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Stephen
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Dan
There has been an 80 year cover up of the existence of non human intelligent life covered up by elements of the US government. But this past Friday the first tranche of evidence was released to the public.
Hal
The evidence is absolutely clear that there is some form of life with advanced technology. They're all over the place.
Dan
But the people involved in gatekeeping this information don't think the public can handle the truth. People have had their lives threatened. A lot of them are afraid to come forward and tell the White House what they know. And this has been kept from even sitting president. And I've interviewed high level intelligence officials and government officials and there have been UAP crashes over the years and in some cases the crashed crafts had the bodies of non humans in them.
Hal
And now we have people on ships seeing these things enter the water, but seen enough times under enough different conditions that we just have to accept it as real.
Stephen
So what exactly is inside this report?
Hal
We have so many sightings, even access to materials.
Dan
And there's a number of files, reports, video and still images that were declassified. And the most notable piece of evidence in there is this.
Stephen
So I have so many questions. You're probably familiar with this NASA report. They essentially say that they don't believe that these UAPs are aliens. Why would NASA be lying? Is there a reason why this stuff hasn't been captured on like an iPhone? Are they currently living amongst us? And then do you trust the Trump administration to release all of the available information?
Dan
I think eventually we'll get to that moment that we've all only seen in movies, where a sitting president steps to a microphone and tells the world we're not alone in the universe.
Stephen
Guys, I've got a favor to ask. Before this episode begins, the algorithm, if you follow a show, will deliver you the best episodes from that show very prominently in your feed. So when we have our best episodes on this show, the most shared episodes, the most rated episodes, I would love you to know. And a simple way for you to know that is to hit that follow button. But also it's the simple, easy, free thing that you can do to help us make this show better. And I would be hugely grateful if you could take a minute on the app you're listening to this on right now and hit that follow button. Thank you so, so, so much. Doctor Harold Dan, I wanted to have a conversation with both of you today because you are two of the most popular voices online on this subject of UAPs, which is unidentified anomalous phenomena, right?
Hal
Exactly.
Stephen
It has been in all the news recently because Trump a couple of days ago released 400 classified files containing videos and photos and different reports on this subject of uaps. Now, I don't have an opinion. I honestly haven't gone that far down the rabbit hole on this subject, but I wanted to have the conversation with both of you because you do have opinions. So starting with you, Dan, what is your background and as it relates to the subject of UAPs, what is it that you believe that most people don't know or understand?
Dan
My interest in this topic comes from my childhood and so over the years I just, I read every book on the topic, watched every doc. I always wish someone had made a super ser credible sober documentary that only interviews people who have direct knowledge of this topic. As a result of working for the US Government and so got into producing, as I was getting access to high level intelligence officials and government officials before I even filmed, I really quickly learned how serious and real the situation is and how serious it's treated behind the scenes. And you know, I made this movie the Age of Disclosure in secrecy over three and a half years and I would say the headlines that I learned that the average person doesn't know is that there has in fact been an 80 year cover up of the existence of non human intelligent life. It has been covered up by elements of the US government since at least the late 40s other nations have also covered this up. And the other major headline is that the people within the US Government that have been gatekeeping this, they've also been involved in a high stakes secret Cold war race with adversarial nations like China and Russia to reverse engineer this technology of non human origin. And the stakes couldn't be higher. Those are the two massive headlines. And I'm proud to say when the film came out, it created a national conversation at an unprecedented level. And it led to President Trump issuing this directive in the middle of February. Super unprecedented historic directive instructing federal agencies to start declassifying evidence it has they have of non human intelligent life and uap. And then that process began. This past Friday, the first tranche of evidence was released to the public.
Stephen
And during the process of producing this documentary, who did you speak to?
Dan
I got access to the highest levels of government, military and intelligence community. My interview subjects range from Secretary Rubio, who's also our national security Advisor, now White House National Security Council members, Navy fighter pilots, admirals, generals, former Secretary of Defense, the leadership of all the recent classified US Government UAP investigations. Every single person is extremely credible. Hal is one of my interview subjects. Hal's one of the most senior scientists to work on this topic for the U.S. government in classified projects. And him and all these other people interviewed, they had a lot of information they could legally share over the years, but they were always discouraged from doing so and they never really had the opportunity to comfortably do it. No one wanted to be the one guy out on a limb saying something extraordinary on CNN or Fox or 60 Minutes and then being subject to the pushback and the ridicule. And so when I realized that, I started socializing a plan for how to step out of the shadows, arm in arm with safety in numbers.
Stephen
I'll pick up on that point there. We talked about safety in numbers, how he mentioned you there. You're part of the documentary. I saw you as well in the trailer of the documentary. What is your background and why? What reference points are you drawing on to speak on the subject of UAPs and UFOs etc.
Hal
I'm a quantum physicist. I work for the National Security Agency for various organizations in the intelligence community like CIA and so on. And so as part of my technical work, I was also a consultant chief science advisor to Robert Bigelow of Bigelow Aerospace. He's really quite a titan. I mean, he has two space stations orbiting the Earth. So anyway, those people who are in the space business and they're moving out into space. They just can't help but wondering, you know, what are we going to run into when we get out there? As a science advisor to him, it turned out that the Defense Intelligence Agency came forward and said, you know, we need to find out really what's going on in the so called UAP area.
Stephen
So you worked with someone called Robert Bigelow.
Dan
He's the guy who knows everything about what is possible in terms of aerospace technology and anything that would be in the air or space. Simply put, one day one of his colleagues comes to his office, pulls him into a skiff and shows him a video that Air Force security guards took over a nuclear weapons site. It was a triangle, UAP hovering over a nuclear weapon site. This colleague said, please tell me this is one of ours, like one of our black projects, you know, some advanced cutting edge technology that's ours. And he knew instinctively it was not. That set him down a rabbit hole. He's like, there's gotta be some office somewhere in the intelligence community that handles UFOs. So he went all over trying to find it. Him and his colleague, they couldn't find one. So then they determined they were just gonna start a UAP program. That program they started was called OSAP. They hired all the team, for example, Hall. And that program started in 2008 and got a lot of pushback behind the scenes because it turned out when they looked all over the intelligence community to see if there was another UFO program and didn't think there was, turns out there was one. And there was a deeply hidden program referred to as the Legacy program. And it had been operating in the shadows since the 40s, outside of congressional oversight, outside of the oversight of the White House. Completely off, completely hidden away, as hidden as a program can be. And so they started pushing back behind the scenes against everyone involved in OS app because they didn't want anyone else looking into this started to cause a lot of bureaucratic issues for them, red tape issues. And ultimately OSAP lost its funding in 2010, despite the fact that it was looking into very real issues like UAP over our nuclear weapons sites. It shut down in 2010.
Stephen
Why do you think it shut down?
Dan
They were dealt these bureaucratic hurdles behind the scenes by people involved in the Legacy Program, people who just caused problems and prevented funding. And it's a lot of big bureaucracy. People can do things behind the scenes to prevent funding from coming through for programs. And so ultimately they lost their funding in 2010. And then Jay Stratton and other people involved, they were continuing to look into this because they didn't want this serious national security concern to go uninvestigated, right?
Hal
So that's how somebody like me gets pulled in. They say, okay, these pilots are out there and they suddenly see craft coming out of the ocean and making right angle turns at 6G or whatever. And they say, oh my God, this is way beyond our physics. So I and other physicists sort of dug into what could be responsible for this. And we actually found that just like we use so called Maxwell's equations and electromagnetic stuff for everything we do in electromagnetics, we have Einstein's equations in general relativity for black holes and all that kind of stuff. But it turns out if you could engineer those, you would actually get the same effects that people were observing with these UAP crafts. And we think we've come up with, you know, what it is about the science of it. It's just that we don't have the engineering to do it.
Stephen
Do you believe in UAPs?
Hal
Absolutely believe in UAPs because I've been exposed to data about them.
Stephen
A more specific question would be, do you believe in aliens?
Dan
Yeah. So a number of the people I interviewed went on the record stating that they know from their own personal experiences that there have been UAP crashes over the years that have been recovered by elements of the US government. And in some cases the crashed crafts had the bodies of non humans in them. And numerous people I interviewed went on the record saying that. And keep in mind, everyone I interviewed only shared what they lawfully could. There was a line they couldn't cross. Everyone I interviewed was aware of classified information they can't talk about, but they went right up to the line and made it clear that there had been recoveries of non human bodies. A couple people actually testified under oath to Congress saying the same thing.
Stephen
Why wouldn't they be able to talk about it publicly?
Dan
Well, when you're involved in certain programs, you sign certain agreements that prevent you from sharing specific information.
Hal
Highly classified programs. And of course the big concern is, okay, whatever we might learn about these kind of craft and so on, our adversaries are out there. And probably there have been crashes in Russia, crashes in China. And so if we reveal what we're learning about the subject area and said it publicly, then it might help some potential adversary get a step ahead. So that's why it's all just kept really close in.
Dan
So a saying that I heard often from my interview subjects, you can't tell your friends without telling your enemies, meaning you can't tell the public what we know and don't know without also telling China and Russia what we know and don't know. And giving them that information might give them a competitive advantage. And the obvious question anyone would ask when hearing that is then, well, okay, so what's shifted? Why is that no longer the leading thought? Secrecy is best. And the answer is because the US is in a really high stakes race, technology race against these adversaries to reverse engineer technology of non human origin. And the secrecy around it in the US since the 40s has created a scenario where the scientific community and academia don't even know it's real. They don't even know it's a valid
Hal
area of inquiry, don't even believe it's real.
Dan
Yeah, I mean the smartest kids graduated at MIT this year. They are not thinking that this is something they can put their brain power towards.
Stephen
So coming back to the question, do you believe in aliens?
Dan
I 100% believe that non human intelligent life is here and has been here for a long time.
Stephen
When you say here, do you mean currently living amongst us?
Dan
I don't know about the living amongst us. I don't know about that, but wouldn't rule it out. There is UAP activity being reported on a daily basis by commercial airlines pilot, commercial airline pilots to the faa, by Navy fighter pilots off the east coast being reported up the military chain of command. And on top of that, regular activity over our nuclear weapons sites inside the United States. It's happening on a regular basis on the nuclear sites and on a daily basis in commercial air travel space.
Hal
UAP have come over nuclear missile sites and actually turned off the missiles. And so, you know, once something like that happens, you just got to take it seriously.
Dan
And the technology that they're displaying is technology that no humans have. And again, there has been some crashes and in those crashes there have been the bodies of non humans.
Stephen
How do we know that? How do we know that in those crashes they've recovered bodies of non humans?
Hal
They're whistleblowers basically coming forward from the railroad.
Stephen
So the basis of that evidence is that some people have said it at
Dan
this point, until previously classified information regarding crashes and recoveries is declassified. Until that happens, the best we could hope for is credible people putting their reputation on the line to tell you this is what's been happening.
Stephen
Did someone during your process of making the documentary who had seen non alien, non human life, non human intelligence tell you that?
Dan
Yeah.
Stephen
Who was that?
Dan
A number of people, but notably, you know, Jay Stratton, who we just talked About.
Hal
Yes, right.
Dan
Who co created, co founded OS app and then became the director of the UAP Task force. The largest whole of government investigation of UAP ever.
Stephen
What did he say?
Dan
He went on the record in the film saying that he's seen non human beings and non human craft with his own eyes. That was the farthest he could go at that point.
Stephen
Why did he say he couldn't go further?
Dan
He had a situation that he was involved in that for a few reasons he just wasn't comfortable talking about it yet. And some of it I think he just wanted to make sure he legally could. Now going back to credibility, like take a guy like Jay saying that when Jay retired a few years back, he was part of the senior executive services of the federal government. That's a level less than 1% of all federal employees ever reach. It's the equivalent of a two star admiral or general. Very, very senior, very trusted, cleared at a very high level. He had worked with Naval intelligence in a senior capacity. He had worked with the CIA, he had worked with the Defense Intelligence Agency as the head of air and space warfare. He's a super serious credible guy and he's putting his reputation on the line to share this information to the extent that he legally could and comfortably could.
Stephen
And when you asked him why the world doesn't know this stuff, in his view, what would he say?
Dan
There's a lot of reasons. I mean certainly the idea that we can't tell our friends without telling our enemies has been a driver. Just to recap the reasons for secrecy, I actually believe it's better to kind of start from the beginning. In 1947 there was a crash at Roswell of non human origin. And yeah. RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region. Yeah. And then this is the image of their cover up story trying to show a weather ballooner. Yeah. So multiple people in my film go on the record saying the Roswell crash really happened. Technology of non human origin and non human bodies were recovered. If you put yourself in the shoes of the military and government at that point, like put yourself in Truman and you know, Eisenhower shoes, you're just coming out of World War II. The world was just chaos for a very long time. It's finally starting to settle down. You can't exactly step to the microphone and tell America that there's a new threat that we know nothing about and we can't protect you from. They're far advanced, you know, what's the advantage of that? So secrecy became the plan at that point and they had more questions than answers. So everyone I've talked to gave me context, explained that the, the plan for secrecy went in motion there. Let's investigate. Let's find out more about what we don't know before we tell the American people. That was quickly followed by the Cold War era. And we learned that Russia also had retrieved technology of non human origin. And so we knew we were in a technology race. So then the idea of can't tell your friend without telling your enemy ruled the day. So now the Cold War mentality led to more secrecy. And as a security wrapper for this program that it, that it started, they created the stigma in the late 40s, early 50s, this cultural stigma, this idea that you're crazy. If you look into this topic, you're wacky, you'll have your reputation ruined, you'll have your career ruined.
Hal
It was actually a CIA meeting where people got together and said, okay, in order to not have people be pursuing this area, let's go out of our way to spread what we would call now disinformation.
Dan
Yeah, basically the most effective disinformation campaign in the history of the US Government because it got into our culture. Some movies were funded that made aliens seem silly and the idea of life from elsewhere seem ridiculous. And that got compounded over the years. And then we got to the point where we were like, you know, just, just like a few years ago, where the average person just thinks it's not real. You know, the average scientists, academia, you know, they think it's conspiracy stuff, it's nonsense, it's silly. There was no advantage for elected leaders to get in front of this or for military members to speak up about what they learned or saw. It would be a career ruiner. And that started to shift several years back when Jay Stratton and Jim Lekowski, when they put together OS app in 2010, and they started to go out there and collect data and get evidence, and they started to actually share it with the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee. And looking at classified data in a classified setting, People like Marco Rubio, who was the vice chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee at the time, started to
Hal
realize there's something here.
Dan
Not only is there something here, but we've got a problem, right? There's a lot of UAP activity over these highly classified sites like our nuclear weapons sites. There's a lot at stake. We are in this race with other nations, and the stigma has created a disadvantage for us. It's very hard to win a technology race when the majority of scientists don't know it's a valid area of inquiry. Right.
Stephen
And do people think that there's one type of non human intelligence that's visiting the earth or is there many, many types?
Dan
People who have been involved in recoveries
Hal
have said there are at least four types, four separate types. Now I have not had direct access to that, but I believe the people who I talk to, four different types of life, four different types of life at least.
Dan
And the people I've talked to through the process of making the documentary, both on camera and off the record sources and the people Hal's talked to over the decades have said that there have been dozens of recoveries of crashed craft in the US alone. Dozens of craft of non human origin that either crashed organically or caused a crash and then recovered.
Stephen
And have you spoken to people who you talked about, Jay? Have you spoken to other people that have worked on these crashed crafts?
Dan
I've talked off the record with some people who are involved in recoveries. They would not go on camera to do interviews. Special Forces people that would not go on camera to do interviews. One I actually thought, I've mentioned this in another interview, but one I thought was going to do an interview and then a couple days before sent me a message saying after further consideration and long talks with my wife, I decided I'd be forfeiting my life if I participated in your interview. And I thought that was like very unchilling, very unsettling message to get obviously, but also very specific word choice, you know, forfeiting my life.
Stephen
What did he know?
Dan
He was a special, very senior special forces guy who had told me he had been involved in multiple recoveries. That's what he told me.
Stephen
Okay.
Dan
And I met him through some high level intelligence people early on in my process. I got connected with the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Senate Armed Services Committee and they had on their own learned the reality of the situation through the work of OSAP and then AATIP and then the UAP task force and through their own intelligence channels. Leaders on those committees wanted to educate the public about what they could lawfully about this, but they didn't really have a way to do it. It's such a complicated situation, it takes a while to explain it. You can't do it in like a six minute news hit on Fox or CNN or even like a 15 minute 60 minute segment. You just can't do it. And no one wanted to be the one guy trying to do it. So when I started putting together the film and socializing this safe way for people to step forward. It also quickly became those people's plan for disclosure. That's why Secretary Rubio participated. That's why White House National Security Council members participated. It became amongst the group of people who had learned the truth, it became the plan for disclosure, the way to bring this information out in a thoughtful way.
Stephen
Do the presidents of the United States know about this stuff? Are they aware?
Dan
Historically, no.
Stephen
Historically, yeah.
Dan
And even Rubio says on camera that, you know, historically this has been kept from even sitting presidents who would know then? So a number of the people in my film break down who's involved in the Legacy program now. To put it simply, it's elements of the CIA, elements of the Air Force, elements of the Department of Energy, and a few major defense contractors. And they have the ability to access information from a number of federal agencies and branches of the military. But the primary leaders of this program are the CIA, the Air Force, the Department of Energy and major defense contractors. And Rubio breaks down in the film the way our bureaucracy works. You could have career bureaucrats in positions of power at those organizations for decades, and they can just wait out sitting presidents, they can wait out senators, sitting
Hal
presidents as just temporary help that are going to come and go.
Dan
And that's what's been happening up until this point now. So the fact that Rubio had learned so much about the reality of the situation and the extent of the COVID up, and then ended up arguably the second most powerful guy in the world as our Secretary of State and our national Security advisor at the same time, which has only happened once in US History, Henry Kissinger, for two years. No one else has ever had both those jobs at the same time. The fact that he ended up in that position of power and influence after learning the reality of the situation, and right as the age of disclosure is coming out and driving this national conversation, it really led to the current President Trump being informed about this in a way that no president has in a very long time.
Stephen
So are you saying that the United States don't think the public are ready to even know that this exists? Because they could tell us that they have recovered UAPs or aliens, whatever it might be, without telling us about the technology. They could.
Dan
And I think we're gonna get to that point.
Hal
Yeah, I think they were trapped in this system that had, that had grown up and people behind the scenes working in the classified programs said, well, you know, we don't know how the public is going to respond, so let's be safe and let's just keep it In House.
Stephen
Do you think Trump believes that there are aliens? Because I was looking at some of his quotes, and he said, well, I don't know if they're real or not. I don't have an opinion on it. I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it.
Dan
Barack Obama said that aliens are real?
Hal
Well, he ain't classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that, you know.
Dan
So aliens are real? No, I don't. I don't have an opinion on it.
Hal
I never talk about it. A lot of people do. A lot of people believe it.
Dan
Do you believe it, Peter? Well, the president can declassify anything that he wants to.
Hal
So if you want to make an announcement, I may get him out of trouble by declassifying.
Dan
One of the things that came out in the Age of disclosure is that during Trump's first administration, his Cabinet was briefed by the UAP task force, by Jay Stratton. And when he briefed them, he was told that they had asked for this briefing because they needed to be able to evaluate what the repercussions would be if Trump decided to step to the microphone and tell the world, we're not alone in the universe. Obviously, he didn't end up deciding to do that then. However, in this new administration, he's got Rubio in the position of Secretary of State and national Security adviser and fully aware of the situation, and that has given him the comfort to put this process in motion. There's certainly a disclosure process unfolding right now.
Stephen
Obama said in an interview that he did with Brian Tyler Cohen. When asked about aliens, Obama said, they're real, but I haven't seen them. They're not being kept to Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the President of the United States. Now, that sounded to me like kind of sarcasm when he said they're real, but. And then explained that they're not real. They're real, but I haven't seen them. And they're not being kept in Area 51. There's no underground facility unless there's this enormous conspiracy, and they hid it from the President of the United States. So it would appear to me that Obama also doesn't know of any aliens.
Dan
I think Obama was largely kept in the dark. I think he does know the base fact that we're not alone in the universe. And I actually think when he said they're real, I think he was being. That was just candid. That was his honest that was his honest, candid, genuine statement. I think when he then said they're not kept at Area 51, I think he's also being honest. Cause none of my sources say that UAP and aliens are being kept at Area 51. They're being kept somewhere else. So I think he was being honest there. And I think when he made the comment of unless there's a giant conspiracy, if you watch the tape, he like sips his cup and raises his eye sparrow, as he said, I think he knows there's a giant conspiracy. That's the truth. The following day, Trump was asked about that on Air Force One, and he responded saying, Obama revealed classified information and he shouldn't have said that. And I think that's the truth. Yeah, I think presidents don't know and they're told not to talk about it.
Stephen
Trump has started to release a lot of classified information around UAP and aliens. The first batch of that was released a couple of days ago. What exactly is inside this report?
Dan
There was a number of files, reports, video and still images that were declassified. This is information that previously had been classified or just never really made public. This was just the first tranche of what will be released. The most notable piece of evidence in there is an image, a still image from the 1972 Apollo mission. It's an image of a triangle, a seemingly triangle shaped craft hovering above the moon and above the astronauts. And the image was taken from the, from the lunar module. And you know, the UAP task force looked into this image years ago and determined it was real. That seems to be the most glaring piece of evidence in this, this tranche. But I will say this, Hal and I both have the same, a lot of the same sources of information. And everyone we've talked to at various federal agencies has told us that when the President gave this directive in the middle of February for federal agencies to declassify evidence of non human intelligent life and uap, only a few engaged with it. They only gave a small percent of what they have, and they only had a couple weeks to do it.
Stephen
One of the things I think I've always struggled with with the idea of these kind of conspiracies is that I don't know why that information would necessarily fall into the hands of, like, government officials. Because, you know, alien life forms or UAPs would be visible and would land in anyone's back garden. So you would, you could imagine a world, especially in a world where we have, I don't know, like 8 billion iPhones roaming around can imagine A world where if there was some kind of UAP crash in my garden, it would be on TikTok within five minutes.
Dan
Yeah.
Stephen
Or if there really was, someone got
Hal
there with an iPhone. You're right.
Stephen
You know, there was that incident earlier in the year with those. Were they drones in America flying Jersey. And that was on social media within minutes and everyone was talking about it and looking at what they were. I think in the modern world, because we have so many ways to capture high quality video, if there was something out there, we would have seen a very clear image of this thing by now.
Dan
Well, there's a lot.
Hal
That's why there's a lot that came out in these files, because over the years, our sensor systems that the pilots have in their planes have gotten so much better. They've captured really astounding.
Stephen
Does this life want to be seen? Do these aliens want us to know that they're.
Hal
I'd have to assume that given the level of quality of their technology, if they didn't want to be seen, we wouldn't be seeing them. So it seems like I would say there's evidence that for whatever reason they're wanting to be seen.
Dan
But also, like, my personal opinion is that if someone answers that question, they're answering it through the lens of, like, how humans think. Right. For all we know, you know, we're ants to them. You know, you don't hide from the ants. You walk around them, you don't even. But you also don't pay attention to them.
Stephen
You know, based on their behavior. From the interviews you've done, how do you think they view us?
Dan
I honestly feel like the dynamic is, you know, we are very, very far below them on the food chain. You know, Hal makes an analogy in the film. He says the ants in your tree line in your backyard, they could be there for generations. You never think about them. You walk around them, you're not hiding from them, but they're there and you don't really care. But what happens if they evolve one day and out of nowhere they figured out how to get into your house and they've beelined under your door and they're in your living room? Right. We might have evolved technologically over the last 80 years since we cracked the atomic so quickly that we're now, you know, the equivalent of the ants showing up in their living room. Like all of a sudden, all of a sudden, this warring species, this violent species, humans, you know, we progressed so quickly. We went from no real technological progress for a very long time to cracking the atom and then figuring out nuclear technology and then continuing to increase, you know, our nuclear technology development. And we have this program that has been retrieving their crash craft and trying to reverse engineer them. So we might be at that point where we're about to do what they do, and all of a sudden we are a problem. That might be the explanation of why they pay so much attention to our nuclear process. There's a lot of UAP activity, not only at the nuclear weapons sites all over the world, but sites involved in the process. The nuclear process, like uranium mines or refineries. It might just be we've gotten to the point where all of a sudden, they have to.
Hal
In the Soviet Union, the UAP came over and actually started a launch of the Russian missiles. I mean, they actually forced the system to start into a countdown process.
Stephen
How do we know that?
Hal
By the intelligence community's access to information about it.
Dan
Every person we spoke to in Bielakorovice said they saw a flying saucer on that day. For hours, it hovered over the nearby ballistic missile base. No one had touched any buttons. No one had entered any codes. And yet, as the UFO hovered over the base, the control panel showed the missiles were preparing to launch. For 15 agonizing seconds, the base lost control of its nuclear weapons.
Stephen
Logically, I would think that unusual activity would happen around consequential sites.
Hal
Yes.
Stephen
You know, I'd be more surprised if there was really frequent unusual activity happening in my back garden, for example. But around highly consequential sites, one would expect there to be people flying things around there, spying. You know what people are like with cameras these days. They want to take photos of anything interesting. They hang around police stations and army barracks.
Hal
Right? Right.
Stephen
So logically, I would assume that there would be an increased probability of strange activity in the sky above a nuclear site.
Hal
Well, in fact, there was a group of people in the intelligence community who recognized exactly what you're saying. And so they decided to make an attractive magnet by getting a whole lot of nuclear assets in one location to see if that would draw them in. And it was successful.
Dan
So our nation and other nations have figured out circumstances that can, for lack of a better term, bait uap. A certain level of nuclear footprint in a small radius tends to attract them. And our nation figured that out a long time ago, and so did other nations.
Stephen
One of the things that I've thought about is I know very little about physics, but I know one thing I know is how big the universe is. Now, I'm quite a big fan of SpaceX I'm actually an investor in the company. And from my fascination with space, I've learned just how big the universe is and how long it would take us to travel from, I don't know, Earth, to the nearest galaxy, the closest star system to us, which is called Alpha Centauria. Alpha Centauri is over four light years away, which is about 24 trillion miles. If we traveled at the impossible 10% of the speed of light, which is impossible, currently impossible, it would take a ship 40 years to get there.
Hal
Now, fortunately, what we learned in looking at what might be the underlying physics and using Einstein's theory of general relativity, it turns out that there are ways of modifying the effective speed of light to make it much higher or much lower. So you can do that. So when you get into potentially modifying what we call the space time metric, you could get to a point where you could make wormholes and warp drives. And those are things that are not off the charts. I mean, they're actually textbooks by general relativity experts on the fact that you could re engineer the space time. So you could do it, you could get from here to there.
Stephen
But you're not saying you would travel in a line like you do in a plane.
Hal
Well, you could, you could. If you arrange for the effective speed of light in that line to be much higher, then without breaking the speed of light, you can zoom over there very quickly. So even in a straight line, but
Stephen
no one at the moment knows how to do that on Earth.
Hal
We can write the equations and see how it doesn't violate our physics equation equations. But we don't have the engineering capabilities.
Dan
So we figured out, basically, we figured out how these craft are operating, the theory of it, but we don't have the material sciences right exactly to replicate it.
Stephen
What I'm pointing out is if you travel at that speed across the universe, if you even hit, I don't know, an object the size of a pebble, it would be like a nuclear explosion.
Hal
Yeah, but the thing is, if you're modifying space, it's sort of like making like a surfer wave at the seashore. You arrange to have space moving ahead like that. So you come up to a rock, it's just going to push it aside so you can engineer that.
Dan
This is how I've wrapped my head around it. Essentially, they're warping space time in a localized area. They're creating an immense amount of energy around the craft. And it creates essentially a bubble around the craft. And that bubble separates the craft from the environment around it. So the environment has no impact on craft. That's why we see trans medium travel. Like a craft going smooth from space to air to the water without even a splash. The environment around the bubble has no bearing on the craft inside it, and the craft inside it is in its own space time. And once you wrap your head around that, then things like interstellar travel become totally possible.
Stephen
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Hal
Well, actually some of them have not crashed, but have been simply left in the desert. Sort of like a gift or a donation. We're still trying to figure that out. So, I mean, some of them do crash and it can have maybe some of our electromagnetic pulsing and laser pulsing can interfere with their technology and you might get a crash.
Stephen
Why do you think another country hasn't come forward with similar disclosures and similar evidence?
Dan
I actually think there's a really simple answer for that. I think our allies follow the US's lead and I think our adversaries, primarily China and Russia, have no reason to go public. They don't have the same sort of societies and dynamics like Xi can do what he wants anyway. What's the advantage to him? Same thing with Putin. There is no advantage. And when you look at it that way, you really quickly get to the, you know, this is the way it is.
Stephen
For that reason, they did a study in 2026 and found that 45 planets are likely capable of supporting life. They call this the habitable zone. Out of more than 6,000 planets discovered so far by NASA, there are approximately a trillion galaxies in the universe, and within these galaxies, 100,000 planets could potentially host life, according to Oxford University. Now, I believe that if you think about the entire universe, I believe that we're not the only life in the universe.
Hal
Yes, right.
Stephen
I think that's, I mean, I think
Hal
that's a very scientific conclusion.
Stephen
Probabilistically, it would be pretty incredible if we were. I mean, it'd be just. It's almost inconceivable that we are. The question of whether that life has been here is a question that for me is still a big question mark because I just, you know, I also, I think Elon, you know, whatever you think about Elon Musk, he is someone that seems to just say what he thinks. And this is part of what's caused his companies a lot of problem is he seems to be pretty unfiltered. He has been asked multiple times as well if he believes that there are aliens in our galaxy. And he said on multiple occasions that he doesn't believe that to be the case. And he's launching rockets all the time. So he said, I heard him say, if anyone should know, it should be Me. Do you think he knows?
Dan
I think that you can't operate in space at the level he does or operate as a contractor at the level he does without having clearances that require secrecy. There's all kinds of levels of secrecy. Everyone knows the word classified. There's classified projects, but there's also black projects that are unacknowledged special access programs where you literally, by law, required to not acknowledge the existence of the program or anything it does. That's literally the.
Hal
Anything it knows.
Dan
Yeah, that's literally the whole. They're literally referred to as unacknowledged special access programs. So if you're involved with an unknown special access program and someone asks you about it, you have to say you have no idea what they're talking about.
Stephen
And all of his team, if they
Dan
are part of the program. Yeah, but just because someone's read it on an unacknowledged special access program doesn't mean all their employees are.
Stephen
Elon said that we have 9,000 satellites up there. He's referring to his company, Starlink. And not once have we had to maneuver around an alien spaceship. He argues that if aliens were constantly visiting Earth, the aerospace experts who watch the skies every day would be the first to know.
Dan
Well, look, NASA also has said for decades that they had no evidence of extraterrestrial life for UAPs. And last Friday, the federal government released a photo of a triangle craft hovering over the 1972 Apollo space mission. So somebody's. Somebody's not being honest, you know, which also implies a lot of other people know things that they haven't revealed.
Stephen
I think I've heard you say before, Hal, that you think this intelligent life actually exists amongst us. Yeah, the quote was, they are not occasional visitors. They live secretly alongside humans, but with advanced technology.
Hal
We have so many sightings and so many even access to materials and so on. I mean, they're all over the place.
Stephen
65% of Americans believe intelligent life exists on other planets. 40% of people say military reported UFOs are probably evidence of extraterrestrial life, according to Pew Research. And 30% of Americans believe UFOs or unidentified flying Objects are probably alien ships of life form. And 47% of Americans believe aliens have definitely or probably visited Earth at 70 at some point. According to YouGov, half of Americans believe that UFOs aliens have definitely or probably visited life at some point. Quite a lot of people.
Hal
Well, you see the Age of Disclosure film and the people that came forward. I mean, you had Clapper ex head of the Office of Director of National Intelligence and Senator Rubio at the time now in his elevated position and so on, you now have people of real quality, and, you know, they're not lying, and they're coming forth and saying, this is real and we got to deal with it, and there's a lot we don't know about it.
Stephen
Could you be wrong?
Dan
I don't think it's about whether I'm wrong or Al's wrong. You'd have to believe that senior leadership across the. The government, the military, the intelligence community that has access to classified information and is saying based on the classified information they have seen, this is a real situation. You'd have to believe all of those people are lying for some bizarre, unexplained reason. So I find that hard to believe.
Stephen
Could it be the case that all of those people were misinterpreting what they were seeing? They saw something. Fighter pilots saw something moving in their visors when they're up in.
Hal
Not really, because in some cases that could be the case. But then when you have actual materials, crash craft, bodies that aren't human.
Dan
Also a lot of these sightings, they're now in the process of. The White House cabinet members are in the process of identifying where the evidence exists within federal agencies and the military so they can get access to it themselves and then determine from there what can safely be shared with the public. I think once they get their hands on more evidence, then a plan will be put in place for telling the world. This conclusion, I think it's like more close, fait accompli, basically. It's going to get to that point relatively soon.
Stephen
If we get to that point and you get personally invited in to wherever they're keeping these materials, and you get to see every single file that exists. And as you go through those files, you realize that a lot of what you've been told is not true, because there's other explanations. How would it fundamentally change the way that you see the world?
Dan
Some of the UAP we've seen, like take the famous. Everybody knows the Tic Tac ufo.
Hal
Right.
Dan
That Commander Dave Fravor, the Navy fighter pilot, interacted with in 2004.
Hal
Right.
Stephen
I'll put that on the screen for anyone that hasn't seen it.
Dan
Great. And so take that uap, for example, multiple data collection systems and Commander Dave Fravor, a legend in the Navy, Top Gun guy, commander of an entire naval strike group. Right. Like total badass legend, legend of a guy. He sees this with his own eyes. And a bunch of data collection systems Capture data confirming it's real. This UAP went from hovering above the ocean to instantly being at 80,000ft, which is the entrance to space. Right. And it did that maneuver all afternoon. The amount of energy required to do that is so bonkers. We do not. Humans do. No human beings have the ability to create that much energy in a localized area for an aircraft. And so to answer your question, if we find out the unthinkable, that this is not non human intelligent life, that some humans have figured out how to crack that technology and did it as recent as 2004, when the TIC Tac incident happened, that would be even more mind blowing than accepting that life from elsewhere is here and has been here a long time, because that would mean that some group of humans leapfrog the rest of all of humanity technologically by thousands of years and then seemingly did nothing with that.
Stephen
Or it could be something else. That's the nature of unusual things. They become gray stories. So I think in the case of the Tic Tac incident, again, what I'm trying to do is interrogate this from all angles is could it have been something else?
Dan
Could it be any isolated event like that? You could do the whole, could it be this? Could it be that thing? But you gotta take a step back and look at the collective. It's one report like that after another from credible people since World War II. You know, during World War II, pilots were seeing what they called Foo Fighters, like these orbs that would move alongside our fighter jets.
Hal
Right.
Dan
Like they would. Like they would move in line with them.
Hal
And now we have. We have people on ships seeing these things enter the water and then moving it, you know, impossible. Speed, 450 knots or something, which no human being, as far as I know,
Dan
our fastest submarines go like 50 miles an hour. These things are going hundreds of miles an hour under the ocean. So these craft are trans medium. They're seen in space, they're seen in the air, they're seen underwater. There's just too much activity to ignore it.
Hal
Yeah, and that would be a hard one to say. Well, you know, is there some sonar thing that makes you think something is doing that? But it's seen enough times under enough different conditions that we just have to accept it as real.
Stephen
Is there a reason why this hasn't been captured on, like, an iPhone in 4K?
Dan
There's been a lot of stuff captured on phones and video cameras in that scene. In the Age of disclosure that I mentioned, where Hal and some of the other people break down how these Things are working. And they describe that they're creating a warp bubble around the craft. That warp bubble also makes it very hard to get a clear video of something because you're, you're taking a photo or a video through essentially a space time barrier, you know, space time barrier. It's like the equivalent of taking pictures of trying to take video of like koi fish in a pond from above the water. It's going to look all distorted because you're going through the water. If you're trying to video or take a photo through this bubble, it makes it pretty hard. And then you end up with the kind of videos we see.
Stephen
You're probably familiar with this NASA report that they produced on UAPs independent study team report, where they essentially say that they don't believe that these UAPS are aliens. Why would NASA be lying?
Dan
Like all these big bureaucracies, there's people who are aware of the truth and then there's people who have the truth kept from them. Or, you know, one of the people I interviewed was Mike Gold, who was on the uap, the NASA UAP task force. And he talked about how that effort was flawed from the start. They didn't want to have a result that said NASA has all this information that they've kept from the public. They wanted the result that they landed on, which is there's nothing to see here. And they were really discouraged from, for example, that image of a triangle, what clearly appears to be a triangle craft over the moon. They were told not to, not to include that in their report. Like they were not set up to tell the world the truth.
Stephen
In your view, is it possible that aliens aren't real? Is it possible? Possible. So you think it's impossible Using the
Hal
term alien, you know, has a certain connotation about it. So we can certainly say, I mean, that the evidence is absolutely clear that there is some form of life with advanced technology. You know, if you want to say, well, what can I prove about it, well, those are still unknowns that we're trying to suss out.
Dan
I got access at a very high, to a very high level of the government, the military intelligence community. And there were a lot of people who talked to me off the record that wouldn't go on camera. There were a lot of people who couldn't tell me about classified information. I want to know classified information. But they all made it very clear, not just on camera, but off the record, that there is evidence at a classified level that is clear as day, like some video taken when the bubble is turned off. And you can see a craft of non human origin, clear as day. And there is evidence of the technology that's been recovered and of these bodies. And when you have, if you put yourself in my shoes, when you have so many senior people across the military, government intelligence committee telling you this, it's really just impossible to ignore it. Especially when most of them aren't even friends. They're not like ideologically aligned or politically aligned. They're all just different groups of people.
Stephen
I'm less compelled by eyewitnesses. This is the problem because I'm such a big true crime fan, hear about all the bloody cases where eyewitness said this and then they find out the serial killer wasn't that person or that thing didn't happen. And I also just have my own experiences of thinking I saw things when I was younger.
Dan
Here's an interesting thing you just made me think of. So in the film, Rubio and General Jim Clapper, two people who are completely, ideologically and politically opposed to each other, made the same really intelligent point. And they both have knowledge at a classified level of this situation. They both said a problem we as humans have is that there's something in the human psyche that says I cannot wrap my head around or prepare for things I haven't seen or experienced. And time and time again throughout history that has proven to be a human flaw. Rubio goes on to say that the greatest intelligence failures in US history come from a lack of imagination. And he cites a few examples. He says we never would have imagined the Japanese could figure out how to get torpedoes through the straits and hit us at Pearl Harbor. Until they did, he says we never would have imagined terrorists would fly to the homeland, learn to fly commercial planes and then use them in a terrorist attack until they did.
Stephen
Right.
Dan
He says some other examples too. But time and time again not wrapping our head around a set of circumstances that and using our imagination to think about what might happen or what might be happening, it's bit us in the ass. And he ends his line of thought by saying lack of imagination leads to strategic surprise, like Pearl harbor, like 9, 11. And sometimes strategic surprise changes the course of history. And so, you know, him and other people I interviewed think it's really important to get ahead of this as opposed to waiting for something to happen, as opposed to waiting for, you know, to find out the hard way that China cracked this technology before us and used it in an act of war or non human intelligent life does something unpredictable. And then all of a sudden the US government's on its heels and so are other governments on their heels explaining to the public what they've known for a long time.
Stephen
I've often heard that the reason why they don't tell the general public that these things exist is because the general public aren't ready for this information. Is that an argument? I've not really heard you guys say that.
Dan
Yeah.
Stephen
No.
Dan
There are people involved in gatekeeping this information that don't think the public can handle the truth. You know, Hal recently told me that people in the Legacy program are pointing to the age of Discovery and saying, look, this film reveals a lot and people aren't losing their shit. You know, people aren't jumping out of windows. It's not causing chaos in society like the public can handle the base facts.
Stephen
Of all the things you've heard, Dan, what was the most compelling story or anecdote that you heard that convinced you?
Dan
It was really just a sheer number of very high level military, government intelligence officials who were telling me in private settings to my face, you know, that at a classified level they know with absolute certainty this is real.
Stephen
But if you had to pick one story.
Dan
Oh, I mean, it's really, it's really. It really wasn't one thing for me. It was like. It was the overall, it's like, for example, I interviewed Rubio and Senator Gillibrand on the same day. They both participated in the film and did lengthy interviews with me. And both looked me in the face and told me they thought this was the most important documentary that's ever been made and that this was really important to bring this information out in a thoughtful way to the public and make them aware of what's happening. You can't like unhear stuff like that, you know, and it makes, it makes an impact on you.
Stephen
What about you, Hal? What was the most persuasive thing that you. That tipped you over the edge from a, you know, maybe being agnostic to believing that there are non human intelligent life amongst us?
Hal
Well, it's looking at the technology which is so advanced, then I'm essentially certain that no us or our adversaries could have made it. So somebody actually made it. And it has to be somebody who knows a lot more about physics than we do. I mean, there's this. There's nowhere to go but to say, okay, there's somebody who is way beyond humans to develop that kind of technology and display it.
Stephen
Of all the evidence that's been released and all of the rumors and videos and, you know, going back to the crop fields that we used to hear about many years ago. Presumably there's lots of this stuff that you don't believe that you think is nonsense.
Dan
Oh, there's definitely. There's definitely. There's tons of reports that are. That when you look into them, seem like bullshit for sure.
Stephen
Because, you know, one of the things people often say is that alien encounter descriptions perfectly match the pop culture of that era. So people saw flying saucers in the 1950s after sci fi movies popularized them, and grey aliens in the 1980s after books like Communion popularized them. And this kind of suggests that sightings are born from human imagination versus.
Hal
Well, I think that's a reasonable place to come to. I think a lot of the reports that we get we can generally set aside as being just manufactured by humans who get caught up in this sort of give and take on social media and so on. But nonetheless, when you really zero in on actual evidence of technologies and evidence of bodies there, you can't just say it's, you know, it's just social contagion.
Stephen
When I think about the technologies, when I watch like the Tic Tac video, it's kind of blurry and I don't really know what I'm looking at. Like there's this thing moving around on the screen that's like black and white, but I don't really know what I'm looking at. And I think this has always been the struggle with it is we're so used to consuming content in high definition that we can clearly. And it appears to be the case that so many of these UAP videos are like, in the distance and kind of blurry and vague. So it makes them harder to believe. And it just. I think we're all longing for like a solid video. You talked about them going in and out of the water. How come someone's not got. If someone like falls over and we capture it all on camera these days, CCTV cameras on every high street. Why is there not like a solid video of something going in the water and out the water?
Dan
Look, multiple people said on camera they have seen with their own eyes classified videos that are indisputable. And some of them told me specifics, like that story I told you the first video Jay Stratton was shown when he went down this rabbit hole was a triangle craft hovering over a nuclear weapons site. Air Force security guards had filmed it on a little VHS camera that they had. It was hovering long enough for them to do that. That kind of evidence exists, but it's just still classified.
Stephen
Will it be coming out do you think?
Dan
I hope so. I know this process is playing out right now where people like, like Jay Stratton are helping the administration find where the evidence exists so they can get their hands on it and then determine whether it can safely be declassified. Like that process is definitely playing out right now.
Stephen
Do you think, do you trust the Trump administration to release all of the available information?
Dan
I don't think it's a question of do we trust the current administration will release it. It's do we think all these federal agencies and branches of military are going to turn over the evidence they have to the administration? That's the question. And the jury's still out on that. They're not right now. They're pushing back and they're pushing back hard. And that's why the administration is working with people like Stratton, like Jay stratton, who over 16 years has learned where a lot of this evidence is. They're working with people like him to find out where the evidence sits, who's gatekeeping it at each of these different organizations and how to get to it. So they're doing, they're doing a fact finding mission right now.
Hal
Whoa, what's that on your face?
Stephen
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Dan
I think it will lead to a giant technology boom. I think once we're told, hey, there's this technology that exists that could revolutionize the way we live, you know, it could lead to anti gravity technology, it could lead to new energy sources. New energy sources, solve the energy crisis overnight. Right. Could lead to interstellar travel and going farther out, you know, and I think
Hal
have a great psychological effect because, you know, if suddenly you go from the point of saying, well, maybe we're the only intelligent species in the universe, and then you suddenly get the idea that this is a universe full of life,
Stephen
what does that mean for religion?
Dan
I think all dogmas will just apply to it, you know, and I think the Vatican's already gotten ahead of it and said, you know, they put out a message a couple years ago that basically the gist of it was, you know, God's universe and God's work is vast. And
Hal
you couldn't say that he wouldn't have the ability to do that. In fact, from a religious standpoint, and certainly in the case of the Catholic Church, they've had very positive views about population being throughout the universe.
Dan
And there's nothing really, at least from the Catholic Church's perspective, there's nothing that counters the. That doesn't allow you to wrap your head around the fact that there's other life out there.
Stephen
You know, Are you guys religious?
Dan
Not like overly religious, but like, you know, my mom's Irish and grew up going to Catholic school. And I, you know, I went to ccd Sunday school. It's called the CCD where I grew up.
Stephen
Do you believe in God?
Dan
I do, I do.
Stephen
Do you believe in God?
Hal
I do too, yeah. And I'm a practicing Catholic, so.
Stephen
So would that mean that you believe God has made all of these aliens as well?
Dan
That's what my worldview is, yeah.
Hal
I would think that I couldn't say that's not the case. But, you know, as a scientist, I can't prove that it is the case. But you know, just on the statistics of it, it's pretty likely.
Dan
You know, an interesting thing happening right now, Steven, too, is these people who have been gatekeeping the truth. A lot of them are afraid to come forward and tell the White House what they know because they think they're going to be villainized. They think the optics around this are such that, like, if someone's been covering this up, they're the villain of the story. Right. And so the White House and the Director of National Intelligence and the Department of war realized this. And so in the last couple weeks, they've been messaging out to the military and the intelligence community that this is not a witch hunt. It's not an endeavor to punish anyone. They want to encourage people to come forward, assure them there will be no punishment for being involved in gatekeeping this. They just want to learn the truth and find out where the real evidence sits. So that's another thing that's playing out right now that I think if it gets out there enough, it will lead to more people coming forward with that evidence we all want to see.
Stephen
Earlier on, you talked about how some people feel like their lives are at risk because of what they know. Has there been any instance of anyone being punished for saying anything in this regard?
Hal
Well, certainly having their clearances pulled or losing their opportunities for advancement. We've heard stories like that from several people in the intelligence.
Stephen
Is there anyone you can name that has said that they were threatened or punished in some form because of what they said?
Hal
Well, certainly the number one whistleblower for. For many people has been David Grusch. And so he has outlined the various steps taken against him to basically ruin his career significantly enough that he went to the inspector general of the intelligence community and said, I'm being punished, shoved aside, losing clearances and so on, because I came out with this data. And they said, well, what you've provided us is serious, worthy of consideration.
Dan
I think a lot of people have had their lives threatened. I'm not certain if anyone has been killed, but I know people have had their lives threatened.
Stephen
And who's threatening them?
Dan
People that are involved in this program, referred to as the legacy program, who
Hal
think that the evidence should not ever come out.
Stephen
This legacy program. So this is a program ran within the U.S. government.
Hal
U.S. government. Elements of it. Elements of it, and also defense contractors.
Stephen
And you think the legacy program knows the truth in this regard?
Hal
Yes, because they have the firsthand evidence of the crash materials and the bodies.
Dan
There's 80 years of data that this.
Stephen
This group has, and they haven't released or leaked that data for the last 80 years.
Dan
There'd be no advantage.
Stephen
No one's hacked it.
Dan
This. This program is the epitome of a special access program. I think this program is as off the grid as it could possibly be.
Stephen
It almost seems like there's nothing that eventually hasn't come to come to light that the government have done. Like, I've sat here and interviewed a lot of CIA spies who've told me the history of the CIA and this program that lasted for 12 years and then it comes out. And this program, and I mean even some of the stuff that I've heard you talk about, Hal, around. What's it called?
Dan
Remote viewing.
Hal
Remote viewing.
Stephen
Remote viewing. That was that CIA project. What is remote viewing?
Hal
Remote viewing. Well, the CIA suddenly got concerned because they saw that the Soviets were spending millions of dollars at some of their best institutes to investigate the possible use of, quote, esp.
Stephen
What's esp?
Dan
Psychic abilities.
Hal
Yeah, psychic abilities. Extrasensory perception. And so as it turns out, I was at Stanford Research Institute and they saw my background, they came to me and said, you know, we'd like for you to look into this. Is there anything to this? I mean, no scientists in America even believes there is such a thing as ESP.
Stephen
Who came to you?
Hal
CIA.
Dan
This is in the 70s.
Hal
Yeah, back in the 70s.
Stephen
The CIA approached you in the 70s and asked you to investigate remote viewing.
Hal
That's right. And so they asked me to set up a small program and 50 or 60k or whatever. And they said, you know, we hope you'll find this is all nonsense, we can forget about it, we don't have to worry about it. And it grew into more than a two decade program called Millions of Dollars. Stargate is the label for it that most people know about because by now most of the information in the program came out. And basically we just found that people essentially just like you have artistic ability or athletic ability or whatever, music ability. Well, we found out that remote viewing, this ability to sit in a location and pick up information from someplace far away, is a talent that many people could demonstrate. And so we ended up actually training army intelligence officers at the Army Intelligence and Security Command at Fort Meade how to do this.
Stephen
So wait, let me just simplify this for the audience that might not fully understand what we're talking about. So remote viewing is the idea that I could sit here in London, where we are now, and I could be trained to see what was going on in another part of the world to
Dan
make your mind's eye go to a remote location.
Hal
I'll give you a specific example. A Soviet plane that CIA wanted to get hold of went down somewhere in Africa. They didn't know where because the pilot had bailed out and it just went on until it ran out of gas. So we got two of our quote, best remote viewers, one that worked for the Air Force and one that worked for my organization, to say, okay, here's a map of Africa. Where's that damn plane? We got to go in and get it. And they put an X on the map that was in three miles of where the plane went down out of the hundreds of thousands of square miles. And so the CIA went in and got the plane. So, I mean, it was, you know, how do they do that?
Dan
Well, by the way, there's an audio recording of President Jimmy Carter telling that story.
Hal
Yeah,
Dan
post presidency.
Stephen
Maybe we should play that One time
Hal
we had a small plane go down somewhere in Africa. We were not able to find it by surveillance from our satellites. So the director of the CIA, he was also director of all the intelligence agencies, heard about a woman in California that was a medium, and he contacted her and she gave him the latitude and longitude of the plane's whereabouts. And the next time one of our space satellites went over that area, we located the plane where she said it was.
Stephen
Again, this sounds like it's impossible.
Hal
Sounds like.
Dan
It sounds completely bananas. It sounds like something. I have an X Men comic. It sounds crazy, but.
Hal
Well, I was, okay, you want to be really practical about it. You know, they often are. Skeptics would say, well, if they're so psychic, why aren't they rich? Why aren't they in the stock market or whatever? So we set up a little program on a challenge to predict silver futures.
Stephen
To predict what?
Hal
Silver futures.
Dan
Just the value of silver?
Hal
Yeah, the value of silver. Silver on a daily basis was a. To go up or go down. So we had somebody said, okay, if you'll set up a little program like that for 30 days, I'll bet on what your, quote, remote viewers say, and I'll put the money in and I'll give you 10% of what I make. Okay, fine. Now, long story short, made $260,000 in the 30 days we got our 10%, which is $26,000. So people could actually, in this case, even look into the future a day and generate a description of what they were going to see and handle the following day.
Stephen
Presumably not everybody. How many people did you have do that experiment?
Hal
We had seven in that experiment.
Stephen
And how many of them were successful
Hal
in generating 6 of the 7 generated really good data.
Stephen
So are those 6 of people now rich?
Hal
Well, I don't know. Some of them may have followed up.
Stephen
Why were those six people picked?
Hal
Since we had learned that sort of anybody can do this, we were actually raising money for a school that was being put together. So I just went to the board of directors and said, okay, I'm going to give you a crash course over the weekend in, quote, remote viewing of the type we train intelligence officers to do. And so you're going to be it.
Stephen
So you just. It was the board of the school.
Hal
Yeah, board of the school.
Stephen
Okay.
Hal
They all knew what I did for a living.
Dan
And so this program, Stargate, got so much actionable intelligence from the remote viewers that Hal started briefing at the time, the Director of the CIA on a regular basis.
Hal
Yeah, I briefed all the way up to Bill Casey, Director of the CIA.
Stephen
So does it still exist, this program, in any capacity, remote viewing?
Hal
If it does, you wouldn't hear about it.
Stephen
Why?
Hal
Because it would be a black, highly classified program.
Stephen
Why?
Hal
Because we don't want our adversaries to know how we might be getting access to their data.
Stephen
You just told us.
Hal
But people can not believe that, and
Stephen
that's fine, but aren't you under some sort of contract?
Hal
Well, as it turns out, the CIA and Diagnostic also went to the dia. That program finally got declassified at the level it was operating at, and that you can go to the CIA reading room and you can get all the documents on it.
Stephen
So your work was originally classified?
Hal
Oh, it was originally a top secret special access program. Yeah.
Stephen
There's a part of me that goes, if people could do remote viewing and see into other parts of the world or predict the things that you're saying, I mean, if it was trainable, everything like life as we know it would be completely flipped on its head.
Dan
I think it's unreasonable to think that when Stargate became public, the US Government stopped remote viewing.
Stephen
I mean, I wouldn't stop if I was the US Government. If it worked, I wouldn't stop.
Dan
I think it just went underground, moved to a different agency, went underground.
Stephen
So you were training people to do it, though?
Hal
Yeah, well, we had. Yeah, we had. We had people that we trained.
Stephen
So train me. How did you train?
Hal
Now, a number of the military intelligence officers that we trained have now left the military and they do have training courses.
Stephen
Do you believe that?
Dan
I do. At first I thought it just sounded too much like something in a comic book. Right. But the more I first read about Stargate and the declassified documents, started to realize how serious the government took it, and the more I learned about it through Hal, and then eventually. I really don't want to get into the details of this, but eventually I got connected with someone who has done remote viewing for the government, and they did a demonstration for me that blew
Stephen
my mind, because you would think if anyone was capable of doing remote viewing, they could go on the Internet and make one prediction or do one video that would be, you know, proven to be true. And they would literally be considered to be a superhuman. Like they would literally be. I mean, people would probably think they were a deity or a spiritual leader or something. Well, if one person could do, what would you do?
Hal
What we found was that it seems to be an action that is just part of the human makeup. And so it isn't like they're a super deity or a godlike or really off the charts. It's something that people can learn to do. Like they can learn to play the piano or whatever for whatever reason.
Dan
Maybe it was a physical.
Hal
Now we have new psychiatrists and neurophysiologists beginning to study how does consciousness do its thing in the brain and so on. Are there elements of it? Once you get into quantum theory and quantum entanglement, that would say you could have evidence beyond just our physical structure,
Dan
it could be rationalized with a quantum connection, basically the moving your mind's eye to another location, which also goes to Hal's life, very interestingly. First was the Stargate stuff and then he got into uap and the overlap that I find fascinating is some of these craft that have been found or crashes that have happened. The reports from people involved say that a lot of them don't have any control panels in them. Like they're basically empty other than seats, which suggests that maybe there's some sort of mind connection controlling these craft.
Stephen
I did wonder about the crafts. I thought, you know, if I was an advanced civilization, why would I. And I was that smart. Why would I send life to these planets when I could just send the crafts? You know, why am I sending biological life when I could just send the.
Dan
Maybe they're manufactured biological life. Maybe it's. Maybe they're the equivalent of. Maybe they're not sentient. That's true, but the remote viewing stuff opens up a lot of possibilities.
Hal
Yeah, I mean, we, as part of this CIA program, we found that people could affect quantum devices that were totally shielded by superconducting shielding.
Dan
Tell them that particular story.
Hal
That's a. Yeah, there is a quote, psychic, so called. And so I brought him to Stanford and I was skeptical at the time and I said, okay, well we've got this super experiment where there's a tiny quantum chip down inside of this electrical shielding, magnetic shielding, superconducting shielding. We want to see if you can affect it. And he did. I mean, this is supposed to be totally non affectable by anything on the outside. In fact, it was developed by the Navy to just look for corks and stuff like that. And so it was supposed to not be influenced from the outside by anything. And he influenced it. And when I say he influenced it, I'm not just saying there's a little blip you could kind of read into it. No, it was a system where it ordinarily just had an oscillating signal like that. And then when he affected it just stopped the oscillation. And then he could also make the oscillation go twice as fast. Of course, poor graduate student whose life depended on this not being affected from the outside, really. But then that raised a big issue for them. That means, gee, does that mean if we, if we hide our documents inside superconducting safes, the Russians might be able to. So actually when we had detente, the American remote viewers got together with the Soviet remote viewers and traded war stories, did experiments together for.
Stephen
I think I'm naturally skeptical because I'm skeptical with all things, but I'm often proven wrong. So my fiance, she believed lots of things I don't believe, believe. And so frequently she's been proven right in those things that I remain open minded to things in life because I've learned too. So I think that's where I remain. I remain open minded and I think on the balance of probability, if you ask me, do I think there's other life in the universe? I think it would be crazy to say there wasn't. But has there been life that has arrived here that we've recovered? I just, I would need more, more
Hal
evidence is that, I think that's the right attitude. And we're hoping that with the release of documents that's starting to happen now, that you'll get that evidence. But in the absence of actually getting access to the evidence, it's very reasonable to be skeptical. Yeah, absolutely.
Dan
I do think though that the current administration in the US is so focused on following through with this directive the president gave to get all the evidence within the possession of the federal government, all the different agencies, the military branches, and then figure out what can be declassified. I think they're taking it so serious that we're going to get to more tranches of more meaningful evidence. And I think eventually we'll get to that thing that we, that moment that we've all only seen in movies where a sitting president steps to a microphone and tells the world we're not alone in the universe. I think we're going to get there.
Hal
I think so too.
Dan
Just a matter of time.
Stephen
Does it change the meaning of life if that becomes the case? Does it mean anything? For us as humans? What do you think the meaning of life is, Hal? And do you think we should change our behavior in any way even if this moment does occur?
Hal
I think if we found out that there were life throughout the universe, that it can be developed in all kinds of forms, then that makes us take a new look at, well, what does it mean to be human? You know, we ought to think about if we can, interacting with these other species and seeing what we can learn from them and what might they learn from us. And so it just opens up a whole new sort of view of what the universe is like. I mean, I've got 15 grandkids. They should grow up in a universe where it's, that's teeming with life and they know that, and that's a very kind of an exciting kind of thing.
Dan
I think it also could be the one thing that could unify all of humanity. You know, Reagan gave a great speech during his presidency at the United nations where he said he often thinks that it might be a threat from outside this universe that makes all of humanity come together and think more about what it has in common than its differences and, and moves them past the conflicts of the moment. And that might be wishful thinking and might be naive, but it also might actually be the one thing that could line people up.
Stephen
Has it changed how you think about the meaning of life?
Dan
Between what I've learned about the reality of the UAP situation and the existence of non human intelligent life, what I've learned about, for example, remote viewing, it's made me realize that our sort of western present day view of reality is not complete. You know, we think we know everything there is, you know, to life and how things work and we just don't. And when you're honest with yourself and you look back at history, all the times people thought that they were proven wrong pretty quickly. And so it's made me open to a lot more possibilities than I would have been just, just 10 years ago.
Hal
I think it'd be a renaissance in our attitudes toward life and everything.
Stephen
Are you both open to being wrong?
Hal
Yeah.
Dan
Look, I should have said this early on. When I first started making my documentary, I was totally prepared to have people tell me, look, this is all bullshit. It was all cover for our classified projects.
Stephen
Did they?
Dan
No, no one did. That was the crazy thing. Not a single person did. I was trying to pull it out of people. I'd be like, come on, this is really, this is like a black project. Unacknowledged Special Access program. Right. Just Say nothing if that's the case. And they were like, no, dude, not even close. It was over and over. And these weren't random people. These were senior people on the Senate Intelligence Committee, on the Senate Armed Services Committee, leaders in the intelligence community, leaders in. In the military. And so, yeah, it's hard to ignore.
Hal
Yeah.
Stephen
Well, Trump has released the first round of the UAP reports, so I guess in many respects, this conversation is to be continued.
Dan
Yeah.
Hal
Yeah.
Dan
And we have been told by our friends in government that the next tranche of evidence is likely to come out in the next 30 days or so, and it's going to be a rolling declassification process. So there'll be a lot more to talk about in the near future.
Stephen
Thank you so much for your time. Really appreciate it. I feel very interesting, very, very curious, and I highly recommend people go check out your documentary. I'm going to link it below. And I think one of the great things about the documentary is the diversity of people you've spoken to, including Marco Rubio, who is now working alongside President Trump and many others, including yourself, Hal, and other guests that I've met. People like Jay, who I hope to speak to sometime soon.
Dan
Cool.
Hal
Okay.
Dan
Thank you for having us. And thank you for bringing attention to interesting topics like this. I really do think people like you are helping open people's minds. In the past, you only had. It wasn't that long ago there's only four TV networks. Right. And a small group of legacy media people controlled what people thought about. Really. So people here are opening up everyone's minds to other possibilities and other information. And so thank you.
Stephen
It's interesting because again, sometimes I think I have to remind the audience of, like, why I do what I do and why I pick the subjects that I pick. But it's honestly just what I'm curious about. And if something rises in public curiosity and it's in my curiosity, then I'll speak about it. It's not an endorsement of me believing everything. It is just me wanting to learn more.
Dan
Yeah.
Stephen
And I, you know, I wish we lived in a society that was more open minded generally to the people on the other side of the aisle or to subjects that are currently considered to be, I don't know, controversial or, or not. Because, you know, it's not lost on me that my own very existence as a black businessman is in of itself something that was once a very controversial idea. And so I'm all for, you know, controversial ideas being having some kind of
Dan
space to be every major breakthrough in the history of humanity came from someone being curious, right, and wanting to learn about something they weren't aware of. So I, I think great things will come out of it. And you just touched on something we didn't mention, which is I found shockingly that this is the UAP issue. Non human Intelligence on life is the most bipartisan issue in Washington D.C. at a time when Democrats and Republicans in the United States can't agree on anything. They're completely lined up on this being the biggest issue of our time. Extremely significant and like that says a lot too.
Stephen
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Podcast Summary
The Diary Of A CEO with Steven Bartlett
Episode: UFO Roundtable: CIA Physicist Proves Aliens Exist
Date: May 14, 2026
Guests: Dan (documentary filmmaker, UAP investigator), Dr. Hal (CIA physicist, UAP government contractor)
This episode is a deep-dive roundtable into the recent historic release of classified UAP (Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, aka UFO) files by President Trump, discussing alleged proof of alien existence. Host Steven Bartlett is joined by Dan, an investigative filmmaker with extensive access to U.S. officials, and Dr. Hal, a quantum physicist and former CIA/NSA consultant. The trio explore the evolution of UFO secrecy, the physics behind reported phenomena, the societal implications of disclosure, and the credibility of whistleblowers.
“There has been an 80-year cover up of the existence of non human intelligent life…this past Friday the first tranche of evidence was released to the public.” – Dan (01:01)
“A lot of them are afraid to come forward and tell the White House what they know.” – Dan (01:19) “He decided I’d be forfeiting my life if I participated in your interview.” – Dan (21:53)
“If you could engineer [Einstein’s equations], you would actually get the same effects that people were observing with these UAP crafts.” – Hal (10:15) “[They are] creating a warp bubble around the craft...separates the craft from the environment around it.” – Dan (38:11)
“UAP have come over nuclear missile sites and actually turned off the missiles…Once something like that happens, you just got to take it seriously.” – Hal (14:23)
“I was at Stanford Research Institute…we found out that remote viewing…is a talent that many people could demonstrate.” – Hal (69:03) “Some of [the UAP] don’t have any control panels in them…maybe there’s some sort of mind connection.” – Dan (78:07)
“Every major breakthrough in the history of humanity came from someone being curious, right, and wanting to learn about something they weren’t aware of.” – Dan (87:22)
This episode offers an unprecedented window into the evolving conversation around UFOs/UAPs, propelled by declassified files, credible whistleblower testimony, and a unique convergence of congressional and presidential interest. The guests neither blindly embrace nor dismiss claims, instead urging critical, open-minded inquiry and anticipation of further disclosures. The roundtable touches on the intersection of science, security, politics, religion, and the profound “what ifs” at the heart of humanity's search for meaning and truth.