several of those witnesses didn't just describe the craft. They described a crew. Now they're describing three and a half to four feet tall, like these men dressed in what appeared to be spacesuits with helmets, climbing out of a landed aircraft. This is an actual 1966 FBI memo reported by a field agent. The FBI, again, doesn't draw a conclusion on this file. It documents it, and then it forwards that report up the chain. And then for 60 years, it just sits in a classified archive until this release. Now, if you're thinking, all right, civilian eyewitnesses in 1966 see Little Men in a spacesuit, sure, that's one thing to reckon with. But surely the trained professionals, the pilots, the astronauts, the people in the most rigorous sort of observational standards in the world, the most trained and educated of these, you know, adventurers of the sky, surely they're not seeing stuff. Well. Well, the files say the opposite, because the files include NASA mission transcripts, crew debriefings, audio recordings, and annotated photographs covering unexplained sightings from Gemini 7 in 1965 all the way through the Skylab missions into the 70s. And the astronaut reports are consistent and repeated. And unlike the civilian accounts, documented in the most controlled environment ever, right? Like, literally in space. So the Apollo 11 file, that's the moon landing, Neil Armstrong, July 1969, all that stuff. It includes a report from Buzz Aldrin, who describes what he calls a bright light source. And he said he observed this during the mission that the crew discussed, and they couldn't identify what it was. Now, according to the transcript, the crew felt that it, quote, could be a laser. It wasn't the moon's surface. It wasn't a known spacecraft. I mean, there's nothing else up there with them. It was this unidentified bright light source in the vicinity of the lunar module. And Buzz Aldrin filed this in his formal Reporting about the mission now, the Apollo 12 and the Apollo 17 transcripts are also included, once again showing a pattern. You have these astronauts, again, the most highly trained observers in the world, routinely encountering things in space that, that they can't identify. And, you know, they felt that they were compelled to formally document this. If you could actually even pull up the, the link on this one from the, from the government website. So you can see the link on the, the page and you can kind of see the transcript. And then there's a photograph as well in that same dog. If you could pull that up now, it says in the document, we don't know what this is, but we can't say it's nothing. And I mean, it's not just like the, the lunar mission. So you can see here, this is from the war.gov on the NASA UAP stuff. So you can see three dots off in the distance and scroll to the left so I can read the transcript here or the, the description. It says. As part of the review of historical UAP materials under pursue, which is the name of the program, the Department of War has opened a case to investigate the accompanying NASA photographs from Apollo 17 missions taken in December 1972. The image contains three dots in a triangular formation in the lower right quadrant of the lunar sky that is clearly visible upon magnification of the image. While this photo has been previously released and discussed by keen observers, there's no consensus about the nature of the anomaly. NO New preliminary U.S. government analysis suggests that the image features potentially the result of a physical object in the scene. Additionally, as part of this investigation, the government has obtained the original film from the Apollo 17 mission, and the results of the full NASA and Department of Analysis will be released when completed. So what does that mean? I mean, they're basically saying there, they're like, there's something in the field that they can observe. It's not like, you know, a spec that's on the lens. It doesn't appear in the other photographs. And it's something that's worth investigating. Now, looking at film from 1972, I don't know exactly what they're going to come up with, but it is just an interesting ripple in this whole story where you're actually seeing photographs from NASA astronauts and scientists looking at a picture being like, we don't know what this is now. The Gemini 7 crew in 1965 also reported anomalous objects in the sky. The Sky Labs crew in the early 1970s added their own accounts to what now is becoming this pretty consistent body of evidence. And again, it's not definitive, but that there's something going on that is unexplainable to the most sophisticated and trained observers that America's ever produced. And once again, more so to the aggregate, these files have been reported and then filed away with no, you know, sort of abject consensus as to what it is. It's just kind of like, yeah, this is unresolved. And they just sat there for 60 years. And none of this was ever fully disclosed or fully public before May 7. Of course, there were pieces of this that were redacted or leaks that came out. But now you actually have the official files being released from the government. And, you know, we've had a lot of UFO sightings and stories that were made public by certain individuals throughout the years, but nothing official that had been recognized by, you know, the government in this way. And these files have been slowly building for a long, long time. Now, the most recent chunk of the files covers 2019 through 2024. And in some ways, it's maybe the more bizarre because it's not this, like, grainy archival footage from the Cold War. This is like infrared sensor data from US Military operating in an active theater within the last five years. You know, like, all of us were alive when these actual, like, images and videos were taken. And there are actually more than 20 videos in this release shot by military sensors in locations from Syria, Japan, Iraq, the uae, the Gulf of Oman. And the objects described in these images range from small, fast moving white specks to metallic elliptical shapes hovering at altitude to what one report calls a bouncy ball shaped. And a June 2024 infrared sensor recording over the Gulf of Oman shows an object being tracked by a US aircraft over the waters near the uae. And then it just quickly accelerates out of frame. But the single most striking report in the modern sort of, you know, disclosure section is what the files describe as a, quote, super hot orb, one of the hottest orbs that they've ever found in space. This orb is sexy, dude. And they encounter it near a suspected government facility in a mountainous. Now, the exact location of this region is heavily redacted, but here's what the documents say happened. This is the story. You have a military aircraft on a nighttime search mission, and it detects a single orb. And it is described through the radar and infrared as super hot, and it's close to the ground. The orb then moved eastward at a high rate of speed and then split into two objects. The crew continues to pursue it, and then the two objects Split further into four and then into five orbs, each flaring up sequentially and remaining stationary and then dimming one by one until they all vanished and then the aircraft broke off pursuit. So, I mean, what do we do with that? The Pentagon's official position on this stated plainly on the war.gov UFO portal. And they basically just once again said this is an unresolved case. Some researchers who have reviewed that footage have offered some, you know, more mundane skeptical positions. They say defer fraction patterns from hot jet engines can produce these like star shaped or potentially even orb shaped artifacts in infrared sensors. Fast moving specs can be a commercial drone or an optical illusion when you're at a certain altitude. You know, that's like a very genuine explanation that possibly makes all the sense in the world. But an orb that splits into five objects and then emits light in all directions, then even outpaces military aircraft before just completely vanishing. Where is Daredevil? I'm right here. Don't miss the return of Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again. So what's next? I feel liberated. We're gonna take this city back over medicated in an all new season now streaming only on Disney plus. They're hunting us. It's time we started hunting them. I can work with them. This should be tons of fun. Marvel Television's Daredevil Born Again now streaming only on Disney. I mean, that particular case doesn't have, you know, the most mundane explanation available to us. You know, it's just a little, that one you read and you're like, all right, maybe there's like a weird sort of, you know, parallax thing where you're at a certain distance and it's moving faster. I don't know, it's just a weird thing that they put in the report. And then there's also the Kazakhstan report. This is a bright object observed by multiple sources making what they say are 90 degree turns at speed. So for context, if you're not a aerospace engineer, any aircraft capable of making 90 degree turns at the speeds described in these reports would require structural materials and jet propulsion systems that we don't think exist in the world. Like, at least they're not publicly known in aerospace programs across any of, you know, the major power players, America, Russia, China. This 90 degree turn at the high velocity is something beyond traditional physics or aerodynamics. It's something else that, you know, we can talk about in a second. What's up, guys? We're gonna take a break because I want to talk to you about Something that happens in your late 20s, early 30s that no one tells you that basically your ability to handle a night out drinking with the boys completely changes, bro. When I was 22, I could go out on like a Thursday, sleep three hours, wake up, go to work, then go to the gym, feel completely normal, and then do it again the same day. Like, I felt invincible. 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I'm able to recover better, and I'm still able to have fun with the boys at night. So same night out, but a way better morning. And that is with Cheers. So for a limited time, our listeners are getting 20 off their entire order when they go to cheershealth.com and they use the code camp. So you just go to Cheers Health, use the code camp and you're gonna get 20% off. And after your purchase they're gonna ask where you heard about Cheers. Please tell them it was from the good people over at Camp Gagdon. It really helps us. It keeps the fire burning, it keeps the lights on. Thank you guys so much. Cheers has been amazing. I can't handle the uneasiness of the next day. And Cheers makes it all possible. Now let's get back to the show. But there are obviously people on the, on in the online space, specifically in the UAP space that have talked about this and they've looked through the files and they've given their, you know, their, their own sort of analysis as to what's going on. I mean, when the files dropped, people went crazy. Like the website war.gov UFO is going crazy. I mean, 340 million hits in a single day. 340 million website interactions in the first day. The server infrastructure of the United States Department of War, one of the most powerful government bodies struggled to keep up with people trying to go through and read the documents. I mean, that alone tells you just how much public interest has been building on this specific topic. But of course the reactions to this have been split and there's kind of like three camps that people fall in, you know, so the first camp you could say are, you know, the believers who went looking for confirmation. And some of them feel that they found it on Instagram and on X. You know, the four foot tall crewmen in spacesuits from the 1966 FBI memo that we talked about. That one immediately goes viral. Screenshots of the memo alongside text like they knew and you know, this is an official FBI document and no one's talking about it. The buzz Aldrin Apollo 11 report spread similarly. And then of course Barack Obama's 2021 statement that there are things that I can't tell you on air about UFOs that have been, you know, recirculating at this time. And people are now framing it as like a retroactive confirmation, like, oh, Obama knew the whole time and you know, he was like hiding it. David Grush's congressional testimony, like I talked about before, where he, you know, said that there was recovered non human aircraft and biological material that also resurged, you know, as the context around this release. And the skeptics looked at the same files and they saw something completely different. So on Reddit you have responses from our UFO or, you know, our Ask Reddit, and it's super divided. One of the top comments in one of the threads about the release put it plainly and says this. I don't know who wrote it, so I'm sorry if I'm, if I'm reading your comma without, you know, giving you credit, but it says UAP can literally be a bird camera distortion or a helium balloon. And of course, several aerospace engineers and physicists commenting in those threads went through the modern military footage and pointed out that many of the objects, including the star shaped ones, in their opinion, are almost certainly infrared refractions or defractions and basically just like visual artifacts from jet engine heat signatures. So when the infrared is looking at a jet engine, the heat from the engine can actually create these weird sort of diffracted visual cues that then get reported as something that they're not. Now, the consensus in these skeptical communities is that the files are interesting, you know, as historical documents and giving us a look into, you know, what the internal memos during the Cold War were and that kind of thing. But the gap between unexplained and extraterrestrial is what they would say is, is wishful thinking, that this is not actual evidence. But this is just a bunch of people that want to believe. And there's maybe a third camp, and this is the most politically charged. And maybe you can belong to two of the camps at once. You know, you have the believers that get confirmed. You have the, you know, skeptics that get confirmed of their skepticism. They're like, oh, this is bs and then the third camp is like the distraction theory camp. Now, almost immediately after the UFO files dropped, a counter narrative emerges across all the platforms. And they say that the timing here is not just a coincidence. You know, February 2, 2026, just three months before the UFO files were released, the Justice Department made publicly like 3 million pages of the Epstein files just available. And they were forced to do that through, you know, a law that was passed. And according to a New York Times report, Donald Trump is referenced in those Epstein documents over 38,000 times. Not a great look for, for Trump to be associated with Epstein so many times in the files, either through, you know, Epstein talking to him or about him, or, you know, different places that they both were. So you have the Epstein files that drop and everyone goes crazy. And then, of course, you have, you know, shortly thereafter, the UFO files that drop. Now, on Reddit, there's a thread titled, are Trump's UFO files a distraction from Epstein? And of course, that gathered a ton of traction. And the argument is pretty clear. The Epstein files, you know, reference Trump a ton, and it's deeply damaging and politically inconvenient for Trump and his administration. And plus, the Epstein files are highly redacted. And supposedly there are even more files that have even been released. So for the last few months, many have been calling for the files to be unredacted or to disclose all the rest of the files that haven't been made public to ensure accountability for those who are responsible. And they've been calling for the remainder of everything to just get put out in the open so we can actually see and hold accountable those that were involved in it. Right. Like, it's kind of crazy that you have Epstein and all these other people that are, you know, in these concentric circles of, you know, connection with him. Either, you know, they are completely unaware of what he's doing in their relationship, or they're aware of what he has done in the past and overlooked it because it's convenient for their business, or they're fully aware of what he has done and what he's doing now, and they're just ignoring it. Or, you know, the most deviant circle is that they're fully aware and complicit and potentially even engaging in these highly disgusting criminal affairs. And, you know, in these files, you have all these people connected, but yet only Ghislaine Maxwell is in prison. Only one person, like, it's. And she's in a cushy prison, like, walking around playing tennis all day or someone else in prison. But, yeah, I mean, Epstein might not. Epstein might just be busted out of here, chilling on a, you know, yacht somewhere. Well, I meant he's no longer with us, but maybe he's not with us. Where he is. I don't know. He might be in. It might be near Cancun or something. Tampa Pete or whatever it might be. It might. Oh, West. West Palm. Pete. Palm Beach. Pete Palm beach. Be. Who knows? Now, the UFO files release is obviously a high spectacle. Shock and awe, high engagement, overwhelming event that dominates social media, algorithms, and shifts a lot of the cultural conversation. I mean, as Steve Bannon calls it, you know, flooding the plane, just putting more stuff out that people just kind of fall into this kind of algorithmic malaise where they're just constantly like, oh, all right, nuclear war over here, and, you know, another conflict here, and this thing happened at this place, and these aliens are real, and it just kind of puts us into, like, this, you know, catatonic, kind of overwhelmed Coma, you know, and critically, the UFO files, perhaps, you know, by design, don't actually resolve anything. You know, like they. It just is an endless debate and it generates a ton of conspiracies, and you have skeptics and you have believers, and it consumes an enormous amount of attention because it's really interesting. But ultimately it doesn't mean that much. But once again, this is only the first drop. And remember, there are supposedly many more files, both, you know, UFO and Epstein, one of which I'm much more confident we're going to see than the other. And to be fair, the counter argument is, you know, also, I think, important. Many voices within the UFO research community, including people you know on ufo, Twitter, and, you know, UFO Reddit, they have pushed back hard on the framing. And there's actually a popular thread titled the UFO files and the Epstein files are not mutually exclusive. And this position basically argues that the people who worked for years to get these documents released, whether it's researchers or whistleblowers or congressional advocates, they deserve credit for actually getting something disclosed and actually getting the government to move on this issue. And that dismissing this, you know, purely as just a distraction technique basically does the government's work for them by getting people to stop looking at any of the files themselves. And I think both things can be true, right? Like, these UFO files can be obviously legitimate, and there are really interesting things inside of them. They're obviously highly sanitized and redacted, so that doesn't actually threaten the power structures in this country. But they're still really interesting. And the timing of them could also be strategic, and that is probably the most likely situation of all. And then, of course, there are a ton of theories circulating that go beyond the distraction angle. And the ones that, you know, treat these 162 files not as a conclusion, but more as like a breadcrumb trail that goes to some type of more grand conspiracy. And the most persistent one online is pretty straightforward that these are the files that they're okay with you seeing, and that's the most likely scenario of all. And almost certainly. I mean, what we're seeing in these files is not. Not the actual craziest stuff that the government has in these classified archives. Right. I mean, what we're seeing is almost certainly a very sanitized version that is imbued with a lot of truth, but it's just kind of the stuff that they're like, yeah, show them a picture of a blob on a screen and the people go crazy and just kind of once again just be happy with their bread and their circuses. And I mean, think about like Operation Paperclip like we talked about before, you know, this theory that the U.S. imports all of these Nazi scientists after World War II. And you know, it gets aerospace technology that was farther along than anything else. But people also suggest that in this, it's possible that maybe they got whatever was being built in the Austrian Black Forest in 1944. Remember that disc shaped UFO thing? And that the US was literally building these like black programs of, you know, this type of technology in the subsequent decades. And they were partially built on this Operation Paperclip Foundation. Now in that type of reading, some of what gets filed as UAP isn't alien at all. It's actually American technology. Or, you know, it was built on the technology that the Nazis had that then we acquired. And classifying it as unexplained phenomenon could be a really convenient way of having to avoid where it came from or what it is. And then you have a theory built on top of a theory. And this has been going around in a bunch of different, you know, UFO and you know, conspiracy forums that, that, you know, these images that we're seeing specifically of like these orbs that split and then multiply and then they vanish, they represent something that no existing aerospace program can explain and something that the government has known, you know, for a long time. That basically this slow drip release process of these files is very deliberate. And it's what they call a managed process of acclimation. So not disclosure. Disclosure would be, you know, the government just being like, guys, it's official, we have contact with aliens and they're here and they're telling us this stuff. This is what they would call acclimation. Getting the public used to the idea incrementally so that when potentially the real answer comes, whatever it is, disclosure or not, it doesn't cause a collapse to the social order. The concern is that if the government comes out and says, hey guys, we have confirmation that aliens are real, that we would just dissolve into, you know, just anarchy. That people would go crazy, that, you know, there'd be this existential threat, there would be all these different factions, wars would break out, out. And so by dripping these files in this manner where people are kind of like, it seems to me sort of ambiently just kind of down with the idea of aliens. Like most people I talked to were like, yeah, there's probably aliens. You know, like it's, it's maybe a tactic to get people to just kind of be a little more blase. And that way, eventually, if the government's like, we got aliens, which that's its own conspiracy, people would be like, okay, we can deal with this and the whole world doesn't collapse. So what does all this mean? Where. Where does this put us? You know, we know that in 1944, the FBI gets a tip about this, you know, Nazi flying disc in Austria, and it's filed without a conclusion. And then in 48, the State Department in Sweden and the Netherlands look at, you know, a bunch of stuff appearing in their skies, and they say in an actual, you know, diplomatic, you know, letter that it didn't originate from any known culture on earth and it was filed without a conclusion. And then in 66, FBI field agent documents, you know, eyewitness accounts of a landed metallic craft with a crew filed for that conclusion. Buzz Aldrin, one of the most, you know, watched astronauts in the world, maybe the most watched voyage in human history, observed this weird unidentified light source near the lunar module in 69, filed with that conclusion. And then in 2024, US military sensors track back an orb that splits into five, five orbs, and then, you know, just vanishes. Once again, filed with that conclusion. So you have 80 years, dozens of agencies, thousands of reports, all filed with that conclusion. And unfortunately, the only. The only honest answer to, you know, Trump's question that he put on Truth Social, what the hell is going on? Is that no one knows. And it's not because people aren't trying to figure it out, but it's because, you know, it's unknowable based off of what's been released. And there's also still a ton of stuff that hasn't been released, and hopefully more pieces that the US Government will put out. But, you know, the narrative that the Department of War is leaning into is decisively uncertain. You know, we still don't know what this is, and we can't say it's nothing. And that's where they're at. That's why the files are public now, and that's why these specific files are able to be released, because they're able to be like, hey, here's something, but we don't know what it is. So I don't know, go read them. Make up your own mind and let me know what you think. Because, you know, the truth is that what we've covered in this episode is a sampling. It is really an overview. And there are a ton of different ways that you can read these files, and there are a ton of different narrative threads that should be followed and actually, you know, dug deeper into. I mean, there are religious. Through lines that we didn't even talk about, about how, like, these files might have implications for God and angels and demons, which maybe that's its own episode that we do. And then, of course, there's the historical lines, like, you know, Operation Paperclip and a bunch of the other secret military operations. And, you know, we're definitely going to be going through all this stuff in future episodes, so make sure you subscribe so that way you don't miss out on those specific deep dives. And unfortunately, at the end of those episodes, we might end up in the same place, which is just like, this is something, but we don't know what. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief overview of what was released in the most recent tranche of UFO files put out by the United States government. I mean, once again, my feeling on this is that this is a convenient time to put it out. I think that there's probably a lot of strategic political agendas at play, and the fact that there's not a bigger reaction for most people is a little bit surprising. But I guess I don't know what the reaction would be. You know, like, I'll just go to my coffee shop and be like, you see these files? And people are like, yeah, I saw some pictures on Instagram. Pretty weird. I don't know what it is. Which kind of just goes to show, like, without people being explained what they're looking at, they don't know what they're looking at. Like, most people are not, like, deeply invested in this stuff or, like, at least even curious about this stuff to dig in and try to come up with their own theories. Most people are just like, yeah, the government said they don't know, so neither do I. And I'm like, all right, well, you could look into it a little bit. I mean, what do you think? Like, is it possible that the orb thing is like, look, imagine you got a. A plane and you got, like, four rock. Or like, let's say you have five rockets coming out the back, right? And you see the plane like this. You're just going to see one heat source. Like, if the plane's like this, you're just going to see one heat source, and then all of a sudden, the plane turns. All of a sudden you're going to see five. I guess the fact that it's split into one and the two, and then two into four, and then another one shows up. I don't Know, I'm trying to make sense of it all. I mean, what do you think, Christos, you think this is? Do you think any of the pictures or any of the files that are disclosed are actual, genuine, non human objects? I think they all are. But I'm actually very curious about, like, what you think about whether or not this gives credence to experiencers who say they have come into contact with them. I mean, to an extent it should, right? Like, everything that's going on right now is, like, pushing towards the fact that these people aren't crazy. Which experiencers for years get just written off as like, oh, you're crazy. What you experienced is fake. What you're. You're a liar. And it's not like there's a massive backslide to prove that everything that ever happened to them is fake. It's like, no, that we're just inching ourselves towards the direction of like, sure, yeah, probably, you know, like, I don't know if most people would be like, yes, you definitely experienced something. But, like, if you ask someone what their opinion about, you know, UFOs or aliens or abductions in 1960 versus today, I think it's like one of the biggest cultural pendulum shifts of our generation. You ask people about aliens in the 60s and they'd be like, no, dude, I believe in God. But now you ask people about aliens and they're like, probably now whether they're coming to Earth, all the other nuance and details, you know, yet to be seen. And I think most people are a little bit more skeptical, but still, like, I think most people are definitely, like, on the Fermi paradox, just like, yeah, dude, aliens are definitely out there. 100. So where does this leave us with this? I do think there's two things happening. Like I said before war, there's the convenience. I'd Loki. I mean, I think that the conflict with Iran was the same thing, right? Like, the United States was eager to get in some type of conflict with Iran and was trying to justify it through every which way. And I mean, Obama had Iran at the. One of the top of his, you know, issues. He's signing all these deals and treaties, trying to get, you know, trying to patch things up. Biden had all sorts of issues with Iran. So the United States has been gearing towards this as a mechanized war machine for a long time. And then the Epstein stuff drops and it's like, now can be good, you know, so, like, I think both things are possible where it's like, yeah, you, you know, things work out. It's like you're gonna get your wife a Christmas gift, but also you get into a huge argument two weeks before Christmas. Maybe you give her the Christmas gift a week early. You were always going to get her a Christmas gift, but the timing of it shifted a little because it was convenient. Economy's bad. Let's drop this right now. Yeah. You know what I mean? I don't even know if the economy is bad. I mean, like, gas is $6 a gallon, mark. That's fair. That is actually a good point. I live in New York City and I don't drive. But like, our, like, our, like grocery prices have gone up a little. But like, gas is the most significant thing that I don't. I'm not actually affected by because I don't drive, but like, grocery prices a little bit. But hey, Pam, Bonnie said that the Dow was up hit 40,000 or whatever. Whatever that means. I don't know. Yeah, they're saying that Michael Burry guy is predicting another collapse. That's the big short, dude. Yeah. Oh, should we just buy gold buried in the campsite? I'll take my paycheck in gold. Yes, same. Anyway, what do you guys think? Is there anything that we missed from this tranche? Is there anything that we overlooked? If there's. I specifically want to do an episode detailing what the these files mean for people of a more religious aptitude. Like, like, if you believe in God and angels and demons, is it possible that what's going on here could be that? Like, call me crazy, but this has been something my mom has always said forever. I'm like, mom, what about aliens? What about UFOs? What about all that stuff? And she always just tells me, she's like, mark, it's demons or it's angels. I mean, I've seen some biblically accurate angel paintings and I've also seen some pictures in these files. And I'm like, we got an angel on camera. I don't know, but we got to do a whole episode dedicated on that. But I don't know. What do you guys think? Drop a comment, please. I will read all of them. And I got a little bit of time this week. I'm going to Salt Lake City on Friday. So I'm going to be responding to a bunch of comments while I'm on the flight. I would love to know. Please drop a comment. YouTube, Spotify, I read all that. And furthermore, I want to give you guys a couple more updates. If you want more content, if you like historical stuff like we talked about a little bit. We did a whole episode on Operation Paperclip and Vorner von Braun. You can see at History Camp. That's where I talk about everything that's ever happened. If you're interested in kind of like the mystical, divine, theological nature of the world, what happens to us when we die? Where do we come from? Why are we here? Talk a lot about a lot of that stuff on religion Camp. And if you just like to go on crazy deep dives and rabbit holes, well, great news. That's what we do here at the campsite every single week. So make sure you subscribe and you will never miss another episode. See me on the road, Mark Yagnon, live. I would love to come. I would love to. I would love for you to come to a show and shake my hand afterwards and say what's up? And enjoy some standup comedy. And check out out the secret society that is patreon.com Camp Gagnon. God bless you all, and I will see you next time. Peace.
Host: Mark Gagnon
Date: May 14, 2026
In this intriguing episode of Camp Gagnon, host Mark Gagnon breaks down the historic May 7, 2026, release of 162 declassified U.S. government files about UFOs (now termed UAPs, or Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena). The episode explores what's actually in these files, the political and cultural context of their release by President Trump, and the heated responses from the Internet. Mark dives into the history and modern mysteries documented within—resisting both credulous belief and dismissive skepticism throughout.
Format & Scope: 120 PDFs, 28 videos, and 14 images, all unresolved cases.
Notable Early Cases:
Cold War Era (1947–1968):
Astronaut Testimony:
Modern Files (2019–2024):
On the ambiguity of release:
"You have 80 years, dozens of agencies, thousands of reports, all filed with that conclusion. Unresolved." (1:23:00)
On skepticism:
"I’m fascinated by seekers and not finders… always drawn to people that are desperately seeking the truth." (10:00)
On the distraction theory:
"Shock and awe, high engagement, overwhelming event... as Steve Bannon calls it, you know, ‘flooding the plane,’ just putting more stuff out that people just kind of fall into this algorithmic malaise." (58:30)
Christos on experiencers:
"Everything that’s going on right now is like pushing towards the fact that these people aren’t crazy. Which experiencers for years get just written off as… you’re a liar.” (1:17:55)
Mark wraps up by underscoring the unresolved nature of these now-public cases. The files brought forward contain patterns—credible observers, unexplained phenomena, but always officially unresolved. The timing and content are likely politically calculated, simultaneously offering real historical intrigue and tantalizing ambiguity. The episode ends with a call for further curiosity, deeper dives, and open discussion, promising to explore the theological and philosophical implications in future episodes.
Call-to-action:
Mark invites listeners to share thoughts and theories in the comments, teasing upcoming deep dives (Operation Paperclip, religious interpretations of UAPs, etc.).
Conversational, curious, skeptical but open. Mark maintains humor and humility, balances historical context with up-to-the-minute reaction, and encourages listeners to educate themselves and keep asking questions.
For a detailed breakdown, check out the official files, browse the war.gov portal, and stay tuned for more tranches—because this is just the beginning.