← The Micah Hanks Program
Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:06]
A
Reports of unidentified flying objects, Unidentified aerial phenomena. Are they secret weapons being tested by our own or foreign governments? The American people are becoming most interested and in many instances very alarmed by the UFO story. So why do you suppose that all of this has been kept from the world? Exploring our past, our future, and the mysteries of our universe. Where do they come from? Why can't you explain it? Everybody in Ufology is screaming for disclosure. The future is now. This is Micah Hanks from the high mountains of Appalachia in a bunker below ground. Welcome one and all. It is the Micah Hanks program. Glad as always to be getting into gear and going in pursuit of the anomalous in our existence, as we do every week. Listen on demand via podcasting apps everywhere. And as always, courtesy of our friends at the ONX radio Network. Welcome everyone. Hope you're all doing wonderful out there. Busy last several days for your friendly neighborhood podcaster. Busy in fact, because of a visit from a friend and his entire family. Not just any friend either. A good pal of mine of many years, Christopher McCollum, known in some circles as Mr. McNonymous. But he and his lovely wife and their children were here this weekend. So needless to say, it was a fun time and I am completely exhausted and so I had to crash for a few hours. And by that I meant put away the phones, put away all the devices, put everything on silent, and grab some good old fashioned style entertainment. That's right, a book. I went to one of the many shelves here in the Sanctus Hanctorum and I found a copy of a favorite of mine involving UAP literature. If you haven't read it, you really should grab a copy. You owe it to yourself to read this one. It's called triangular UFOs an estimate of the Situation by David Marler. Great reading after all these years. And of course, that also by a good friend of mine. In fact, we're overdue to have David back on the show for an update because he, like myself, is often very busy and we're often going in different directions. But I keep saying I'm gonna get back out there to Albuquerque and visit him sometime this year, I hope and see the National UFO Historical Records Center. He has a bit of a library of his own. In fact, it happens to be one of the largest libraries of UAP related material in the United States. So he's always doing great work out there. And of course, on the subject of uap, you can tell that's on my mind. One reason being that we had yet another release that appeared on Friday at war.gov/ufo as part of the presidential unsealing and reporting system for UAP encounters. And while we're gonna be doing a complete breakdown of what's in the latest filed up, I gotta say a lot of people are starting to really speak up now and say, you know, this is feeling a lot less like disclosure and more like distraction. I'll tell you why as we get into that analysis. But first, some news and also another update because I keep getting messages from people out there who are interested in this story we have been covering here now for weeks involving an alleged CIA pilot who it turns out also claims to have been a pilot for IBM about back in 1977. And this guy seemed to be really good at having extraordinary UFO encounters. More on that in a moment. First in the news, residents down at Forest beach in Queensland, Australia recently woke up to a very strange sight. Strange metallic spheres were all over the place. In fact, one local business urged residents to do the smart thing and start panic buying after what they characterized as a UFO crash in Queensland. Now if you were a resident of Queensland and in fact if you are and you're listening and you happen to see these spheres firsthand, drop me a note infoicahanks.com I'd love to hear from you or anybody out there by the way, who has a UAP sighting to report. But yes, Queenslanders would not have been faulted for thinking a UFO had crashed when these odd metallic spheres were found all along the beaches. These things were kind of strange looking and in fact, I've got a picture linked for you right there in an article we did at the debrief over the weekend. Another reason I was so busy by the way. Yes, of course. While entertaining friends from out of town, I was also still churning out articles including coverage of this story. A statement released by Queensland Fire and Rescue said that crews are continuing to assist partner agencies following the discovery of several potentially hazardous objects found around Forest beach in North Queensland. Specialist QFR scientific teams have safely secured a number of the items throughout the weekend and remain on scene continuing their work. According to the statement they released, a 50 meter exclusion zone is still in place. Now at that time they said that the nature and origin of the debris are still being investigated. So a lot of people were saying, okay, what are these things? Are these actually objects from space? Well, normally that's not the case, but in this instance that actually is what these curious looking metallic spheres are believed to be. Objects that actually did fall from space. And so technically they were, for a time, UFOs, unidentified falling objects. That is, until the Australian Space Agency got into the game and they were able to confirm that although these objects fell from space, they didn't come from deep space. No, they were part of a space launch vehicle. According to a statement they released, quote, the recovered objects appear to be pressure vessels from a space launch vehicle and are consistent with debris from a foreign rocket body. One possible source of these is a SpaceX launch. And in fact, this isn't the first time that debris from a SpaceX launch didn't burn up during reentry. We had, back in 2024, an incident right here in western North Carolina where a really weird object was found out on a hiking trail not very far from me. And I contacted the property owners, wasn't able to get in touch with them. Fortunately, my intrepid pal Brett Tingley, managing editor over there@space.com he did get to go out to the property and managed to take some excellent photographs while he was there, which, of course, he allowed us to use there in our at the debrief. But in the original photographs posted online by the property owners, it was already pretty clear this was some kind of space debris. And in fact, I was able to match that to a similar object that had fallen in a field in rural Saskatchewan. And sure enough, it is believed that in both instances, these were portions of a rocket body that fell to Earth from a SpaceX rocket launch. Now, according to a fact page there at the Australian Space Agency's website, the majority of returning space objects either arrive back in a controlled manner to a specific location on Earth or burn up in the Earth's atmospher. Some objects, they say, may survive uncontrolled re entry, making it harder to predict where the debris may fall. While any space debris that survives re entry is most likely to land in the ocean or in remote locations, the initial discovery of space debris on Australian territory may be by members of the public. Well, that's certainly the case here in the United States. And that's precisely what happened to residents of Forest beach down in Queensland in recent days, too. Strolling along the beach in the morning and encountering odd metallic spheres, just not the flying kind that are being tracked by the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office. But speaking of spheres, folks in Queensland aren't the only ones who are finding spheres these days. You know, one turned up in Azerbaijan recently where archaeologists found a spherical artifact they say crafted from polished stone uncovered during excavations at an archaeological site called Pasha Tepe in the Yaliabad district. While digging at the site, they uncovered this perfectly spherical stone that they say is really unlike anything that has been found at other sites in the southern Caucasus. According to Vava Mahmudova of the Institute of Archaeology and Anthropology at the Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences, he says the stone sphere is of particular scientific importance because of both its manufacturing technology and its possible function. In other words, we don't know exactly how it was made or why it was made, but there are theories. They say it's about 4 inches in diameter, weighs a little more than 4 pounds, and therefore one theory is that it might have been some kind of standardized weight. It also, of course, has been suspected of being some sort of a ritual object. But this is often something that anthropologists suspect of objects that they find that they can't explain any other way. Well, it was used and some sort of ritual. It has spiritual significance rather than utilitarian value. Well, in this case, we really just don't know. But again, Mamudova and his colleagues are still looking into it, and he said recently that it offers a new source of information for understanding connections between the Levant, Anatolia and the South Caucasus during the Neolithic period. By the way, if you'd like to see an image of this, we also have that linked in the show notes in our ongoing coverage of apparent mystery spheres turning up everywhere that we've been writing about. Over there at the debrief recently, I mentioned also that we have an update about this story from back in 1977, which initially intrigued me so much because it was a Navy pilot said he was working for the CIA at the time, flying back to Japan from Hawaii, returning from a mission, when he said that he encountered a strange triangular object that followed him pacing his aircraft for some time as he was flying along. And then it broke away and shot off at high speed just before he reached the area where radars would have been able to pick this thing up. For anybody who's still catching up, you can go find the recent episode. It's titled Interloper, which we did here on the show. But you'll want to listen to all the recent episodes too, because there have been many who have been writing in, pilots in particular who've been saying, look, there are things about this story that just don't add up. And then, as revealed in the final segment last week, I found something even more significant that doesn't add up. Apparently the very same caller, within just a few weeks of the call where he claimed he was a CIA pilot, had also called in claiming he was an IBM pilot and had encountered a flying saucer with multicolored lights around its rim. Now, obviously you can't be a commercial IBM pilot and a Navy pilot working for the CIA encountering UFOs all the time. So evidently this guy was a hoaxer and so many more have now written in with additional details, observations and thoughts about all this. A few of the messages we've been getting recently Chris Brathwaite, who's been on the show with us in the past, good friend by the way, of the program he wrote in, said great job. I remember listening to it when you first played it and thought it sounded totally legit. The only things that stuck out a little to me as suspect had been him admitting he was a CIA pilot and that the range of an F4 could fly between Hawaii and Japan. I brushed it off thinking he hooked up with a tanker somewhere along the route. Unfortunately, there's never been a shortage of fraudsters and hoaxers in the UFO arena. With AI nowadays, I don't even bother looking at alleged UAP videos that pop up on social media. Like always, I appreciate all you do to shine a light on the truth. Well, thanks as always, Chris. Meanwhile, Brian in Idaho writes in Micah, just listening to your latest podcast segment on the apparently bogus CIA IBM pilot, it occurred to me that I've heard military pilots describe the speed of their aircraft in terms of fractions of Mach numbers. Like we were flying at 0.8 machine or just below Mach 1. Not sure if it applies here, but could the bogus pilot have meant 94 Mach, which would mean subsonic, still way too fast for any IBM plane, I'd imagine, but somewhat more reasonable. Keep up the good work. Well, Brian, I think you're onto something because as Trenton writing in from down under in the land of the mysterious spheres, he notes, Micah the pilot was, I believe referring to Mach 0.94, which equates to cruising speed of a Bombardier jet. So thank you, Trenton. In fact, a lot of people wrote in with that observation. My buddy Brent, by the way, longtime friend of mine, one of the best pilots that I know. And so Brent, if you're out there listening, thank you for pointing this out as well. But he said, I think the CIA pilot story is BS on the Mach 9.4 thing, though pilots do usually state Mach 86 or 94, meaning.86 or.94. But as Brian alluded to, Brent also noted the McDonnell Douglas would do a 0.86. Some corporate aircraft can hit the mid nines. But he says, I don't think in the 1970s. So although we have resolved what this guy meant when he said 94, he meant subsonic speeds, 0.94, that's still probably at very best the upper range of what that aircraft could handle. But that again is probably a bit of a stretch. I think another one of our excellent pilots in the listening audience, Jamie, who wrote in, probably would agree, but he also wrote in with some details about g forces, which was very interesting. He notes, quote, just so you know, there are no real G force constraints on the top speeds you could reach in the Earth's atmosphere. G force is a measure of acceleration, which the biggest issue is engineering. Once you reach extremely high speeds, hypersonic speeds, typically you run into two major issues, both caused by air compressibility. The first is that skin temperature heats up like crazy. That's why famously, the SR71 leaked fuel at low speeds. He also notes, I might have to fact check him there, but I do seem to recall hearing the same thing. But of course there are so many in our listening audience who are very helpful with their knowledge about these matters. So if anybody out there knows otherwise, feel free to drop me a note. Infoicahanks.com Jamie continues, though the other big problem is the engine. A rocket carries its own oxygenating material, but a jet requires oxygen to run. I guess this is why they call them air breathing, right? If you reach extremely high speeds, the air intake design is critical to minimize the compressibility effects in heating. And so of the two, skin temperature is the biggest hurdle really. You could strap a rocket to the back of anything and reach insane speeds. But if your fuselage melts, then conditions for safe man flight tend to be quite tricky. For the avoidance of doubt, I've spent my entire life subsonic and airliners, but they teach us this stuff anyway. Well, in this instance I think we're all the better for all that knowledge that you have and all the other pilots who've been writing in and Brent and everybody who's been texting me. Also one more interesting take on this developing story. Ryan writes in Micah, I have thought about the CIA pilot's voice from the recent episode, and to me it recalls the voice of Bob Lazarus, which has me pondering whether this could have been some mischief he had been up to before he developed the more elaborate hoax of the S4 area 51 story. Has this been noticed by you or anyone on your team or audience? It might be worth utilizing some software or AI to investigate the possibility. Thank you for doing what you do and for being an open minded voice of reason within this fraught space. So that's an interesting take, Ryan. Now, the only thing I would point out, and somebody may have to fact check me here, I'm not sure if Bob Lazar is a pilot or if he has any flight experience. And the reason that is significant is because this person who was calling into the National UFO Reporting center certainly did know the lingo, as evidenced by the recent corrections that were sent in about the 0.94, even though that pilot did not say that in the call. This is the kind of lingo. And other pilots who were listening knew exactly what he meant and they were able to help clarify that for me. And because of those little details in the way that he speaks and the terminology he uses, it seems very evident that this person was a pilot. But I'm not sure if Bob Lazar is a pilot or if he would use that kind of flight terminology or would have awareness of it. For my own part, I don't see a connection there. But it is an interesting theory. So thank you for writing in with that, Ryan. And as you alluded the idea of Bob Lazar being up to some sort of mischief, in my opinion, I do think that Bob is doing one of two things when it comes to his stories about Area 51. Either Bob is another one of these extremely credible sounding people who is telling a wild story that is untrue and he knows it, or there's that possibility that Bob may have been misled, Bob may have been shown things and Bob may have been told things that were not true but which he believed. Now you might be wondering, why would the government do that? Why would they have somebody come in and be told that they were working on extraterrestrial crash wreckage retrievals, but in fact they were working on something else entirely, or maybe just some junk and this person was completely misled to think that we had alien hardware. Well, what did Bob Lazar do? He went public with his story and he's still talking about it. And half the world still believes that Mr. Lazar has handled actual materials from off planet. If this were a disinformation operation, one would have to say it's been pretty darn successful, hasn't it? And the worst part perhaps is that Bob Lazar may believe that everything he is saying is true. So in that sense, it very well may be that Bob isn't a liar, but the story isn't entirely true either. Oh, what a tangled web we weave. Speaking of tangled webs, the web continues to widen over@war.gov UFO so when we come back, we're going to dive into the latest pursue release right here on the Micah Hanks. The Department of War's fourth pursue release has arrived and like recent past releases, it adds another collection of military videos, historical NASA records and supporting documentation to the growing public archives surrounding unidentified anomalous phenomena otherwise known historically as UFOs. Predictably, some of the newly released material has already begun circulating online, accompanied by familiar claims that it represents definitive evidence of extraordinary craft. Yet a closer examination suggests a far more nuanced story. Welcome back. You know, some of the most interesting material in this new release actually may be the least mysterious and we're going to be diving into all this. But among the historical additions we've been seeing are NASA records from the Apollo era discussing the now well understood phenomenon of cosmic ray induced flashes of light experienced by astronauts in space. Earlier pursue releases included similar material with very little context and thereby leaving some observers to wonder whether astronauts had encountered unexplained aerial phenomena. By explicitly identifying these events as a known biological effect, however, the latest release appears aimed less at introducing new mysteries than at resolving old misconceptions, or at very least peppering in some known phenomena. That sounds sort of UFO ish In the midst of a bunch of other stuff that's kind of turning into a grab bag of UAP related stuff, there's other NASA related information, such as imagery collected from the space shuttle Columbia's STS 80 mission. We'll get to that here shortly. And also several newly released military videos which remain genuinely unidentified, including footage collected over the Middle east and the United States between 2015 and 2023. Some of these videos, many of you out there have probably seen these by now, but some depict what appear to be fast moving infrared targets whose exact nature can't be really determined very easily. One of them kind of looks like a Tic Tac before then it seemingly splits into two, or there's an optical effect that causes a double image. And all that occurs conveniently enough right before the targeting pod. I suspect it was the Atfleer targeting pod made by Raytheon, probably on board an FA18 Super Hornet, just like the one in the 2004 incident that filmed the Tic Tac out there off the Baja California coast. But yes, in this new video released@war.gov UFOs this object only remains in the frame for a couple more seconds before that lock is lost and we're left to ponder what exactly this little white Tic Tac shaped object that seemingly splits into two might have been. Arguably, if the Pentagon's growing archive ultimately accomplishes anything, it may be this that it causes us to look more carefully at alleged UAP data. We have quite a lot of it now, don't we? But the thing that seems to be missing is the context, crucial context to help us interpret what these videos are, what they represent, if anything. And yes, as we will soon hear in some instances, the objects that are shown, which are explicitly labeled as UAP are clearly something else. So is this disclosure, ladies and gentlemen, are we seeing the true release of all the UFO secrets? Or is the public being satiated for now, although very increasingly with time losing our taste for these subpar UAP videos that the government keeps releasing? Is this all just a distraction? Is this disinformation? Or is this really the best that they have? And does this cause us fundamentally to have to question whether there really is such good data in the government's holdings after all? Now, for my own part, I suspect that they probably do have some better videos and certainly some better data. We also know that there are examples of information that has been partially released but largely redacted from agencies like the National Security Agency and others within the intelligence community over the years. And it clearly indicates that although we are shown glimpses of data that's been collected for reasons of national security, no, the government is not releasing all the UFO secrets. And in truth, I think we have to look at these pursue releases in a similar way. When you file a FOIA request and they send you a 50 page document and about 58% of that document is blacked out and all of the most important details are omitted. So you can only see that there are files being kept on UFOs and there's a little bit of data, and most of what's actually readable suggests things like balloons and, you know, typical objects. We have to kind of look at the pursue releases in a similar fashion. They're sending us NASA documents that describe known phenomena. They're sending us videos of things that in many instances do appear to be balloons. They're sending us a whole lot of documents that have already been available now for years, but maybe with fewer redactions. But we're not really seeing a whole lot of new quality UFO data. And that's because this is how the United States government works. When we have requested information through FOIA requests, they don't give us everything that we have. They cite national security concerns and they redact all the best stuff. Now they are giving us videos and saying, here you go. Disclosure. Here's everything we've got here, all the UFO videos. Are you surprised that you're underwhelmed? Well, if you are, you shouldn't be. But let's take a look nonetheless at the high points from this latest release. Because although I think underwhelming is the best way to describe probably most of everything that's been released by the pursue releases@war.gov, nonetheless, there have been a few high points and there are some important things worth discussing. For instance, there were some documents, historical ones, included in the latest release. Let's start right there. One of These, dated to 1949, is titled US Air Force Air Intelligence Division Study Analysis of Flying Object Incidents in the United States. Now, this is an intriguing document and for a couple of reasons. And a lot of this actually has to do with what remains unknown and unseen, not what actually appears in this report. And I'll clarify a bit exactly what I'm talking about when I say that here in a moment. But to quote directly from this formerly top secret document, as they note in the opening page, the problem as they define it is to examine pattern of tactics of flying saucers, which they put in parentheses and note hereafter referred to as flying objects, to develop conclusions as to the possibility of existence. Now, as you'll already notice, they mention flying saucers, but then they immediately say, and we're going to refer to them as flying objects after this. So in 1949, this was only a couple of years after the whole UFO story blew wide open. But they weren't initially called UFOs, were they? No, they were first called flying saucers because that was a term that a reporter came up with for objects that were observed by a pilot named Kenneth Arnold, who was flying over Mount Rainier, Washington in the summer of 1947, and he saw objects that to him, he said moved like discs skipping across water. He said they didn't resemble discs, they were kind of chevron shaped when you watched them. But they did seem to be flying very erratically. And because of the way he described how they flew, some reporters started calling them flying discs or flying saucers. And sure enough, everybody picked up on that name. But of course, this was a problem from the outset because not all UFO reports are actually saucers. So in the document here from 1949, they acknowledged this problem essentially by saying flying saucers in quotes and then hereafter noting that they call them flying objects. Within a couple of years, Project Blue Book, the successor to the original Project Sign and also Project Sign's initial successor, Project Grudge, they eventually did start calling these unidentified flying objects. So by referencing flying objects, you can see that way back in 1949, they were already heading in that direction. So among the facts that they get into in this document they outline are that some type of flying object has been observed. They say approximately 210 incidents have been reported as of 1949 when this assessment was produced. And apparently that among the observers reporting on such incidents are trained and experienced U.S. weather Bureau personnel, U.S. air Force rated officers, experienced civilian pilots, technicians associated with various research projects, and technicians employed by commercial airlines. Essentially very much like what's still going on today. A number of professionals in a variety of different technical fields, military personnel, civilian pilots and others have all made credible reportings of flying objects of unknown origin. They go on to note here the possibility that reported observations of flying objects over the US Were influenced by previous sightings of unidentified phenomena in Europe, particularly over Scandinavia in 1946. They're talking, of course, about the ghost rockets there and that the observers reporting such incidents may have been interested in obtaining personal publicity have been considered as possible explanations. However, these possibilities seem to be improbable when certain selected reports, such as the one from U.S. weather Bureau at Richmond, are examined. During observations of weather balloons at the Richmond Bureau, one well trained observer has sighted strange metallic disks on three occasions and another observer has sighted a similar object on one occasion. The last observation of unidentified objects was in April 1947. On all four occasions, the weather balloon and the unidentified objects were in view through the theolidite. These observations at the Richmond Bureau occurred several months before publicity on the flying saucers appeared in a US newspaper. So that's a very intriguing point right there. By April 1947, US personnel were logging sightings of what appeared to be disk like objects in the skies above the United States. And these were trained observers with the U.S. weather Bureau. But it was many weeks before alleged sightings of flying saucers began making their way into the newspapers after Kenneth Arnold's sighting. So the air Force in 1949 was very well aware of the fact that this was a problem that extended back further than the media reporting and thereby the public sensation. The document also gives us three different categories of shapes. They have disc shaped objects, rough, cigar shaped, and also balls of fire. They note that it's possible that there's really just one type of craft that maybe some of these disks, when seen from the side, appear to be cigar shaped. And perhaps also at night, these things, when illuminated, appear as balls of Fire. And so they don't rule out the possibility that. That there's really just one type of object that may have been observed, rather than three different types, but seen under different visual conditions. They may have different appearances. Therefore, the document states, it appears that some object has been seen. However, identification of that object cannot be readily accomplished on the basis of information reported on each incident. It is possible that the object or objects may have been domestically launched devices, such as weather balloons, rockets, experimental flying wing aircraft that would certainly match the chevron shape described by Kenneth Arnold, wouldn't it? Or celestial phenomena. But they also note, of course, that it is necessary to obtain information on such domestic activity to confirm or deny this possibility. Depending on the degree with which this may be accomplished, foreign devices must then be considered as a possibility. Now, foreign aircraft could certainly apply to something from off planet, but deeper into this document, if you read all the way to the end, they don't actually entertain any ideas about extraterrestrial craft. They seem to say that if indeed these are foreign objects, it's probably a technology that's been developed by the Soviet Union. And one reason that's so intriguing is because this document is from 1949. But there is a semi legendary earlier US Air Force assessment alleged to have existed by Edward Ruppelt, the first director of Project Blue Book, because he described it in his book back in the 1950s called the Report on Unidentified Flying Objects. And Ruppelt said this estimate of the situation came to a vastly different conclusion. And in fact, it actually looked at some of the very same early UFO cases which Ruppelt called the classics. That this 1949 document I'm looking at right here addresses. This document, says nothing about the possibility of extraterrestrials. And there's probably a clear reason why, because according to Ruppelt, in his discussion about the estimate of the situation, he said that initially, analysts with Project Sign determined that there was really only one possible explanation for these sightings. Some of these things were so weird, they had to be extraterrestrial. And apparently that idea didn't sit too well with top brass in Washington, specifically Hoyt Vandenberg. And so essentially, he ordered the assessment to be destroyed, all copies to be destroyed. Ruppelt says he had, of course, seen one. There were others who later came out and said that they had seen one. Dewey Fournette, I think, actually is recorded in an interview that David Marler is referenced before. I think he has a copy out there at the National UFO Historical Records Center. But there are officials like he and of course, like Ruppelt, who from that era had said that they saw this estimate. Despite that, there are some today who have tried to argue that the estimate may never have actually existed, which to me is kind of a silly argument considering that there are historical records where former officials talk about, having read the estimate of the situation, I can't see air, therefore it doesn't exist. Right, that seems to be the kind of logic. But all that said, this 1949 document from the latest Pursue release, of course it's also been available for a long time, but it makes for interesting historical discussion because you can see that by 1949 there was no discussion about extraterrestrials in these documents. If indeed the estimate of the situation came to the conclusions that Ruppelt and others said it did, that would probably be why in this document we're seeing them talking about Soviets and not space aliens. But when we come back, we'll look at a few more of these documents. We'll also take a deep dive into some of the videos and then finally also see exactly where we stand in terms of disclosure when it comes to what the Department of War is releasing. All that and more awaits right here on the Micah Hanks program. Sam, The Pentagon's UFO archives continue to expand and yet many are saying, well, more of the same. So we're going to dive into this and see if there is indeed anything new of substance in the latest pursue release. Also want to remind you, if you aren't already an EX subscriber, you've got a lot of listening to do, a lot of catching up to do, and in fact, this week for EX subscribers, since we were talking about the estimate of the situation in the last segment, I want to expand on that a bit because that is probably one of the most long sought storied documents in the history of ufology. In fact, David Marler, I mentioned his book earlier, Triangular An Estimate of the Situation. He explicitly states in the book, that is why he titled it that, because it's a nod to the famous estimate of the situation mentioned by Edward Ruppelt way back in the 1950s in his book. And I'm kind of amazed that there are people today who say that that document never existed because we don't have any copies of it today. Something tells me the skeptics who simply don't believe because they can't see it aren't aware of all of the secondhand history, let alone really the historical process which often relies on secondhand sources. For instance, we look at all the ancient documents that have been lost. But we know they existed because they're referenced in later writings by people, archivists or other writers, philosophers, historians who documented their existence. So the loss of information, the loss of records, the loss of our history has been something that humans have grappled with for as long as we have had record keeping. And that's exactly what seems to have happened. Back in the 1950s, the Air Force did this assessment, okay, what are these things? Well, some of these things are so weird. We really don't think they're ours and we don't think the Soviets have such advanced technology. It could really be only one other thing. Perhaps we aren't alone after all. But military leaders in Washington weren't satisfied with that. And again, it's easy to see why. They wanted to know, hey, look, first of all, are these flying saucers even real? And second of all, is this something the Soviets have? Is this something we need to be worried about and should we be preparing for an escalation here? They didn't want to hear about aliens. But again, the deeper history is something we will be discussing. For EX subscribers, if you aren't already a subscriber, you can find out how to become one there@micah hanks.com X for the here and now Getting back into this discussion about the latest releases there from the Pursue program, we mentioned the Air force document from 1949. Among the actual document files, we also have additions like a CIA file from the 1950s on unconventional aircraft sightings. Again, this is a document that has been known for many years. But now, for people who haven't been digging into all this for as long as researchers like myself or David Marler have been doing, people can find a lot of these documents in one place. And while you're pouring through the Pursue releases, you can also go look at some interesting videos and imagery too. Imagery like one that was captured by astronauts during the STS 80 mission. According to the caption included with the image in the Pursue document files, between November 19 and December 7, 1996, astronauts aboard Space Shuttle Columbia captured a series of three images of an unidentified object in low Earth orbit. In the first photograph, the object is visible near the center of the frame, to the right of the limb of the Earth. Now, this object you see in the photograph, it's either triangular or maybe cone shaped. It's really unclear what this object is, but I think it is important to note a couple of things. First of all, this was 1996 and UFOs were all the rage around that time. In fact, actually the following Summer was the 50th anniversary of the Roswell incident. And so in the 1990s, there were television shows like Sightings, Unsolved Mysteries and others. And I think that we could say that there being a general interest in UFOs at that time certainly could have been a factor. Why? Well, because astronauts aboard the space shuttle Columbia are going to be looking out the window and they're going to be looking at anything that seems unusual. And there were some unusual things that were seen around that time. There were also some identifiable objects that were misrepresented as being something more anomalous. Like for instance, In November of 1996, aboard the same mission, STS 80 astronauts captured footage from its backward facing cameras of grainy, luminous shapes and fast moving light anomalies. Now, there have been multiple interpretations of what these objects are. Some scientists have said they're plasmas, some have said they're genuine UFOs. The official explanation, however, is that it was most likely bits of ice that were reflecting light. And because of the contrast settings on the cameras, the back facing cameras on board the shuttle, these objects appeared extremely luminous and they appeared to be flying around and moving independently, when in fact they were probably actually being influenced by the thrusters on board the shuttle itself. But you can go online, you can actually watch these videos and you can hear the people at mission control saying, we're seeing some objects out there. Can you kind of describe for us what you're seeing? They were asking the astronauts on board the shuttle, in other words, what are you seeing when you're actually looking out the window right now? Does it look like what we're seeing? Because on this camera it looks like there are UFOs flying all around you guys. And you can tell they were a little perplexed at the time. So there's been discussion about this for years. Funny enough, those images haven't been included in the releases here from Pursue yet, although they did release these images of this little conical or triangle object photographed during that same mission. Now, it could be space debris from a past launch, that would be my guess, but it's really kind of unclear. I know there's a lot of space enthusiasts out there, as well as pilots in our audience. So space enthusiasts, experts who might have some knowledge of this kind of thing, you know who you are. Feel free to drop me a note if you have some insights about what it was the mission team on STS 80 photographed and which we've now found in the latest Pursue release. We also have the ongoing discussion about astronauts who say that they had experiences seeing unusual flashes outside the space shuttle. And these keep turning up in the pursue releases, even though for decades it's already been known that this is a phenomenon that is induced by cosmic rays. And this is what induces this flashing phenomenon that's being described. Well, now in the pursue releases, they are actually describing this as such, but they continue to release audio segments where these astronauts are describing seeing these flashes in space. There was even a funny clip online this week where, of all people, Dr. Phil apparently got early advance access to some of these files. And he was kind of oohing and awing about these astronauts saying that they'd been seeing firework like displays outside the shuttle. Well, I hate to have to tell you, Dr. Phil, but most of these sightings by these astronauts are explainable. The phenomenon in question have been well known for a long time. But I don't expect that Dr. Phil is a longtime student of UFO history. For people like Dr. Phil, I'm sure he's seeing all this stuff for the first time. And I'm sure it is quite extraordinary. I'm seeing all these talking heads on television saying, my gosh, the government's been keeping documents since the 40s. Well, yeah, this stuff's been around if you knew where to look for it. And so maybe one of the most significant things we're actually seeing, and I do think this is a positive people in the mainstream, podcasters, talking heads, media personalities, news anchors. People who never would have paid attention to the wealth of information that was available about UFOs and who always would have downplayed this topic. Now they're seeing these files that have existed for decades, being released again by the Department of War and appearing at its website, and they're finally acknowledging, my gosh, we do have a lot of information about this. People we have been lied to for decades. Well, yes, sort of. And the reason I say that, by the way, I'm not disputing that there's information that's been withheld. I think we've already established that. But for these talking heads who are seeing all this stuff for the first time. Oh, yeah, of course they think that we've been lied to for 79 years because they didn't know these documents had existed for nearly as long as there has been a Freedom of Information Act. But there have been diligent researchers going after these documents for decades. It's just that the media ignored it. They considered the whole UFO subject back when they were called UFOs and in my opinion it's fine to still call em UFOs, but they considered the entire subject nonsense. Only crackpots go looking for information about UFOs. But now that the Pentagon's re releasing all this stuff and peppering in some obscure videos of some things that we can't really identify and putting it all in one convenient location on their website. Oh yeah, of course the mainstream media is paying attention now. Of course they are, because a it's a great distraction from other events that are occurring in our time. It's also something that drives up the ratings because there's a whole lot of public interest in this topic. And so now it's more beneficial for these news outlets to be covering this stuff. And hence now you got everybody in the world, including Neil DeGrasse, Tyson, Dr. Phil, everybody seems to be coming out of the woodwork and now commenting on the great disclosures coming from our government. But are we really seeing disclosure? We mentioned those videos. Now let's take a look at some of those. D o w UAP Pro 30 unresolved UAP report from the Middle East I've got all these linked by the way, in the show notes so you can see each one of the videos that we're specifically referencing. This one according to the caption they provide. The United States Central Command submitted a report of an unidentified anomalous phenomena to the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office consisting of 10 seconds of video footage from an infrared Sensor aboard a US military platform in 2023. As they go on to note, two areas of contrast transit the sensor field of view. The first enters the field of view from the bottom right and it exits from the top edge of the frame. Meanwhile, the second relatively smaller area of contrast enters from the top and exits the bottom of the frame. Now, if you go and you watch this video right now, and I highly recommend that you do, you might be slightly amazed because the first thing you're going to see is this unusually shaped object that seems to have these kinds of sharp protrusions around its edges and a red light in the center. This thing comes flying through the frame and then as soon as it's leaving the frame, a smaller object comes shooting through at very high speed. And initially when you watch all this, I mean it actually looks pretty impressive. Admittedly, that one did kind of catch my attention. Had to do one of the good old backup and rewind. Let's watch that again. What is this? But after I watched the video a couple more times and again I have it linked in the Show Notes Dow UAP Pro 30 unresolved UAP report Middle East 2023 go watch it. This video, as weird as it initially looks, in my opinion, actually probably has a pretty conventional explanation. So the first object that drifts into the frame, it has a really weird appearance. It has a lot of unusual protrusions, or at least it appears to. But I actually think those are sensor artifacts. I think that those are essentially refraction spikes being produced by maybe a highly reflective object. And what it gives the impression of in this infrared footage is an object that has an unusual almost star like shape. Now the reason I think that's probably what we're seeing is because there are other videos that have been released in the pursue releases, at least two others I can think of that show similar objects that appear to be the result of refraction spikes. And so it's a sensor artifact that gives it a starfish like appearance. And some are interpreting this as being the actual appearance of the UAP in question. Whereas in reality it was probably a reflective object. And the light it was reflecting probably caused this sensor artifact. And it makes it look really strange when it appears on the camera. And I think that's also probably why the thing seems to have a reddish light in the center initially. That too, I believe is probably a sensor artifact. In fact, I have actually seen when a high light source is observed through an infrared or a night vision camera, sometimes it's interpreted as red through that camera's lens. So I think that's what we're seeing there. And since this object was probably highly reflective, whatever it is, I also suspect that as it leaves the frame, that smaller object, or what we interpret as an object passing through, might also be light reflected from the first object off the lens or the reticle of the infrared system that's filming it. Now, I could be wrong about that. But again, there are a lot of different explanations for what this might be. Without thinking, well, they're for aliens. But therein in my opinion, lies the problem, because I think a lot of people look at these videos with the expectation, well, the government's telling me this is uap. So then they go and they look at the video and they see something that's very oddly shaped and they see a little thing shooting by at very high speed, or at least what appears to be high speed relative to the position of the camera. That too could be an optical illusion. And with so little additional context provided about what we might be looking at, apart from the fact that we're being told this is UAP people look at the video and they say, wow, that's really interesting. These things really are strange. But on further reflection, maybe not so much. We also have d o w UAP P R108 unresolved UAP report from the Western United States in 2020. This is the one I said that superficially resembles the Tic Tac. If you go watch the video, you'll see what I'm talking about there for a moment. When the targeting pod used to film this thing locks onto the object for a few seconds, it does look like a little white elongated pill shaped object and then it seems to split into two. But again, that to me, I think is probably a camera artifact. My guess would be that more than likely there was an attempt to try and focus on the object. And what ended up happening was it actually created a double image there temporarily right before they lose the lock and then the object disappears. Now was it a genuine uap? Maybe so. I mean, obviously whoever was operating that targeting pod thought this was an unusual object and they decided to try and film it. And so we have to be clear that there are weird looking objects that appear from time to time. Military personnel sometimes try to film these things. And so it's obvious that there are unusual objects that appear in our airspace, or at very least objects that for the time being remain unidentified, and that our military personnel try to film these things. By definition, yes, they are uap. But unfortunately, none of the videos that I've reviewed from this latest release unequivocally show something that seems to me like it's a real anomalous craft, either from this world or from any other. So where does that really leave us when it comes to these pursue releases and what many are calling disclosure? Maybe a few fewer of us are calling it that at this point. I think we'll examine why as we wrap things up here on the final segment when we return on the Micah Hanks program. Unusual Objects, Range Fowlers and weirdness in our Skies. You know, some of the descriptions provided in reports by military personnel are quite compelling. Like for instance, accompanying one of the videos, Dow UAP PR112 unresolved UAP report Eastern United States 2019 there's a range Fowler debrief. Not my debrief, by the way, an actual debrief. And for anyone who isn't familiar with that term, range Fowler essentially is just a Navy terminology that was derived from these UAP sightings. They started calling any kind of an object that comes in and interrupts a training exercise an Unknown object, a bogey that shows up. They started calling these range Fowlers. So in this Range Fowler report, the description provided by the pilot was that this object exhibited flight characteristics unlike anything they had seen in 28 years of service for the U.S. air Force and U.S. navy. The report also characterizes the phenomenon as a small object traveling in a straight line in the opposite direction at high speed. Now, this video is kind of interesting. This one, I do actually recommend that you go and watch because as the pilot is flying along, this thing enters the frame and it flies above and to the left of the aircraft. And it does appear to be going very fast. And so in my opinion, this is one of the more intriguing objects probably that was filmed and that has been released in this latest collection of videos. And yes, if you slow down the video, I mean, it does superficially kind of look saucer esque, we might say. So is this maybe the very best video from the latest release? I don't know. I recommend you go check it out, have a look, see what you think. But even as intriguing as this video looks, yet again, there is so much left to the imagination. And we can't see anything that is undeniably a structured object under some kind of intelligent control. I mean, if you watch this video, and I have many times, over and over again, slowed down, backed up, repeated, reversed, everything. I mean, I cannot with certainty tell you that what we're seeing isn't a fairly slow moving little object, maybe a balloon drifting with the wind, that since it was going in the opposite direction of this jet, it appeared to be going extremely fast. Yet again, there may be a bit of an optical illusion happening there where this object, because it is headed in the opposite direction of that jet, that seems to increase the appearance of its speed, when in fact it may not have even been moving as fast as this jet was. It might have just been drifting with the wind and therefore it could have actually been a balloon. On that note, by the way, one of the pieces of imagery that's been circulating online, I've been getting more messages from people about this one. This video shows some kind of an object just kind of hanging out up there in the sky and they start zooming in on it. And in this case, rather than it being some sort of a distant object, a little fuzzy light or something, this object, they actually zoom in on it and they get a pretty good clear shot of whatever this object is. And this video, by the way, if you haven't seen it already, is Dow UAP PR116 unresolved UAP report Atlantic Ocean 2020 they're all gonna be linked in the show notes with this episode for ease of access, my friends. But if you watch this video on initial viewing, you might go, my gosh, what is that? Because what you see is about 32 seconds of them zooming in on this object. And they keep getting closer and closer. And it's this really strange kind of jagged, gnarly shaped thing. And the description provided by the observers, I think is the key here, because although the object superficially might look really interesting, they describe it as a darker maroonish color, approximately 12 to 15ft in height. But they also note that this object was traveling with the wind. They say it did not maneuver or change direction. And perhaps most damning of all, that the UAP appeared to be a large, somewhat deformed balloon, unquote. So in other words, if it was drifting with the wind, if it didn't appear to be engaging in any maneuvering, and it seemed to be a large deformed balloon, my guess would have to be that the UAP in this case was probably a balloon. In fact, in other cases, you can see alleged UAP with a little tether dangling down and a little object hanging beneath the uap. In other words, they're weather balloons carrying little payloads. I mean, it's obvious what some of these things are in these videos. And so that raises a very important question. Why does the Pentagon keep giving us balloon videos, some of which aren't even ambiguous? They're obviously balloons, but calling them uap? Why do these pursue releases keep giving us audio sound bites of astronauts talking about a well known phenomenon that's been documented for decades and including that in information that is purportedly about UAP? I find these historical documents from 1949 and the 1950s and 60s fascinating. I also enjoyed it when I read them the first time a decade ago. And I realize a lot of people, Dr. Phil and others who suddenly have become UFO commentators, they are not aware that this stuff has been around for a long time. They aren't people who analyze UAP videos or have a lot of experience studying UAP imagery. Keep in mind, with the UAP Sightings Reporting System, every week we get new UAP reports. Some of them also have imagery included. And so I do a lot of UAP analysis and imagery analysis. But I realize most people out there who are now commenting on this, some of them with the very largest followings, they aren't really aware that what we're seeing is certainly by no means the best UFO information that's available. And therefore we have to ask, why is this stuff what the Department of War is giving us? Now, there are a couple of interpretations here which raise some important questions. The first interpretation is that the government has been lying to us for 79 years, so why would they stop now? Yes, the military has been engaged in the collection of information about UFOs since the 1940s. Many of these documents clearly show that. But yet again, that's been known for a long time. Yes, Project blue book from 1952 to late 1969 was collecting information about UFOs. But many critics of that era of ufology have noted that at times Project Blue Book at best seemed more like a public relations exercise than any serious UFO collection effort. And even some of the very best cases were superficially labeled as having been resolved. Like the famous Minot Air Force Base incident from the late 1960s. Hector Quintanilla, the director of Project Blue Book at the time, tried to say that it was ball lightning in the planet Venus. That could account for a large oval shaped craft that was observed by the personnel on board. A B52 strata fortress that flew beneath them, landed on the ground. They said that the thing had some sort of a strange crescent shaped bumper on the front of the craft. They even got imagery of it on their radar scope. And although you don't see very clearly what the object resembles, there is indeed a light out there, accompanied by radar data. That, of course, is what Hector Quintanilla had said was simply ball lightning. As if that's any kind of a reasonable explanation for the sum total of the sighting reported by those personnel during that incident. My point being, yes, the government has been involved in the collection of information about this for a long time, but there hasn't always been comparable diligence exercised in the handling of this information, how it is released to the public, the resolutions of these cases, the interpretation of the data contained in them, this has been an ongoing issue and many have argued over the years, therefore, that while Project bluebook seemed to be forward facing and claimed that they were able to resolve most UAP cases, a closer look at the data shows that they weren't even trying to. It also suggests that there really were some genuinely strange phenomena that couldn't be explained, but Project Blue Book pretended that they could. It also seemed to imply that there may have been better UAP data within government holdings that wasn't making its way to the public, either through Project Blue Book releases or otherwise. It seems now that with the pursue releases appearing@war.gov that very much of the same is ongoing. We're being told disclosure is happening on a rolling basis and that every few weeks new videos are being posted. But the videos they're giving us in many instances are underwhelming at best. In some cases, they are obviously balloons with little dangling payloads, and yet they still label these as uap. And so one interpretation, which really, again, is an extension of the historical relationship between the government and the civilian populace when it comes to the UFO issue, one interpretation is they are not giving us the best stuff that they have, and they aren't doing a very good job when it comes to the analysis of what data they have released. In fact, they're giving us very little information. And half of these videos don't even appear to really be uap. So it's just more of what we've been seeing for decades. This isn't disclosure. The government is not giving us the best of what they have. We want the truth because we can handle the truth. But that brings us to the other interpretation. There have been some commentators, Mick west, the skeptic, and others have pointed out, you know, this could be the best of what they have. And so if that's the case, what does that mean? For instance, if these videos of what appear to be balloons are actually being interpreted as and classed as UAP by the All Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, then that's a bit of a problem. And really for a couple of reasons, because one, if these objects are being labeled uap, but they are really balloons and the folks at Arrow are aware of that, then that really raises some questions about the government's definition of UAP and what Arrow is actually tasked with doing. Are they really studying UAP or are they studying balloons? But the other interpretation, of course, is that there may not be a level of awareness of what some of these objects are, even if on the civilian side we can pretty quickly determine what these things are. I find it kind of hard to believe, though, that Arrow doesn't realize some of these objects are just balloons. So why are they being presented to the public as uap? Now, depending on which interpretation we take here, it means that there is better data that the government is withholding and they're just giving us a little bit here and there to satisfy people. And for whatever reason, pick your favorite excuse for why this stuff is all of a sudden coming out right now and what it's maybe intended to distract us from. Plenty of options, right? But if some of the skeptics are right and these actually are some of the best examples of UAP imagery that we have. The natural question we'd have to ask is, well, then, is the public ready to accept that all the stuff we thought the government had been withholding from us, that had all the secrets of the universe, might not really exist and we might have to keep looking for it through other means? If indeed. And I do think that there is a strong case to be made that some genuine UAP represent unusual phenomena, things, whatever they are, that may have some pretty important implications for our understanding of science and history and maybe even our place in the cosmos. So as we're wrapping up here, my final thoughts are this. Of these two primary arguments, and there are probably others, feel free to send along your own ideas about what this all means. But of the two arguments I've presented about what we might be seeing here, my personal opinion is this. No, I don't think we're seeing the best data that the government has. I think that Arrow is essentially being compliant with requests from lawmakers, Anna Polina Luna and Tim Burchette and others, you know, who have been very active in the UAP dialogue. I think that Arrow is being compliant with requests from those lawmakers and, of course, from the Pentagon and from the Trump administration, all of which are saying, please release data on UAP to the public when and where you can. So I think Arrow is essentially saying, okay, we're going to release everything we can, but obviously, a lot of stuff has not gone through any kind of analysis or resolution. A lot of these things are not uap. These videos are by no means the best stuff that we have. And one reason why I come to that conclusion is, again, if you look at the past releases through FOIA requests, there are instances where some documents are actually released, but mostly redacted. There are some requests for videos that have been referenced by former officials and which, in response to FOIA requests, government officials have acknowledged but have said cannot be released because of national security considerations. Now, is it possible some of those videos have appeared in the pursue releases? Yeah, maybe so. But I would simply say that in the broader history of this topic and in the persistent work of citizen activists who have gone after government records involving UAP and the way that we have seen them handle that, the kinds of information that's released, or the lack thereof, and then finally, the stories we hear from former officials who say there's much better stuff that the public isn't seeing, at least not yet. Yes. My conclusion is what we've been seeing at the Department of War's website is by no means, by any stretch of the imagination, the best information about UAP and the government's holdings. The question of whether we will see anything better in the weeks to come, of course, remains. But as this information comes forward, we will be analyzing it here on the program for the here and now. That's all. You guys take care. And as always, stay strange out there. We'll talk to you next time. Ra.