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Hey everyone, I'm Ashley Banfield. This is drop dead serious. Thanks for being here. Don't forget to subscribe. So listen, I know that the majority of true crime fanatics have been following the Nancy Guthrie case, right? Going into its seventh week. I mean, it is. It's just this mystifying missing persons case. But there's another missing person's case that should be as big because the consequences of this person going missing could be far more severe for all of us, right? So if you haven't heard of retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland, get comfy because it is a critical case. I get it. There's a silver alert that went out for General McCasland. But it is a lot more than just a silver alert. Okay, I think General McCasland is 68 years old, but he has no issues, medically speaking. He doesn't have dementia. He's not a wanderer. It's not like that. No, he is sharp as attack. Where'd you hear that before? Sharp as attack. It's what Sheriff Nanos said about Nancy Guthrie in the first day that the story began getting coverage in Arizona. Well, this is in New Mexico. The General McCaslin cases in New Mexico. And he is also sharp as a tack. In fact, General McCaslin might be one of the smartest Americans we've ever put out because he's got quite a resume. And his resume is what is causing, let's just say, a case for some alarm. Because this guy shouldn't go missing. And if he does go missing, it could be really problematic for a lot of people, and it could be very problematic for McCasland's family because of all the things he knows. Let me back it up a little bit. According to the Bernalillo County Sheriff's Office, he goes by Neil. So General Neil McCasland was last seen on February 27th, about 11 o' clock in the morning. And if you know the area, he's in the area of Quail Run Court, northeast in Albuquerque. So law enforcement, they're saying that he left his home on foot and he did not take his phone and he did not take his watch. So those are things that might be a little odd for most of us who now can't be without our phones for a hot minute. I can't go upstairs without it. I will come back down and take it up. So search efforts have been super remarkable, right? There have been official teams that have been dispatched. Friends have been out there, neighbors have been out there. People have been horseback searching. They've sent up drones, they've sent up helicopters. They've had three different kinds of search dogs that have gone out. They've had full neighborhood canvassing, door to door, knocking on doors, right? People have been asked to check their. Their ring cams, their doorbell cams, whatever kind of cams they have, their security cams, their wildlife cams, right? A lot of people have wildlife cameras. And the police have been asking for every scrap of video that anybody might be able to offer. And it hasn't just been in that neighborhood either. The investigators have gone a lot wider than the circumference of just his area. So there was reporting just in the week before that authorities actually knocked on 600 different doors, proverbially speaking. Some may have been knocked, some may have been calls, but they went out to 600 different homeowners, according to reports, all near where General McCaslin's home is, where he disappeared from. And they are asking for security footage or anything, any information. You know what you see. Have you seen anything weird, any vehicles, any people tell us anything. No detail is too small. You know the drill, right? You know how investigators are, and they are trying to reconstruct what happened after the general set foot out his door and down his walkway. The FBI is involved, okay? Not weird, right? FBI was also involved in Nancy Guthrie's case. But what's different than Nancy Guthrie's case, right, Is that the Kirtland Air Force Base is also involved. And this is why I said, off the top of this podcast, the case of General McCasland is different, and it warrants equal or more headlines than what Nancy Guthrie's coverage has been. Sheriff's office says that as of now, investigators have recovered no evidence of foul play. Not yet. Right. But they are still considering all possible scenarios. And the reason that this case is starting to jump beyond local news, but maybe not as far beyond as it should, is because Neil McCasland is not just any retired, you know, military official. According to his air force biography, he's a graduate of the U. S. Air force academy. He had a degree in astronautical engineering. He later got a graduate degree from mit. He served in a series of high level roles including, well, that involved space research. This is where I'm getting to the really critical part. Space research acquisition operations and special programs, as in potentially very, very special programs. He commanded the Phillips site of the air force research laboratory at Kirtland. He served as director of space acquisition, then as director of special programs at the Pentagon, and later he became the commander of the air force research laboratory at Wright Patterson. And this is why it's so critical that we know what, what happened to General McCasland because of his connections to Wright Patterson. His resume has obviously, you know, upped the ante on the fascination factor of this disappearance. Look, people disappear a lot in America. There are missing persons cases every single day, many of them. But General McCaslin's is different because once his disappearance became public, people began looking at not only his military service, but also also at the UFO and UAP conversations that may have surrounded parts of his life on the job and his post retirement life. General McCaslin's wife, Susan McCaslin Wilkerson, has spoken publicly about the circumstance that she is in with her missing husband. And there's some controversy and there's some interesting things that she has said. First and foremost, she has really tamped down any of the conspiracy theories that, that maybe someone in the UAP community, you know, is trying to silence him and has taken him, someone with a foreign government, someone with the domestic government. She and she also at the same time said, but my husband is not of failing health or failing mind. Without questions. She said, no dementia, no mental health issues like that. So it's left most people to just guess, you know, what, what it is that's that's happened. And she's also said something that some people took, how do I say this? As almost snarky to the reaction that most people have had, knowing that General McCasland has disappeared. Clearly with his background, there were a lot of people were very concerned and said, well maybe this has to do with his work with Unidentified flying objects or UAPs. And this is what said to that, and I'm going to quote her, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership. However, no sightings of the mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported. And, and listen, people have been surprised, some offended by that comment as well. And that's where Ross Colthart comes in. Ross Coltheart knows a thing or two about UFOs and UAPs and all things surrounding those things. Ross is an Australian investigative journalist. He's an author, he's a documentary producer. He's also the senior special investigations correspondent for News Nation. And Ross believes that the government, actually many governments have covered up knowledge of extraterrestrial spacecraft. And Ross is an advocate for UFO disclosure. He made some very big headlines this week when he said that General Neil McCaslin, quote, is one of the most significant figures ever to be linked to the disclosure conversations around unidentified aerial phenomena and described him as, quote, someone who has served at the highest levels of Air Force and defense world with oversight of classified aerospace and special programs. Here's my conversation with him. Ross, why is the story of General McCasland, for lack of a better description, not bigger
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look, actually it's a very complex issue why General McCasland is such an important figure in not just national security, but especially the UAP mystery, the mystery of unidentified anomalous phenomena. I noticed there's been a lot of ill informed commentary speculating that it's all nonsense and there's nothing to this. He lost his clearances in 2013 when he left the Air Force. He couldn't possibly know anything now that would be useful and all the UFO stuff is just specious nonsense. That is not the the case. General Neil McCasland was recorded in leaks that were leaked by the Russian GRU where they tapped in to the private Gmail of John Podesta. John Podesta was Hillary Clinton's campaign manager in the years running up to the 2016 election. And as you would remember Ashley, back then everybody thought Trump had an ice cube's chance in hell of winning against Hillary Clinton. She was seen as a dead cert, rightly or wrongly. And a lot of the people in the Pentagon who've been protecting what I think is one of the biggest secrets in human history, the mystery of non human intelligence engaging with this planet. They knew the game was up. And so a covert liaison began between John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's Campaign manager and people like Robert Weiss, the chief executive of Skunk Works at Lockheed Martin. General Michael Carey, a former very senior U.S. air Force Space Command general, and General Neil McCasland and believe it or not, Tom DeLong, the lead singer of Blink One Hundred and Eighty Two, the rock band. Why on earth was this disparate group of people meeting? Well, the leaked emails that were eventually posted on WikiLeaks through the GRU, Russian military intelligence, they show that for many months prior to the election there was an ongoing conversation between General Neil McCasland and all of these people about UAP disclosure about revealing the existence of a non human intelligence engaging with this planet. This is why a lot of people who are saying there's nothing to this have no idea what they're talking about. And it really shocks me that one of the things we forget is our history. And if we forget our history, we forget the real story. General Neil McCaslan isn't just one of the the most senior generals in the US military, now retired, he's somebody who was cleared to the very highest levels of some of our deepest, darkest, most important national security secrets. He was for a while in charge of all SAPS special access programs. He was the liaison who handled the administration of saps, which is essentially America's deepest darkest secrets. Then went on until 2013 to be the commander of the US Air Force's research laboratories at Wright Patterson Air Force Base. And it's Wright Patterson Air Force Base where most of the military's secret investigations into weaponry, aerospace, new technologies, new propulsion systems are done. It's a massive facility with extensive underground structures. General Neil McCasland ran the the whole joint. Now sadly, I feel terribly for his wife Susan. She's spoken publicly and issued a statement and she's obviously distressed by the speculation that Neil McCasland might have been abducted or kidnapped or taken by potentially some foreign adversary power or maybe some private military contractor that doesn't want him to talk about something. And she's concerned that there's excessive speculation that because of his past employment in the Air Force it might be lead to an over speculation that he knows something. Now the simple fact is he does. General Neil McCasland has some of the biggest secrets in his head. Not just about the ufo, UAP mystery. You can put that aside for one moment. He's cleared to top secret compartmented levels up to 2013 on secrets that still persist to this day about American weaponry, technology, space weapons, but also, and this is proven in these leaked emails from WikiLeaks. Also the UAP mystery. And it was, incredibly, Tom DeLonge, the lead singer of Blink 182, who went into detail about what General Neil McCasland admitted he knew because of his privileged information as a senior U.S. air Force general. He told Tom DeLong that during the Cold War, the United States found a life form, an alien life form, and that he retrieved and oversaw the retrieval of alien spacecraft. This is a reality. It's not idle speculation. This is a truth admitted by a senior Pentagon general. To believe it or not, incredibly, you couldn't write this as a movie. A rock star who was fascinated in UFOs.
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Well, lest anybody think it's just a rock star, he's also a documentary producer and he's doing projects, you know, of that ilk. So it's not just he reached out to him, a rock musician, there was more to it. Well, I'm curious, though, about General McCaslin's interactions with the US government, whether there had been a lot of plans for him to testify at any point, whether he'd made overtures that were, what do you know about his background and what he wanted to do, or what maybe the government wanted him to do or not.
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Ok, we do know that barely a few weeks Prior to General Neil McCaslin's disappearance, on February 27, Donald Trump, the President of the United States, made a promise. He made that promise on social media, on Truth Social. He didn't yet make it as an executive order, but what he pledged was that he would declassify the UAP files, including files on extraterrestrial life. In any other context, this would be treated as an extraordinary news story. But there is some kind of mental block at the moment. In so much of the legacy news media, they fail to pick up on the enormous significance of what Donald Trump was signalling. President Trump has been briefed. I know he's been briefed. Very limited briefing, but he's certainly apprised now of the existence of a non human intelligence engaging with this planet. He knows that his Pentagon has been flat out lying to the American public for much of the last 70, 80 years. And for me as a journalist, it was a huge leap to realise that this was the case. I've been raised with an expectation that America is one of the great moral leaders of the world, that it's essentially protected us from tyranny and authoritarian rule for the last 80 plus years, since the end of World War II. We to America for moral leadership. And what shocked me as an investigative journalist getting into this subject matter was to realize that the truth was vastly different from that represented by the US Defence Department. The public has been lied to. And President Trump realised this. And the interesting thing is what's happening at the moment is Trump has very slowly started indicating that he's willing to pull back the layers, to show the public what the deep state. And this does fit with his moral narrative, that there's this deep state that has been withholding information from the American public and indeed he believes trying to undermine his authority and his potential leadership. So for him, there's a motivation in revealing what he knows. Now, I got told by people very close to the Trump camp that in his first administration, he was going to make a disclosure about UAPs. And what happened, he got scared. And I'm sorry to have to say this about the most powerful person in the world, but the commander in chief of the US military was scared of his own government. He became aware that there are forces inside the US government that frankly would and have killed to protect this secret. And he wasn't entirely confident that. That he could feel safe in making a statement at the time about what he knows.
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So many people would say that's impossible. Donald Trump feels as though he's omnipotent at this point, given all of the actions that he's taken recently by executive action, going to war, without Congress, et cetera, what kind of people would have any kind of threat power over the president?
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For quite some time, there has been a warning in America, and it goes right back to President Eisenhower's speech when he left office. And if you remember, he talked about a military industrial complex that was out of control. And that was quite something from the man who'd led America to victory in World War II. President Eisenhower, in one of the last statements that he made as the President of the United States, warned the American public that he was concerned that there was a military industrial complex that was actually getting out of control. What I've been investigating for much of the last eight years, years, and every time I start digging, I find more and more to substantiate this. This view is that there is a private military contractor industrial complex that is completely out of control. A lot of what is going on in America at the moment is due to the fact that trillions of dollars have been expended on expenditure that is being kept secret from the American public. This isn't something that's been concealed. The fact of this expenditure, you might remember that prior to 9, 11, Donald Rumsfeld, the defence Secretary, actually admitted that there were trillions of dollars that couldn't be accounted for in the defence budget. There are people like Catherine Austin Fitts, a former very senior government official, who's admitted that when she did audits there were vast amounts of US defence expenditure that could not be accounted for.
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Frankly, anything more than usual though, Ross. I mean, in every war that I've ever covered, there's always been, you know, the missing bags and bags of money. And when I say bags, I mean millions and millions. It's not out of the ordinary for war.
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No, it is, it is. The level of money we're talking about here is billions and trillions of dollars. And one of the things I've been doing is investigating claims that, for example, private military contractors have been involved in the retrieval of non human technology, that they were seeded technology that was originally being held by the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense that was retrieved from places like Roswell in 1947, Kingman, Aztec, a whole series of alleged crashes, some of which have actually surfaced into popular mythology, but which have been successfully suppressed with disinformation by a very, very clever strategy of disinformation and psychological operations run by the government and by private contractors. But what has been going on is a lot of what America knows about the UAP mystery has been privatised. It's gone into the private world. And I know that there have been literally blue on blue confrontations where American troops under the command of JSOC were actually sent to retrieve a craft, an object that crashed, I think it was in Mexico. And in the course of their attempted retrieval, US Special Forces soldiers were killed or wounded by private military contractors who were trying to protect what was allegedly their technology. And this is how absurd it's got that this ridiculous Cold War has been going on between the Russians, the Chinese and the Americans. There's been so much secrecy now about this legacy program involving the retrieval of non human technology. Not only are we in competition with the Russians and Chinese over it, there are battles, in some cases deaths, where people have been killed in an effort to protect and retrieve this technology. That's how serious this is. I've spoken to people who say that people have been murdered to protect this secret. Now this is what we've been trying to get Congress to investigate. But sadly Congress has shown that it's completely ineffectual and very much in the thrall of many of these private military contractors that exercise such an undue influence in the Congress.
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So obviously that brings the conversation back to General McCasland because there are so many potential theories as to what might have happened. And I want to go back to his wife for a moment because I feel as though if anybody knows that General McCaslin might have been a target, it might be his wife. And she's the one person who seems to be throwing cold water on the possibility that there could be something very nefarious afoot because of his background. One of the things that she said recently, and this is a direct quote from her, which I found to be surprising and I wanted to get your reaction. She was frustrated with some of the theorizing on who may have taken him and for what reason. And she said this quote, maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mothership. However, no sightings of a mothership hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported. Obviously very tongue in cheek during a very serious time. What's your reaction to that?
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I was surprised that Susan Wilkerson said that. Susan's a former Lieutenant colonel or maybe still a serving lieutenant colonel in the US Air Force and a former astronaut trainee. So she would know. I mean, I don't know if she was as cleared as highly as her husband was. I know a lot of these people, most of them are men when they talk to their families, in order to protect their families, they keep secrets they don't share with their wives. So it's very likely, I think, that she's completely unaware of what Neil was involved in, particularly with Lockheed Martin fellow generals and John Podesta in the run up to the 2016 election. I think she probably knows because of the leaked emails that he was in communication with the White House. Podesta, of course, was a former Obama senior policy advisor, very, very highly connected Democrat with great connections at the highest levels of the Democratic Party. And what we're talking about here is something that she may not simply be aware of.
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I know if I'm aware of as much as I'm aware, clearly she would be. She'd be far more informed about this. And I just also wonder, just his background alone, it just, it just screams there's a possibility. Why would she be so anathema? Why would it be so anathema to her?
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Well, look, I think nobody wants to think about the possibility that your husband may have been taken by someone unfriendly at the moment, by the way, I should emphasize there's been no official statement that, that Neil McCasland has been taken, abducted. The official story at the moment is that he's perhaps in some way incapacitated and that he's got lost on a trail somewhere around the running trails of Albuquerque. I have to say, frankly, that makes no sense. After 12, 13 days, if he did go on a running trail, he would have been found by now. I've been seen reports from Susan Wilkerson, his wife, that he left his watch at home, which is unusual for a runner. Most runners want to monitor their heart rate and their pace. It doesn't seem right. He also left his phone at home. And more importantly, she also couldn't account for what shoes he was allegedly wearing at the time. There's a lot of question marks, frankly, about the whole argument, the whole claim that he would have gone missing on a running trail. We don't, we don't know that he did.
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Right? We don't. But I'll tell you what, on occasion I'm a runner, not often, but there is no way that I would go to a trail without a watch or a phone or some communication, especially if there's a trail that has a danger where there's a falling, you know, risk. I just feel that anybody who's been around the block a few times, like me, and certainly at 68, I think years old he's been around the block, would ever do something that risky without some sort of location device or communication device. It just doesn't sound, doesn't match the smell test.
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Look, I agree with you. Look, I don't want to distress Susan Wilkerson. It must be terrible to be losing your loved one and wondering where the hell he is. And I sincerely hope that General McCasland is found soon. And frankly, I do hope that the simple extra explanation is that he just got lost or that there's been some medical misadventure. And I sincerely hope he's soon reunited with his family. Frankly, as each day goes by, I think we increasingly have to look at the possibility of foul play. And the fact that the FBI is now more overtly involved, that we've got people from Kirtland Air Force Base now engaged and that the local sheriff is now talking about securing the video cameras from people's homes, means that the search is now intensifying. They're now looking at alternative explanations as to what possibly happened. I've had people contact me in the security industry who knew General Neil McCasland who tell me that they're not happy with the original status of the FBI investigation, that they felt that the FBI was doing a very, very half hearted investigation. There was a lot of talk, for example, that there'd been no mobile phone alert posted. I mean, one of the first things you do when somebody goes missing is you put their face out on a mobile phone alert in the area, inviting anyone with a mobile phone to look at the photograph and see whether that person's been seen anywhere in the silver
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alert, which they, they've done. Right. They put out the silver alert. I don't know how long it took them.
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No, I, I don't think there's been the full mobile phone alert that's been raised. There is, there has been a silver alert, but I don't think there's been the level of notification that you would ordinarily see for somebody who's gone missing. I've spoken to people in the military who think that it, it is being underplayed by the government. The significance of General Neil McCaslin's disappearance. I don't want to suggest that there is necessarily a synchronicity between his past involvement in what was clearly a push for UAP disclosure, but certainly it's an interesting connection that he disappeared so soon after Donald Trump made his announcement that he was going to be transparent. It's also.
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Do you think it's possible that, that his wife, Susan, may be downplaying this as part of any kind of strategy, that this isn't just her verbiage, that maybe there's guidance?
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I've got no idea. I really don't know. It would be idle for me to speculate and frankly, I wouldn't want to distress Susan. The terrible possibility here is that someone's taken him, and I sincerely hope it's not foreign adversary rivals. But I was distressed to see that Susan was suggesting that because his security classification ended in 2013 in the air Force, he wouldn't be of much value now, frankly, with the secrets that are locked up in General Neil McCaslan's head from his years of managing special access programs, there is absolutely no doubt at all that even this many years on, 10 years later, 10 years, 13 years later, he knows things that people would want to know. And so I don't want to be put in the position of taking an opposite view to Susan Wilkerson. And I respect and understand her deep emotion about losing her husband at this time. I sincerely hope she's reunited with him. But there are serious questions that need to be asked. I find the, the lack of an aggressive official response in the very early days quite puzzling. And a lot of his friends and colleagues are saying to me they really want questions asked about General Neil McCasland's disappearance to all of them. It's a serious mystery. This man is and was a very cautious human being. You quite rightly say he wouldn't have left the house without his phone and his watch. He was an extremely methodical, highly intelligent, extremely fit man. Just a week earlier, he'd cycled 60 miles. So the idea that he might have been so medically incapacitated that he might have fallen down on a trail, it just doesn't make sense.
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Well, Ross, what about the possibility that he left his home without a phone and a watch because that's what he wanted to do? That he may. Obviously, some are speculating he may have been having a clandestine meeting with someone and did not want to be tracked. But who would, or could it be that he'd want that kind of a meeting with?
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Well, okay. I mean, one of the possibilities is foreign adversary rivals. And another possibility is private military contractors who don't want General Neil McCaslan to talk about the UAP subject. I mean, no matter. I know it's unpleasant for people, and there's a tendency to ridicule and giggle and mock and stigmatise, but we have to overcome this stigma. The simple fact is it's a matter of public record that General Neil McCasland was liaising with the very highest levels of the White house and discussing UAP disclosure 10 years ago. So get over it. These people who think that this is something that can be dismissed with ridicule and taboo. The simple fact is it does need to seriously be considered that there is some connection between his UAP knowledge and the reasons for his disappearance. And it does seem like an extraordinary coincidence and extraordinary synchronicity that his disappearance happened so soon after President Trump made his announcement on Truth Social. I sincerely hope that what we see are the authorities getting to the truth of this and showing a little more aggression and zeal to actually find the general. It would be good to see senior leadership in the US Air Force, the US Military, and indeed in the White House express expressing concern about the disappearance of one of the most senior generals in the history of recent times in the Pentagon. This guy is a very, very highly respected person. He's a good human being, loved by his family and respected by his friends. His disappearance shouldn't go unnoticed. And more importantly, his loss at the moment is a grave national security concern by any measure, because even though he left the air Force in 2013, the secrets that are locked up in his head are still relevant today. And also the company that he's been working with, ATA Applied Technologies, they Do a lot of work with the US Defence Department, a lot of very high level work on some new extraordinary technologies, most of which are classified. It defies explanation to me that it's not a bigger issue that the General's disappearance is not on the front pages of the newspapers.
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And Quite frankly, from 2013 until now 13 years, has there been so much that's happened that's news or new and critical that it dwarfs what he would have known prior to 2013?
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No, I mean, the simple fact is, I mean, one of the things, one of the bears in the room at the moment is nothing much has happened in US aerospace technology in the last 30 or 40 years. And it's pretty obvious America's been developing stuff in the black, which is great news. I mean, we should all be proud and very happy that America is developing technologies, which means that hopefully we can defeat our foreign adversary rivals in the event, God forbid, of a confrontation. But the man who has been at the, the apex of those discoveries is General Neil McCasland. This is why it's utterly absurd to try and play down any suggestion that he wouldn't know things that, that he would know things that he, that are militarily sensitive. Of course he knows things. And this is the, this is the point, I believe that America is concealing breakthroughs in propulsion, energy, weapons system systems that they're sitting on in the event of possible confrontation. And the fact that the man who was very much at the highest levels of overseeing those developments, those new weapons, those new propulsion systems has disappeared is a matter of grave public concern.
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Is it possible? I mean, you've mentioned defence contractors, private defence contractors, you've mentioned foreign adversaries. I'm assuming when you say foreign, you mean foreign borders, not foreign planets.
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Susan's right. I mean, I don't think there's any evidence at all that he's been taken by aliens. Yeah, no, but, but the simple fact is we're talking here about Russia, China, anybody that's got a hostile intent.
A
And I assume that's what you meant. I just wanted to make our, our audience clear. That's what you meant. But is it possible at all that the third possibility might be the US government themselves were trying to quiet General McCasland if he was planning to talk out of step.
B
Well, we do know it's a matter of public record that 10 years ago, General Neil McCasland was leading an initiative to disclose UAP transparency. He wanted the public to know what he knew. Ten years later, just a few weeks after the President makes An announcement that he's going to disclose UAP secrets. What happens? The general who was one of the principal architects of a secret move with the Democrats to reveal UAPS secrecy disappears. Now, I'm sorry, I don't think it's a conspiracy theory to suggest there might be a link. Why the hell are we burying our heads in the sand on this issue? The question has to be asked. I sincerely hope for his family's sake that it turns out to be a simple case of medical misadventure and that there's nothing sinister in his disappearance. But we're 12, 13, 14 days now into the disappearance of an extremely Senior retired former U.S. air Force general with some of the biggest secrets in the U.S. military Industrial Complex in his head, including the secrets that the US government holds on UAPs. We shouldn't bury our head in the sand on the possibility that there might be a link, a connection. And what needs to be seen is far more aggression in terms of searching for the general. I know there's concerns among his friends and certain colleagues at certain aerospace companies that I've spoken to that this general, his disappearance has largely gone unacknowledged in legacy media.
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Why?
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I mean, well, I mean, the only
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thing I can say, and I. I believe that the Nancy Guthrie case has swallowed every ounce of oxygen that's been out there. But also, you know, America's just gone to war. And that's also dominated the headlines. And maybe that's one of the reasons that General McCaskill's disappearance didn't get bigger headlines, but it's starting to. And I also just want to tug on one more thread there. When the President makes proclamations, like on Air Force One, he said the Nancy Guthrie case was about to be solved. And that was, I think, in week two, that didn't happen. And sometimes he says things that aren't actually going to happen, says things off the cuff. And even his. I've spoken to people who work with the President who says. Sometimes he just says what he saw on his desk, you know. So do you think that his comments about a disclosure of the UAP program and America's knowledge was just one of those moments where he just said what he'd heard recently, but it didn't have teeth.
B
Look, I think the President was looking for a distraction from the Epstein files. To be perfectly honest, I think he saw an opportunity to divert people away from the public attention on the Epstein case. I sincerely hope that he's serious about UAP transparency, because he should be. Because if Donald Trump is looking for evidence of a deep state, a malevolent deep state that is operating against the best interests of the American people. He will find it in the UAP subject. A lot of the people who are, I think, calling themselves patriots inside private military contractors who believe that they're doing the best thing in the interests of the United States by concealing this incredible secret from the American public, I think they're deluding themselves. We know for a fact that there is a legacy retrieval and reverse engineering program of non human technology. David Grusch gave evidence about this under oath to the US Congress. Jake Barber went public with me on NewsNation describing his firsthand involvement with a covert military program retrieving a non human craft. What more evidence does the American public, the American government, and the American Congress need to start taking this issue seriously? And President Trump really should, I think, be thinking about his legacy if he's thinking of achieving greatness as a president, Imagine if he had the opportunity to be the president who definitively revealed, yes, there is a dark state, there is a deep state. It's been hiding this incredible secret from you, the American public, for the last 80 plus years. And this is what we know. I actually think this is the biggest story in human history. And so do many people in the military, in the intelligence community, and in private military contractors who think it's time you, the American public, were told the truth about what's really going on. And yet, time and time again, Congress has failed. It's dropped the ball. We had UAP disclosure legislation on the books prior to Christmas that would have allowed contractors, people inside those private military contractor companies to feel safe about coming forward and giving the evidence that they wanted to give. But corrupt politicians at senior levels in some of the most senior oversight committees in the Congress allowed themselves to be manipulated by private military contractors that used their evidence, their influence, malignly and malevolently to suppress this story. If President Trump is looking for a moment of moral greatness, this is his opportunity to make his mark.
A
Ross Coulthardt, I could talk to you forever. And I know your time is limited. I know you've got a wedding coming up in the family, too, so congratulations.
B
Thank you very much, Ashley.
A
Yeah, the best to your daughter. And it must just be a wonderful time in your household. Will you talk to me again about this again some other time when you have less weddings in the, in the, you know, offing?
B
No problem at all. Very happy to. And thank you for giving us this time to expound my views to your audience.
A
Thanks Ross. So that is where we stand. In my great thanks to Ross Coltheart. I always enjoy my conversations with Ross, and I know a lot of you do as well, because he is, when he speaks, people do listen. And this is a, this is a real mystifying circumstance, the disappearance of General McCaslin. We're going to continue to follow it promised you before, and I'm already following up. And as the days continue, let's just all pray, you know, for the, the safe return of the General. In the meantime, if you know anything about the disappearance of General Neil McCaslin, here is the number to call. It's 505-468-7070. Again, 505-468-7070 for any tips that might lead to finding General McCasland. Thank you so much for listening. Thank you for watching. And remember, the truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.
Episode: Ross Coulthart: "Utterly Absurd to Downplay" Missing UFO General | William Neil McCasland
Date: March 13, 2026
Host: Ashleigh Banfield
Guest: Ross Coulthart (Australian investigative journalist, UAP expert)
This episode tackles the high-stakes and little-publicized disappearance of retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasland. Ashleigh Banfield draws a compelling line between current missing persons media obsessions and the unique, potentially world-altering consequences of McCasland’s vanishing – due to his deep ties to top-secret military programs, UFO (UAP) disclosures, and alleged knowledge of national security secrets. Banfield is joined by noted investigative journalist Ross Coulthart, who provides crucial context regarding McCasland’s relevance, the risks at play, and broader implications for government secrecy, the "deep state," and UAP transparency.
Case Description
Why the Alarm?
UFO/UAP Angle
Ross Coulthart on Why This Matters
McCasland, retired since 2013, is “one of the most significant figures ever to be linked to the disclosure conversations around unidentified aerial phenomena.” (10:30)
Involved in high-level liaison between Pentagon, Lockheed Martin (Skunk Works), and John Podesta (Clinton’s campaign manager), as revealed by leaked Russian GRU/WikiLeaks emails before the 2016 US election.
“There was an ongoing conversation between General Neil McCasland and all of these people about UAP disclosure, about revealing the existence of a non-human intelligence engaging with this planet.”
— Ross Coulthart (11:20)
McCasland allegedly told musician (and UAP advocate) Tom DeLonge that during the Cold War, the US recovered an alien life form and spacecraft.
The Stakes
Trump’s Promise & Possible Motives
Donald Trump recently promised (on Truth Social) to declassify UAP/extraterrestrial files.
Coulthart claims Trump has been minimally briefed on the UAP issue, and that "he was scared" during his first administration by entrenched government forces:
“The commander in chief of the US military was scared of his own government. He became aware that there are forces inside the US government that frankly would and have killed to protect this secret.”
— Ross Coulthart (18:15)
Military-Industrial Complex
The warning, echoing Eisenhower, that the private military contractor industrial complex is “out of control.”
Massive unaccounted defense expenditures ($1+ trillion as revealed by Rumsfeld pre-9/11, audits by Catherine Austin Fitts).
Private contractors are alleged to have been directly involved in retrievals and even violent confrontations over non-human technology.
“I've spoken to people who say that people have been murdered to protect this secret...”
— Ross Coulthart (22:33)
Susan Wilkerson’s Position
Implausibility of Official Account
Both Banfield and Coulthart are skeptical of the “just went missing on a trail” scenario, pointing to oddities:
“He was an extremely methodical, highly intelligent, extremely fit man. Just a week earlier, he'd cycled 60 miles. So the idea…he might have fallen down on a trail, it just doesn't make sense.”
— Ross Coulthart (31:41)
Questions on Law Enforcement Response
Several sources (military, security industry) dissatisfied with the FBI’s “half-hearted” initial investigation.
Lack of robust public alerts and immediate response considered suspicious.
“I find the lack of an aggressive official response in the very early days quite puzzling.”
— Ross Coulthart (31:02)
Potential Motivations/Actors
Foreign adversaries (Russia, China)
Private military contractors wanting to silence him on UAP matters
Conceivable, though unproven, actions by US governmental "deep state" to prevent disclosure
“It does need to seriously be considered that there is some connection between his UAP knowledge and the reasons for his disappearance…it's an extraordinary coincidence…he disappeared so soon after President Trump’s announcement...”
— Ross Coulthart (32:30)
Ongoing Security Implications
McCasland has continued connection to high-level defense contracting (Applied Technologies) and retains highly valuable state secrets.
“The secrets that are locked up in General Neil McCasland’s head from his years of managing special access programs…even this many years on, 10 years later, he knows things people would want to know.”
— Ross Coulthart (30:12)
Media and Public Distraction
Banfield suggests the ongoing Nancy Guthrie case and national/international crises (America at war) have eclipsed this story.
Presidents can make off-the-cuff statements with little follow-through.
"Sometimes he just says what he saw on his desk, you know."
— Ashleigh Banfield (39:18)
Opportunity for Historic Disclosure
Coulthart suggests Trump could define his legacy by revealing the “biggest story in human history – that there is a deep state hiding knowledge of non-human intelligence engaging this planet.”
"If President Trump is looking for a moment of moral greatness, this is his opportunity to make his mark."
— Ross Coulthart (42:15)
Frustration with Congress
On McCasland’s Importance:
“General Neil McCasland…is one of the most significant figures ever to be linked to the disclosure conversations around unidentified aerial phenomena.”
— Ross Coulthart (10:30)
On UAP Knowledge Being a Danger:
“General Neil McCasland has some of the biggest secrets in his head—not just about the UFO, UAP mystery…secrets that still persist to this day about American weaponry, technology, space weapons…”
— Ross Coulthart (13:45)
On Stigma and Ridicule:
“No matter…I know it’s unpleasant for people, and there’s a tendency to ridicule and giggle and mock and stigmatize, but we have to overcome this stigma.”
— Ross Coulthart (32:25)
On the Absurdity of Downplaying:
“It’s utterly absurd to try and play down any suggestion that he wouldn’t know things that are militarily sensitive. Of course he knows things.”
— Ross Coulthart (35:05)
On the Scope of Secrecy and Corruption:
“We know for a fact that there is a legacy retrieval and reverse engineering program of non-human technology…But corrupt politicians at senior levels in…oversight committees…allowed themselves to be manipulated by private military contractors…”
— Ross Coulthart (41:02)
Call to action:
If any listener knows anything about the disappearance of General McCasland, contact the tip line: 505-468-7070
“The truth isn’t just serious, it’s drop dead serious.” — Ashleigh Banfield (42:55)