← REDACTED: Declassified Mysteries with Luke Lamana
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- [00:01]
Luke Lamanna
Love Unsettling stories. Wondery subscribers can listen to declassified mysteries early and ad free, as well as another twisted tale from Ballin Studios and Wondery called Wartime Stories, also hosted by me early and ad free on Wondery. Start your free trial today. Wonder On a sunny summer morning in 1952, a pilot on a US Air Force base sprinted across the Runway to his F86 jet. Radar had picked up a potential threat, an unidentified target blazing through the sky at 700 miles an hour. When the target slowed down near the airfield, the pilot had been ordered to scramble, meaning to take off immediately and intercept a potential threat. As he hopped into the cockpit, the pilot wondered what might be waiting for him. He hoped it it wasn't the worst case scenario. A Soviet bomber carrying nuclear weapons? If this was a Soviet attack, he could be witnessing the first strike of World War Three. But by the time he got high enough in the air, the target he'd been sent to check out had disappeared. He thought it might be a fluke. Perhaps it was just a flock of birds, or there was an issue with the radar equipment. Ground control radioed to drop his altitude while another F86 cruised above to search for the mystery target. As the pilot began to descend, he saw a strange flash of light below him. He couldn't make out what it was, and he felt himself tense with anxiety. Whatever it was, it was moving fast. As he got closer, he realized it looked like a saucer or some kind of circular object, and incredibly, it was speeding up. The pilot's stomach lurched. He was flying at Mach 1, the speed of sound, and it was outpacing him. The Pilot radioed the F86 above him, but got no answer. He couldn't get through to ground control either. He locked the target in his machine gun sights and considered his options. If it was a Soviet craft, shooting at it could kick off a deadly firefight, maybe even a war. Or if it was one of those flying saucers that had been all over the news lately, it might be even worse. He remembered how terrified he was listening to the War of the Worlds broadcast on the radio when he was a kid. It was about an alien invasion. What if that was happening? But this time it was real. But he'd been scrambled to intercept a threat, and that threat was about to get away. As the mysterious object sped away, he opened fire, but his target just climbed up and disappeared into the ether. Once he was safely back on the ground, the pilot told his commander what he'd seen. According to Air Force policy, he was required to give a full report whenever he used his guns. But his boss's reaction took him by surprise. The commander didn't believe him. In fact, he accused the pilot of being trigger happy and telling tall tales to cover up his decision to shoot. He even called the pilot a psycho. The pilot burned with embarrassment as his commander Cross examined the other men in his squadron, questioning his mental fitness. Ultimately, the base's intelligence officer wrote a report on the pilot's story, but when he sent it up the chain, a colonel ordered him to destroy it. The intelligence officer was shocked. The request was highly unusual and he didn't think it was right. But he did as he was told and even went so far as to burn the document. It wouldn't be the last time the US Air Force tried to bury evidence of UFOs.
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- [04:21]
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- [05:16]
Luke Lamanna
From Ballin Studios and Wondery. I'm Luke Lamanna and this is Declassified Mysteries, where each week we shine a light on the shadowy corners of espionage, covert operations and misinformation to reveal the dark secrets our governments tried to hide. This week's episode is called America's secret UFO files. Unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, have captivated people's attention since they were first reported in the 1940s, and they've been shrouded in secrecy ever since. Many Americans have suspected that the government knows more about UFOs than it lets on, and many more have wondered if aliens are really out there at the height of the Cold War, as reports of flying saucers swept the nation, the Air Force launched a top secret study on UFOs. It was called Project Blue Book, and it evaluated thousands of UFO sightings by military personnel and civilians. The goal was to find an explanation for these puzzling events and protect U.S. national security. @ first, the government feared these objects might be a new Soviet technology. But as researchers became more open to the idea that UFOs could be extraterrestrial, the Air Force decided to shut the investigation down entirely. It would become one of the biggest scientific coverups in the history of the U.S. government. In the spring of 1948, J. Allen Hynek, an astronomer at Ohio State University, was teaching a class inside the school's dome shaped observatory when he spotted his department secretary standing at the door. She beckoned him over and whispered that a group of visitors had arrived from the Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio. Professor Hynek was annoyed by the interruption, but he figured he'd better go see what it was all about. And since the class was almost over anyway, he dismissed his students a few minutes early. In the hallway, the Air Force men told Hynek that they had been sent by General Nathan Twining. Hynek nodded and invited them into his office to chat. But as the visitors settled into their chairs, Hynek noticed they seemed uncomfortable. They first made small talk about the weather, and as Hynek wondered what the meeting was really about, one of them finally made it clear. The man shifted awkwardly in his seat and asked if Hynek had heard anything about flying saucers. Hynek replied that of course he had. For the last several months, the strange new phrase had been all over the news after a private pilot spotted a group of nine shiny flying disks near Mount Rainier, Washington. His report was then followed by hundreds more reports as a frenzy over flying saucers swept the nation. Hynek told the Air Force men he thought the phenomenon was nonsense, just mass hysteria egged on by the media. Hynek believed there were other, more likely explanations for what people were seeing, from birds and weather balloons to meteors and planets. He also believed that flying saucers were a lighthearted distraction from people's real problems. Problems. World War II had ended just a few years earlier, and now the threat of nuclear war was looming. It was easier to think about life on other planets than contemplate destruction here on Earth. The Air Force men seemed relieved he was aware of the public discussion. They explained they had a proposition for Hynek. General Twining was heading a new initiative called Project Sign, which would investigate these strange sightings. And to get to the bottom of what was happening, they needed an astronomer to consult on the project. Hynek fought to hold back a laugh. It all sounded ridiculous. But Hynek's guests weren't smiling. As he studied their faces, he saw how serious they were. Hynek pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose, considering the Air Force's offer. The way he saw it, flying saucers were essentially science fiction and not worthy of rigorous study. Most of his scientific colleagues agreed that it was all bunk, too, which meant getting involved with a project like this might even damage his reputation. But at the same time, Hynek realized the Air Force's invitation was a chance to shut down all the nonsense. He could help set the record straight. What better way to demonstrate the scientific method to the public than to show there was no such thing as little green men? He thought it would be relatively easy to do, and he'd make some extra money. It might even be fun. So Hynek agreed to review the Air Force's flying saucer files. He didn't know it yet, but researching these sightings would become his life's work. A few months after beginning his assignment, Hynek sat in a hard plastic chair outside the office of Captain Robert Snyder, who ran Project Sign. As he waited to meet with his new boss, Hynek thought about what he'd learned so far. While poring over hundreds of pages of flying saucer reports, Hynek had discovered internal divisions within the project. He had been asked to work independently so as not to be swayed by any of his colleagues opinions. But it was clear that some of the team thought UFOs were nonsense, like he did. Others thought they were a Soviet phenomenon. A third camp thought they could be extraterrestrial. And in their eyes, this was a major threat. If these were actually aliens, they might not be coming in peace. So the military needed to be on high alert. Hynek maintained there had to be a natural explanation for these UFO reports. Like the time three people saw a metallic object coming down Snake River Canyon in Idaho, causing the trees around it to sway. Hynek chalked it up to a whirlpool of air, like a tiny tornado swirling among the trees. Even if scientifically, Hynek knew it was a reach. He had never heard of a whirlpool of air behaving like that, and there was no proof one even existed. Captain Snyder's door swung open and he waved Heinecke Inside, Snyder's face was serious. He told Hynek he wanted him to look into something. Just a few Months earlier, on January 7, 1948, the Kentucky Highway Patrol had received multiple reports of a UFO about 80 miles from Louisville. That afternoon, a 25 year old Air National Guard captain named Thomas Mantell followed the craft in his jet. As he pursued it up to a high altitude, Mantell most likely passed out due to a lack of oxygen. His plane crashed and he was found dead. The Air Force's official line was that Mantell had mistaken the planet Venus for an unidentified target and chased it. But they were getting pushback from the press and the public. Snyder asked Hynek if he would give his scientific opinion about the matter. Hynek went back to his desk and wrote what he knew the Air Force wanted to hear. There was a natural explanation for Mantell's death. He hadn't been chasing a ufo. It was just Venus on the horizon. Or possibly a weather balloon. Hynek pulled the COVID over his typewriter. Case closed. But in the back of his mind, he couldn't help but wonder if something else was going on. A few years later, on a bright September day in 1951, Captain Edward Ruppelt sent his usual good mornings as he strode down the hall to get some coffee. Ruppelt was in his late 20s and a decorated World War II bomber pilot who had gotten a degree in aeronautical engineering after the war. He'd only been working at Wright Patterson Air Force Base for about eight months now, but he had already grown close with a handful of staff in the Technical Intelligence center who were still reviewing UFO reports. Hynek wasn't among them. He had submitted his final report for Project Sign a couple years earlier. In it, he wrote that while there were some baffling incidents in the files he reviewed, there wasn't enough data to figure out what happened. Meanwhile, unbeknownst to Hynek, a group of researchers within Project Sign had sent their own estimate of the situation up the chain. They argued that UFO sightings were proof of alien life. Some of the Project Signed staff even went to D.C. in person to make their case for the existence of aliens, but got nowhere. The Pentagon was not convinced. The Air Force then shut its UFO program down, but revived it under a new name, Project Grudge. Rather than investigating UFOs, Grudge was focused on debunking them. Even more than Project Sign had been. The Air Force and the Pentagon had settled on an approach to the flying saucer problem. All the reports were hogwash and the people who made them were obviously cranks. Ruppelt quickly got the drift that if he wanted to advance in his career, it was best not to question the party line. However, many of his colleagues on the project didn't think the situation was so black and white. The same people who were quick to laugh off a UFO sighting in public often had a different view about it in private. They were openly curious about what UFOs might be and didn't always believe the Air Force's official explanations. This only made Ruppelt more interested in learning more. Even if his primary role at the base had nothing to do with flying saucers, he was focused on traditional military intelligence. As he poured his cup of coffee, Ruppelt overheard several co workers huddled together in the office kitchen. They were exchanging theories about the latest UFO sighting. A few days earlier in Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, a student radar operator was performing a routine demonstration when a strange object appeared on the screen. It was flying faster than a jet just 18 miles above the Earth, which should have been impossible. Air Force brass demanded to know what the hell this thing was. Ruppelt listened as his coworker's conversation began to raise angry questions about the Air Force's knee jerk habit of rejecting UFO sightings. Somebody even slammed a thick report from Project Grudge on the table, as if to dismiss its conclusions entirely. The Monmouth incident would later be debunked. Like so many others, it was chalked up to a weather balloon and the students inexperience. But it revived the Air Force's interest in studying UFOs seriously rather than just denying their existence. Not long afterward, a lieutenant colonel at the base approached Ruppelt with an offer. The Air Force was launching yet another initiative looking into UFOs, which would eventually become known as Project Blue Book. Ruppelt was a talented project manager with a reputation for being organized, and the lieutenant colonel told him he was the perfect person to get this initiative up and running. After a couple months, he could go back to his old job. Ruppelt was flattered by the Lieutenant colonel's confidence in his work. He also wanted to understand why was really going on with these flying saucers. So he said he was in. Just a few days into Ruppelt's new role, the mailroom assistant dropped a stack of envelopes into the wire basket on his desk. He tore the first one open and started reading. It was a letter from the Air Defense Department about a recent UFO sighting in Albuquerque, New Mexico. About a month earlier, a couple was enjoying a warm evening in their backyard. Marveling at the beauty of the stars above, when they spotted something strange. It was a plane flying low and right over their house. They'd seen planes flying over their house before, but this one looked very different. It was bigger and shaped like a V, almost resembling a stingray. They also noticed a row of soft bluish lights on the back of the wings. They were so alarmed, they had reported what they saw to the nearby Kirtland Air Force Base. The letter Ruppelt was reading said that the bizarre flying object didn't match up with air traffic records for planes flying at that time. Nobody else had reported seeing this ufo, but the husband who made the report worked at a secret atomic lab in Albuquerque. He held an extremely high security clearance, which meant he had undergone rigorous background checks and psychological testing. The air defense officials felt it wasn't something they could easily write off. Ruppelt agreed. He put the letter aside and grabbed the next envelope. It was thick, postmarked from Lubbock, Texas, and bulging with a stack of photographs. It was from four professors at the Texas Technological College. On the very same evening as the UFO sighting in Albuquerque. They had also spotted a strange V shaped formation of blue green lights in the sky. And they said at least 10 similar lights appeared in the area over the next two weeks. As he held up the photos, Ruppelt was blown away by what he saw. The images seemed almost identical to the description from Albuquerque, which was some 300 miles away from Lubbock. He felt that if these people were all seeing the same thing, it was more likely to be something real rather than a fluke. Over the next several days, Ruppelt received more and more letters. Hundreds of people had seen the lights over Lubbock, practically the entire town. By this point, Ruppelt had read every single UFO report the Air Force had collected. But this sighting was quickly shaping up to be the most detailed and documented of all. Ruppelt flew to Lubbock to interview the four professors who were experts in geology, physics and engineering. On the night he arrived, he followed them into an office at the college and thanked them for being available after hours. He leaned forward in his chair and told the professors he wanted to hear all the details. They started to laugh because the whole thing unfolded so unexpectedly. They'd been sitting in the backyard at the geology professor's house, talking about micrometeorites and drinking tea. Then the lights had streaked overhead so quickly they could barely register what they'd just seen. But the lights returned over the next several nights, and each time they measured their angle speed and flight pattern. Taking careful notes, they told Ruppelt that they had spent a long time discussing what these strange lights might be. And they agreed that if they were some kind of natural phenomenon, it had to be something previously unknown. Ruppelt was on the edge of his seat as the professors shared their story. He was so engrossed that he didn't realize how late it was. By the time they wrapped up, it was after midnight. He thanked the professors for their time and headed back to his hotel room. But Ruppelt was too excited to sleep. So he sat down at the desk and went through his notes again, trying to make sense of what he just heard. Over the next few days, Ruppelt met with other people who'd seen the lights, including a college student who'd snapped the photos he'd received in the mail. He analyzed the photographer's negatives and even staged an experiment to try to reproduce the photos. But he was never able to determine if they were genuine or a hoax. Ruppelt returned home from Lubbock with more questions than answers. He desperately wanted to find an explanation.
- [20:34]
Chico Felitti
Everyone has that friend who seems kind of perfect for Patty. That friend was Desiree. Until one day I texted her and.
- [20:44]
Designer Shoe Warehouse
She was not getting the text. So I went to Instagram. She has no Instagram anymore. And Facebook. No Facebook anymore.
- [20:51]
Chico Felitti
Desiree was gone. And there was one person who knew the answer. I am a spiritual person, a magical person, a witch. A gorgeous Brazilian influencer called Kat Torres, but who was hiding a secret from Wondery. Based on my smash hit podcast, From Brazil comes a new series, Don't Cross Cat, about a search that led me to a mystery in a Texas suburb. I'm calling to check on the two missing Brazilian girls. Maybe get some undercover crew there.
- [21:23]
Luke Lamanna
The family are freaking out. They are lost.
- [21:25]
Chico Felitti
I'm Chico Felitti. You can listen to Don't Cross Cat on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts.
- [21:34]
Jesse Weber
In the early hours of December 4, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of midtown Manhattan.
- [21:43]
Luke Lamanna
This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him.
- [21:46]
Jesse Weber
We're talking about the CEO of the.
- [21:47]
Mike Corey
Biggest private health insurance corporation in the world.
- [21:50]
Jesse Weber
World. And the suspect he has been identified.
- [21:53]
Luke Lamanna
As Luigi Nicholas Mangione became one of.
- [21:55]
Jesse Weber
The most divisive figures in modern criminal history.
- [21:59]
Luke Lamanna
I was targeted, premeditated amid to sow terror.
- [22:02]
Jesse Weber
I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi. Produced by Law and Crime and Twist. This is more than a true crime investigation. We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.
- [22:14]
Luke Lamanna
He's awoken the people to a true issue.
- [22:19]
Audible
Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature.
- [22:24]
Luke Lamanna
Of our healthcare system.
- [22:25]
Jesse Weber
Listen to Law and Crime's Luigi exclusively on Wondery plus. You can join Wondery on the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
- [22:42]
Luke Lamanna
A few months later, in early 1952, Ruppelt was in his office going through yet another stack of UFO reports when his secretary popped her head through the open door. He had an urgent call from the Pentagon. Ruppelt pushed his papers aside and picked up the phone. The Pentagon's press office was getting inquiries about the Air National Guard captain who had crashed in Kentucky three years earlier. A slew of reporters had started pushing back on the official explanation that the captain had died mistakenly chasing the planet Venus, not a ufo, and they were becoming quite a headache. So the Pentagon wanted Ruppelt's input over how to respond. Ruppelt told them he'd look into it and hung up. Then he told his secretary to dial J. Allen Hynek, who had worked on the Air Force's incident report. The next day, Ruppelt drove over an hour to Ohio State University to have lunch with Hynek at the Faculty club. As they sat down and unfolded their starched white napkins on their laps, Ruppelt was immediately impressed by Hynek. He was thoughtful and humble, unlike some of the other scientists he'd met. After the waiter brought out their wedge salads, Hynek told Ruppelt he was surprised to hear that the Air Force was still looking into UFOs. After submitting his final report about the UFO sightings he had studied under Project Sign, he'd been abruptly dropped from his role at the time in 1949. The program had then just morphed into Project Grudge, which went on to reject any claims that the UFOs were alien. Hynek had been out of the loop ever since. Having read Hynek's report, Ruppelt said he was struck by the number of blank pages in it. Rather, they were almost blank. At the top of each, Hynek had written a single sentence. There was no astronomical explanation for this particular alleged UFO sighting. Nearly a quarter of all the reports fell into this category. The Air Force simply didn't have enough details about these incidents to draw conclusions, and Hynek felt his bosses were interested in trying to learn more. Now Ruppelt wanted to look into them and not dismiss them out of hand. After lunch, Hynek led Ruppelt back to his office. He opened a heavy steel filing cabinet and found his old notes on the report about the Air Force captain incident, claiming that the pilot saw Venus on the horizon. As the two men spoke, Hynek confessed that he now doubted his own conclusion. That's because the light from the planet probably wasn't even bright enough for Mantell to see when he crashed. Hynek didn't want to say much about any other possible causes that had even less scientific support. Still, Ruppelt felt he had found a kindred spirit, so he asked Hynek if he would consider becoming a scientific consultant on Project Blue Book. Hynek smiled. He told Ruppelt that he would be happy to come back and to try to make sense of as many of these sightings as he could. He had had a strong sense that his work on UFOs wasn't done yet. The two men shook hands. Though Ruppelt almost wanted to give the professor a hug. With Hynek on board, he felt like he was one step closer to solving the mystery of these UFOs. A few minutes before midnight on July 19, 1952, Edward Nugent was working the late shift as an air traffic controller at Washington National Airport when something strange caught his eye. There were seven objects inching across his radar screen. Nugent squinted to make sure he was seeing clearly. These weird blips didn't match any scheduled flight pattern, so he called his supervisor to come check them out. He even joked that it might be a fleet of flying saucers. As soon as the words left his mouth, Nugent realized it might not be a joke. Two other air traffic controllers at the airport noticed an eerie, bright light in the distance. Then, just like that, it zoomed away. Nugent's jaw clenched. Maybe it was a Soviet attack. The phone rang and shook Nugent out of his panic. It was a radar operator from Andrews air Force Base, 15 miles away, wondering if he had seen anything strange. Suddenly, the caller from Andrews started shouting. He yelled that he could see a huge orange ball of fire streaking through the sky. Nugent rushed to the window just in time to see two of the seven objects break formation, dip low, and buzz right over the White House. Sweat beaded across his forehead. It could very well be an attack, and it was happening on his watch. Nugent's radio crackled with new voices. Two fighter pilots had been scrambled to assess the threat. They raced after the mysterious lights. But each time they seemed to get close, the blips dropped off the radar. Nugent and his coworkers stared at each other in shock. They couldn't decide which possibility was more terrifying. A nuclear attack from the Russians or some kind of interplanetary force. By morning, these strange objects had disappeared completely. Nugent clocked out of his shift, shell shocked and exhausted. He tried to get back to his usual routine. But he couldn't stop wondering what those objects were for. The next week, people continued to report mysterious lights and aircraft in the skies around Washington, D.C. edward Ruppelt read the headlines about this UFO invasion when he landed in Washington for a meeting a few days later. He couldn't believe he had to learn about the incident from the newspaper. One headline read, radar Spots Flying Saucers in Skies over Nation's Capital. Ruppelt was ready to work through the night and drive clear across the D.C. metro area to interview the radar operators and air traffic controllers about what they'd seen. But when he tried to get on the road, he was shocked to hear the Pentagon's finance office wouldn't even let him rent a car. Instead, they said he should just go back to Dayton. Ruppelt decided that if the Pentagon was going to make it harder to do his job, he'd just go home. His wife and kids would be happy to have him back. A week later, the weird radar blips returned to National Airport, making even more headlines. Ruppelt felt like he was being excluded from the whole episode. So he was flustered when President Harry Truman's aides called to find out what was going on. He told them it could have been the weather, but the Air Force needed to do a full investigation. Then a few days later, Ruppelt was horrified to see one of the Air Force's top brass, Major General John Samford, flailing through a train wreck of a press conference.
- [29:08]
Lindsey Graham
We can say that the recent sightings are in no way connected with any secret development by any department of the United States.
- [29:18]
Luke Lamanna
Rumpelt knew this press conference was coming, but he hadn't realized. Sanford had basically no clue what to tell the public. He was trying to calm people down. But he couldn't answer the reporter's questions, and his vague explanations pleased no one. Ruppelt watched in horror, wishing the Pentagon had allowed him to do an investigation that could have gotten some answers. Then Sanford invited a colleague from Andrews Air Force Base to the podium to give a more technical explanation. The colleague said that what appeared on the radar could have been caused by a natural phenomenon called a temperature inversion, when cool air in the atmosphere is trapped by warmer air above. The press ran with the story even Though the experienced radar operators on duty knew what an inversion looked like. And these objects were no inversion. But Ruppelt got the feeling that the public wouldn't believe the inversion theory anyway. There was growing pressure for the Air Force to share what it really knew about UFOs. And if the United States was being invaded from the skies by the Soviets or by something stranger. Foreign 1953. Ruppelt stood inside a stuffy room in the Pentagon, sweating. He was here to address a top secret panel of highly respected astronomers, engineers, astrophysicists and defense experts that had been called together by the CIA. The goal was to get an answer from the nation's top scientific minds once and for all about what UFOs really were and if they were a threat to national security. Ruppelt cleared his throat anxiously and began summarizing the position of Project Blue Book. He explained that though the Air Force had denied it for years, the Blue Book team believed it was possible that some otherwise unexplainable UFO incidents were caused by extraterrestrial interference. In other words, there might be aliens out there. This conclusion was informed by serious scientists like Hynek, who couldn't disprove the possibility of alien life. Even if they weren't fully convinced, Ruppelt argued it was best to continue the scientific research of Project Blue Book. He wrapped up the final day of discussion and walked out of the building into the frigid winter air. As he plodded back to his hotel, he braced himself for bad news. If the experts concluded UFOs were nonsense, Blue Book's budget might be cut. Perhaps the entire project would be on the chopping block. But later, when the CIA called him in for a briefing on the panel's recommendations, Ruppelt couldn't believe his luck. The experts didn't want to cut Bluebook. They wanted to expand it. Ruppelt was elated. He'd finally have enough resources to actually investigate what was going on. The panel recommended that Blue Book get four times more staff to look at UFO reports and that they make their findings public. The scientists said this policy would quiet conspiracy theorists and prompt the Air Force to do full and timely investigations. Ruppelt went back to his office, excited to start ramping up Blue Book's operations. But there was a crucial detail he didn't know about. The scientific panel recommended that any new resources be devoted to debunking and discrediting UFO sightings rather than investigating them fairly. It was Project Grudge all over again. The panel had concluded that most UFO reports could be chalked up to optical illusions like sunlight reflecting off seagulls, or natural phenomena like meteors and mirages. As for the sightings that could not be explained away, the panel decided it wasn't worth the effort to figure out what was going on. It was far more important to calm the public's UFO fever, which could potentially be exploited by the Soviet Union to cause Americans to distrust their government. The scientific panel also suggested a concerted propaganda campaign employing psychologists, astronomers, and celebrities to ridicule UFOs in the media. They even recommended monitoring civilian UFO research groups to limit their influence on public opinion. It's not clear why the panel misled Ruppelt about expanding Project Blue Book, but his new team never arrived. When the Korean war ended in July 1953, he left active duty and returned to civilian life. His time with Blue Book was over. Hynek would stay on with the project. Though he disagreed with the scientific panel's conclusions, he was still skeptical that UFOs were real. But he thought the panel had cut corners on the science. It would take another puzzling incident to really change his mind.
- [34:00]
Mr. Ballin
Hey, I'm Mike Corey, the host of Wondery's podcast Against the Odds. In each episode, we take you to the edge of some of the most incredible adventure and survival stories in history. In our next season, it's 1980, and in the Pacific Northwest, the long dormant volcano Mount St. Helens is showing signs of life. Scientists warn that a big eruption is coming, but a restricted zone around the mountain is limited by politics. On May 18, hikers, loggers, reporters and researchers are caught in the blast zone. As the volcano erupts, they find themselves pummeled by a deadly combination of scorching heat, smothering ash, and massive mudslides. The survivors have to find their way to safety before they succumb to their injuries or face another eruption. Follow against the Odds on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts binge the entire season ad free right now only on Wondery.
- [34:54]
Mike Corey
Plus.
- [34:55]
Mr. Ballin
Start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts or Spotify today.
- [35:00]
I
In 1976, a Georgia native, Navy veteran, and peanut farmer named Jimmy Carter won his bid for the presidency. What Carter didn't know then was that the next four years would be the most difficult he could ever imagine. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery's podcast, American Historytellers. We take you to the events, times, and people that shaped America and Americans, our values, our struggles, and our dreams. In our latest series, we explore Jimmy Carter's time in the White House, from his unexpected presidential victory as an outsider vowing to clean up Washington to his remarkable diplomatic breakthroughs and legislative accomplishments on energy, education, and the environment. But Carter also faced crushing challenges as he worked to lead the country through energy shortages, sky high inflation, and the Iran hostage crisis. Follow American historytellers on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Experience all episodes ad free and be the first to binge the newest season only on Wondery Plus. Join Wondery in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify. Start your free trial today.
- [36:07]
Luke Lamanna
More than a decade later on the evening of March 20, 1960, near Dexter, Michigan, a farmer named Frank Manor was at home with his wife and teenage son. They were watching TV when he heard the family's six dogs bark. They were usually well behaved, but now they were drowning out the tv, so Manor went outside to see what was up. While he was trying to hush the dogs, he looked up and saw something bright and reddish in the sky. It looked like a falling star. He waited to see if it would land, but the light hovered by the top of the trees above a marshy area on his property. Then Manor saw blue and white lights turn on. At first he thought he was seeing things, but this brown sphere shaped object stuck around in the area for more than four hours. Manor called the police and they drove out to the farm to check it out. Before police could arrive, Manor heard what sounded like a a bullet ricocheting off something hard, and the object disappeared. That same night, more than 40 people in the area, including a dozen law enforcement officers, reported seeing the mysterious object, too. The next evening, female students at Hillsdale College, about 60 miles away, peered out their dorm room windows and saw another strange object. To at least one of them, it looked like a pie washed in a red glow. The students called the local civil defense director, who came to investigate. Soon, the entire area was abuzz with UFO sightings, and local law enforcement asked for federal help to figure out what was going on. When the request reached Project Blue Book, Hynek immediately got on a plane to Michigan to look into the incident. But he quickly concluded that these weren't really UFOs. The lights were just swamp gas from rotting vegetation that had been melted by the spring thaw. Hynek addressed the issue in an interview with CBS News. He also talked about the fact that many UFO reports could be easily explained away, but others remained unsolved.
- [38:07]
Lindsey Graham
There is this residue of most interesting cases that intrigue me in the same way that a good mystery story intrigues me, and I'd like to get the solution. I don't think it is space people, although I would be delighted, excited if it turned out that way.
- [38:23]
Luke Lamanna
But the public didn't buy Hynek's explanations. Neither did the Michigan congressman who had pushed for Hynek to come out and investigate. Once again, the Air Force felt a need to put the UFO issue to rest. Later that year, it commissioned a public study of UFOs called the Condon Report. Three years later, in 1969, it concluded that UFOs weren't real and deserved no further study. Hynek saw the Condon Report as yet another example of the Air Force's rigid stance that UFOs simply couldn't exist. Over the years, he'd grown more open to the possibility that science couldn't identify what these things were, at least not yet. But he thought the Condon study manipulated limited data to support a preconceived idea that UFOs could only be debunked. Either way, the Condon Report provided the final nail in the coffin for Project Blue Book, which had been on its last legs for a while. But before Hynek left Wright Patterson Air Force Base for good in 1969, he kept numerous UFO reports. He'd been uncomfortable with the Air Force's rigid, debunking stance for years. If they weren't going to look into them properly, he at least wanted to keep the evidence handy for future studies. One afternoon in 1976, Bruce Maccabee opened his mailbox to find an official looking letter from the FBI. He was a physicist who worked for the Navy. Project Blue Book had closed down nearly a decade earlier in 1969. It had continued to ridicule UFO witnesses and had never admitted that there were UFO sightings that couldn't be explained. But that hadn't stopped curious Americans like Maccabee from looking into UFOs on their own. He and many others were convinced there was more to these mysterious sightings than the government would admit, and he was determined to find answers. That's why Maccabee's heart leapt when he spotted the FBI's envelope nestled between his monthly phone bill and the latest edition of TV Guide magazine. Since the Freedom of Information act became a law, he had written to every government agency he could think of trying to get his hands on any official files pertaining to UFOs. Maccabee's hands shook as he ripped the envelope open, but he the letter inside was a letdown. It was just a bureaucratic acknowledgment that his request had been received and was in the queue. He'd figured he'd hear back from the FBI in a decade or two. Six months later, Maccabee was at his desk at work when his phone rang. The caller said he was from the FBI, and Maccabee felt himself straighten. The voice on the other end of the line sounded surprised, too. They did have records about UFOs in their files, including information provided by the Air Force, and there were nearly 1600 pages of them. When the heavy boxes of documents finally arrived on his doorstep, Maccoby dug into what he hoped would be a treasure trove of information. But the papers were a mess, all mixed up and out of order. Some were mundane inner office memos and newspaper clippings. Others were duplicates. But as Maccabee leafed through the piles, some documents made him gasp. These were reports of UFO sightings, though many redacted the names of witnesses. The FBI had always insisted that investigating UFOs wasn't their job. And now there was hard proof the Bureau had lied. At the height of the flying saucer craze in the late 1940s and early 1950s, the FBI had actually received numerous UFO reports and worked with the Air Force to look into them. Over the next few years, Maccabee used the Freedom of Information act to obtain more files from the FBI, the CIA, and the Air Force. He learned about the inner workings of Project Sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book. He even got a copy of the 1953 Scientific Panel Report, which revealed the government's top secret plan to use propaganda to ridicule UFOs and keep tabs on independent research groups. To him, this was all proof that the government knew more than it was letting on. It had outwardly dismissed UFOs and painted the people who tried to investigate them as cranks. But behind closed doors, it had continued to collect information about the phenomenon. Maccabee wrote numerous articles and books based on the documents, hoping his work would help the American people learn the truth about UFOs. But it would be nearly 50 years before the government was forced to finally address the public about. About decades of deception. On May 17, 2022, Scott Bray, the Navy's Deputy Director of Intelligence, squinted under the harsh fluorescent lights in a large hearing room in the US Capitol. He was addressing a congressional committee. He directed the legislators to look at a video on the presentation screen. It was a recording taken by a Navy fighter jet, which showed a spherical object shooting across the sky. It looks reflective in this video, somewhat reflective, and it quickly passes by the cockpit of the of the aircraft. I do not have an explanation for what this specific object is. By this time, Bruce Maccabee was in his 80s, nearing the end of his life. But if he happened to be watching the hearing on C span, his jaw probably would have dropped. For 70 years, the air Force had maintained that flying saucers weren't real or even worth studying. It had kept tabs on U.S. citizens who investigated UFOs and called them crazy in public, while continuing to investigate the issue in private. Now the Air Force was finally being forced to come clean. Bray didn't use the word UFO exactly. They were now called Unexplained aerial phenomena, or UAPs. Bray explained that by using this new term, the military hoped to reduce the stigma that had kept pilots from reporting strange sightings. It had even introduced new processes for flight crews to share these reports straight from the cockpit. And it seemed to be working. Reports were on the uptick. Bray seemed to be saying it was a new era for UFOs or UAPs. For generations, the message to military pilots had been to keep quiet. Now it was more like see something, say something. The military's wall of silence had begun to crack in 2017, when the new York Times broke a massive story revealing the Pentagon had continued studying UFOs in secret. In fact, it had run a division dedicated to UFO research as recently as 2012. Now, thanks to the Times scoop, the Pentagon was forced to admit it hadn't dismissed UFOs at all. Congress wanted to know exactly what the research had found and whether they posed a threat to national security. Bray explained there was an Official database of 400 separate Unknown object incidents. Members of Congress peppered him with questions, demanding the Pentagon follow the evidence where it leads, share its findings with the public, and foster a climate of open scientific inquiry. Bray said that the Pentagon had not identified any US UFOs with extraterrestrial origins. But there were things in the sky that it simply didn't understand yet. Hynek and Ruppelt weren't around to see the 2022 hearing, but they probably would have felt vindicated by it. Both men left Project Blue Book deeply frustrated with their government. Each published books about their experiences, hoping to contribute to public understanding of UFOs. Despite the government's efforts to stifle discussion, both Ruppelt and Hynek recognized that a lack of transparency can feed conspiracy theories. But the way Hynek saw it, the government wasn't covering up things it knew about UFOs. It was mostly covering up what it didn't know, scrambling to provide ironclad explanations that sounded convincing instead of admitting science hadn't found the answer yet. Ruppelt died in 1960, just a few years after his book came out. Hynek died in 1990. 1986 though he started off as a skeptic, Hynek dedicated much of his life to studying UFOs, working with civilian scientific groups and founding the center for UFO Studies. In total, Project Blue Book investigated over 12,000 accounts of UFO activity. Most of them were categorized as weather balloons, mirages, or other phenomena, but 701 remain unexplained. More than 5050 years after Project Blue Book concluded, humans remained deeply fascinated by mysterious lights in the sky. In December 2024, members of the public reported more than 5,000 sightings of mysterious drones over New Jersey and parts of the East Coast. Many of them were actually just piloted planes taking off for landing at airports. The vast majority of these were easily explained, but the government admitted that a handful of were not. If even one of these unexplainable sightings over the decades turned out to be extraterrestrials in our airspace, it would prove that we are not alone in the universe. It's a question people have pondered for generations. And if aliens are trying to reach our planet, perhaps they are just as curious about us as we are about them. Follow Redacted Declassified Mysteries, hosted by me, Luke lamanna on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. If you're looking to dive into more gripping stories from Ballin Studios and Wondery, you can also listen to my other podcast, Wartime Stories, early and ad free with Wondery. Plus, start your free trial in the Wondery app, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today. Before you go, tell us about yourself by completing a short survey@wondery.com survey from Ballin Studios and Wondery. This is Declassified Mysteries, hosted by me, Luke LaManna. A quick note about our stories we do a lot of research, but some details and scenes are dramatized. We used many different sources for our show, but we especially recommend the Close Encounters How One Man Made the world Believe in UFOs by Mark O' Connell, the report on Unidentified Flying Objects by Edward Ruppelt, and the UFO Experience Evidence behind Close Encounters, Project Blue Book and the Search for Answers by J. Allen Hynek. This episode was written by Suzy Armitage, Sound designed by Ryan Patesta. Our producers are Christopher B. Dunn and John Reed. Our associate producers are Ines Renike and Molly Quinlan Artwick Fact Checking by Sheila Patterson. For Ballin Studios, our head of production is Zach Levitt. Script editing by Scott Allen. Our coordinating producer is Samantha Collins. Production support by Avery SIEGEL. Produced by me, Luke Lamanna. Executive producers are Mr. Ballin and Nick Witters. For Wondery, our senior producers are Laura Donna Palavota, Dave Schilling and Rachel Engelman. Senior managing producer is Nick Ryan. Managing producer is Olivia Fonti. Executive producers are Aaron o' Flaherty and Marshall Louie. For Wondery.
- [49:52]
Mike Corey
You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries, and each week on my podcast you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballan's medical mysteries should be your new go to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad free right now by joining Wondery in the Wondery app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.