58. The Truth About UFOs: The First Incident (Ep 1)

Summary

Podcast Title: The Rest Is Classified
Episode: 58. The Truth About UFOs: The First Incident (Ep 1)
Release Date: June 22, 2025
Hosts: David McCloskey and Gordon Carrera

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Introduction to the Roswell Incident

[01:25] David McCloskey opens the episode by recounting the historic Roswell UFO incident dated July 8, 1947. He narrates the discovery of a "flying saucer" by the intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Airfield (RAAF). The debris was allegedly found on a ranch in Roswell, New Mexico, and was swiftly transported to higher headquarters for inspection.

Key Quote:
"Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot... saw what they thought was a flying disc... a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky... at a high rate of speed." ([01:25])

[02:34] David McCloskey introduces the episode's focus on UFOs, acknowledging the blend of historical events and contemporary theories. He emphasizes the hosts' commitment to treating the subject with seriousness and integrity.

Hosts' Lighthearted Banter and Episode Direction

[03:20] Gordon Carrera humorously notes David's "advanced" tin foil hat, highlighting their balanced approach between skepticism and open-mindedness regarding UFO phenomena.

Quote:
"What are they even for? Tinfoil hats?" ([03:35])

David explains his genuine interest in the topic, mentioning his preparation for the series by wearing the hat and his fascination with alien-related headlines.

Historical Context and the Rise of UFO Sightings

[04:17] Gordon Carrera underscores the deep-rooted connection between UFO lore and classified spy programs, particularly those run by the US and Chinese governments. He suggests that government secrecy has fueled public belief in deeper, concealed truths about UFOs.

David McCloskey clarifies the acronym UFO as Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), reflecting modern terminology. They delve into the intertwining of intelligence community activities with UFO sightings, hinting at the complexity behind public UFO narratives.

Quote:
"The intelligence community is the sort of secretive parts of the Air Force, the CIA, and as we'll see, even, even the Chinese intelligence community." ([06:24])

The Roswell Incident Detailed

The hosts revisit the Roswell incident, providing a timeline:

1. June 1947: Rancher WW William Mac Brazel and his son spot an unusual object over Corona, New Mexico.
2. July 4, 1947: Inspired by the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting in Washington State, Mac Brazel returns to the site with his family to investigate further.

[07:21] David McCloskey draws connections between the Roswell sighting and the broader context of post-WWII technological advancements and Cold War tensions.

Gordon Carrera explains how the initial sighting lacked detail, but the motivation to return suggests underlying factors prompting closer investigation.

Government Response and Media Frenzy

Upon Mac Brazel's second inspection, he discovers debris resembling bamboo sticks, metallic materials, and a mysterious black box adorned with floral tape. Concerned, he discreetly informs the local sheriff.

[12:22] Gordon Carrera describes the RAAF's swift response, dispatching intelligence officers to secure the debris. The base commander, Brigadier General Roger Ramey, reacts hastily, issuing a press release declaring the discovery of a "flying disc," igniting media frenzy.

Quote:
"The newspapers go nuts. The Roswell Daily Record runs a headlined article, RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region." ([12:22])

Project Mogul: The Official Explanation

[23:12] Gordon Carrera introduces Project Mogul, linking it to the Roswell incident. Project Mogul was a top-secret program using high-altitude balloons to detect Soviet nuclear activities. The materials recovered by the RAAF matched those of Project Mogul balloons, featuring polyethylene and floral tape—common in the project's equipment.

David McCloskey emphasizes the secrecy surrounding Project Mogul, suggesting that the government's "cover-up" was actually a measure to protect classified information.

Quote:
"Project Mogul was a top secret program ran 1946-49... to monitor for Soviet nuclear tests and explosions." ([24:26])

Subsequent Developments and Public Perception

The episode explores how the Roswell story faded from public attention until the late 1970s, when renewed interest emerged due to pop culture influences like the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind and a general rise in conspiracy-minded sentiment post-Watergate.

[21:35] David McCloskey reflects on the intersection of genuine government secrecy and evolving UFO narratives, noting that official reports like those in the mid-90s attributed Roswell to Project Mogul, dispelling alien theories.

Quote:
"The US Air Force report... Project Mogul is the explanation for the Roswell incident." ([30:32])

Ongoing Mysteries and Conspiracy Theories

Despite official explanations, the hosts acknowledge lingering mysteries, such as claims of alien bodies and additional crash sites. They discuss how such theories persist, fueled by inconsistent reports and the public's fascination with extraterrestrial life.

David McCloskey expresses skepticism about dismissing all unexplained elements, hinting at unresolved questions regarding supposed alien autopsies.

Quote:
"You have not managed to explain that yet... we'll uncover the truth about those poor, dead aliens and alien autopsies." ([32:38])

Conclusion and Teasers for Future Episodes

The episode concludes with a brief mention of upcoming discussions on alien autopsies and government cover-ups, maintaining intrigue for listeners. The hosts humorously tease exclusive content available through their "Declassified Club," while ensuring the main narrative remains focused on historical events and their implications.

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Notable Quotes with Timestamps

• [01:25] David McCloskey:
  "Mr. and Mrs. Dan Wilmot... saw what they thought was a flying disc... a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky... at a high rate of speed."

• [03:35] Gordon Carrera:
  "What are they even for? Tinfoil hats?"

• [06:24] Gordon Carrera:
  "The intelligence community is the sort of secretive parts of the Air Force, the CIA, and as we'll see, even, even the Chinese intelligence community."

• [12:22] Gordon Carrera:
  "The newspapers go nuts. The Roswell Daily Record runs a headlined article, RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region."

• [24:26] Gordon Carrera:
  "Project Mogul was a top secret program ran 1946-49... to monitor for Soviet nuclear tests and explosions."

• [30:32] David McCloskey:
  "The US Air Force report... Project Mogul is the explanation for the Roswell incident."

• [32:38] David McCloskey:
  "You have not managed to explain that yet... we'll uncover the truth about those poor, dead aliens and alien autopsies."

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Insights and Discussions

• Government Secrecy vs. Public Perception: The episode delves into how classified programs like Project Mogul inadvertently fueled UFO myths, illustrating the thin line between legitimate covert operations and conspiracy theories.

• Impact of Cold War Tensions: The heightened anxiety and technological advancements of the late 1940s created a fertile ground for UFO sightings and the subsequent explosion of related folklore.

• Media's Role in Shaping Narratives: The RAAF's press release and the Roswell Daily Record's coverage played pivotal roles in popularizing the flying saucer myth, highlighting the media's influence on public perception.

• Enduring Mysteries: Despite official explanations, elements like alleged alien bodies and multiple crash sites continue to keep the Roswell incident alive in popular culture, demonstrating the human fascination with the unknown.

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Conclusion

In this inaugural episode of their UFO series, David McCloskey and Gordon Carrera meticulously dissect the Roswell incident, blending historical facts with ongoing mysteries. They navigate the complexities of government secrecy, media influence, and public intrigue, setting the stage for a comprehensive exploration of UFO phenomena in subsequent episodes. The balanced approach of skepticism and open-mindedness ensures an engaging and informative experience for listeners, whether they're seasoned enthusiasts or newcomers to the subject.

Transcript

[David McCloskey]

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[Gordon Carrera]

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[David McCloskey]

The intelligence office of the 509th Bombardment Group at Roswell Army Airfield announced at noon today that the field has come into possession of a flying saucer. The disk was recovered on a ranch in the Roswell vicinity after the intelligence office here had inspected the instrument it was flown to quote higher headquarters. Mr. And Mrs. Dan Wilmot apparently were the only persons in Roswell who have seen what they thought was a flying disc. They were sitting on their porch at 105 South Penn last Wednesday night at about 10 minutes before 10 o' clock when a large glowing object zoomed out of the sky from the southeast, going in a northwesterly direction at a high rate of speed. Wilmot, who was one of the most respected and reliable citizens in town, kept the story to himself, hoping that someone else would come out and tell about having seen one, but finally today decided that he would go ahead and tell about seeing it. The announcement that the RAAF was in possession of one came only a few minutes after he decided to release the details of what he had seen. Well, welcome to the Rest Is classified. I'm David McCloskey.

[Gordon Carrera]

And I'm Gordon Carrera.

[David McCloskey]

And that, dear listeners, was of course the Roswell Daily record writing on 8 July 1947 about the sighting of a flying saucer over New Mexico. And Gordon, we are very excited, aren't we, because we are going full UFO for the next few episodes on the Rest is Classified. And Dear Listeners, of course don't be alarmed. Despite the topic, we are going to treat this with the probity and the seriousness that you have come to expect out of this podcast. But we are going to be looking at the world of UFOs, UAPs, as they're called now, and Gordon, what life might be out there in the universe. Isn't that right?

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right. And I should just say that for those who are simply listening to the audio, are not lucky enough to be watching the video, they will not have the sight I have in front of me now, which is an indication of how seriously David McCloskey takes this subject. Because yes, dear listeners, he is wearing a tin foil hat and it looks like a pretty advanced one that you made. What, this one you already had before you're going to do these episodes? Yeah, you just wear it to protect your brain from the. What are they even for? Tinfoil hats? What? To protect you from the cosmic rays.

[David McCloskey]

The alien stuff rays, government rays. I think primarily capital, capital G, capital R. I've got several of these on my shelf that I like to bring out from time to time. Unfortunate people who follow me on Instagram and TikTok will have seen that I have done videos wearing these hats before. But I made this one, Gordon, last night in preparation for this very conversation.

[Gordon Carrera]

Because you are taking it so seriously.

[David McCloskey]

Because I'm taking it seriously. I also watched Independence Day and I've been reading a lot of New York Post headlines about aliens. So that is going to be my contribution to this series about. Well, actually is, Gordon, I think you'll acknowledge a very serious topic.

[Gordon Carrera]

Well, it is. It's my idea. We do it. And you. I think we're almost skeptical at one point I would suggest.

[David McCloskey]

No, no, no, no. That's revisionist history.

[Gordon Carrera]

If there's ever been a topic where it's true, where you could say the rest is classified, it is this. It's a story that kind of emerged in the late 40s. It's never gone away. There's been a recent resurgence of it. It's been the source, as you just suggested, for kind of fiction movies, sci fi, right from the 50s through to now. It's had a massive impact on popular culture. We'll be looking a little bit how fact and fiction intertwined. It's the roots of kind of lots of ideas about conspiracies in the deep states. And yet for all the wildness around it, it is actually rooted in something quite real. And particularly what I think we should look at, which is real classified spy programs and I think that in my mind is disappointed.

[David McCloskey]

I'm usually excited by that idea, but I'm now terribly disappointed about the direction the series is going and I feel ashamed for wearing my hat Now. Gordon, on top of all of it.

[Gordon Carrera]

Though, the aliens may or may not feature, but we are actually going to look at this through the lens of classified spy programs run particularly by the US government, but perhaps others as well, and the Chinese government and recent stories about Chinese top secret programs. So I think, you know, there is definitely a contemporary resonance to this and there's also, there is a genuine element of COVID up because I think one of the problems is that the US Government particularly has sometimes covered up some of these classified programs and what it's doing when it comes to these things, which in turn has fueled the belief that there is some deeper secret that's being covered up.

[David McCloskey]

It is interesting to look at the story of I guess UFOs or UAPs. UNIDENTIFIED we should get the acronym right up front. Which is it? Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.

[Gordon Carrera]

Phenomena, yeah, sometimes Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

[David McCloskey]

And I think because some of these have been spotted in the water, they decided to change that. But it is interesting, isn't it, that at the heart of so much of the lore around this phenomenon is the intelligence community is the sort of secretive parts of the Air Force, the CIA, and as we'll see, even, even the Chinese intelligence community. It is, it's interesting that there is this real kind of spy backbone to so much of the lore around this and in the reading that I so eloquently did, and by the way, I don't know who is editing the Roswell Daily Record, Gordon, but I think I would have some suggestions for tightening that prose. But the newspaper article I read, the Roswell incident, I mean, I guess maybe that is the place to start in the New Mexico desert with probably a little green man in a spandex spacesuit.

[Gordon Carrera]

Not quite, but close.

[David McCloskey]

Oh, darn it.

[Gordon Carrera]

So, yeah, Roswell is a good place to start. It's one of the most iconic famous mysteries and UFO incidents. But as we'll see, there is something interesting that was going on around Roswell at the time. So let's go back. It's early summer 1947 and WW William Mac Brazil is a rancher working near Corona, New Mexico. June day, he and his 8 year old son see something strange in the middle of nowhere. Now, he's in a hurry that day and he doesn't take a closer look, he just leaves it. So that kind of suggests one thing, but Then a few weeks later, on Friday, 4th of July, he goes back to that site with his wife, Independence.

[David McCloskey]

Day, he goes back.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's a good point. Yes, there's a link there.

[David McCloskey]

I'm gonna draw connections, sort of questionable connections between things throughout this whole series. Okay, that's.

[Gordon Carrera]

So he goes back Independence Day with his wife and 14 year old daughter to take a closer look at what was there. Now, already it's a little odd because first time around he'd seen something, but it wasn't interesting enough for him to actually go look at it. But now this time, something has drawn him back to take a closer look. What is that? That's drawn him back?

[David McCloskey]

David, what's the X Files music? I actually should have had that. I should download that on my phone so I can just play that at.

[Gordon Carrera]

Rand, not the aliens calling it, I suggest. But it's what's happened in between those two dates. Because in between the two dates, something happened called the Arnold Incident. June 24, 1947, Kenneth Arnold, an experienced pilot, is flying a small private aircraft over the Cascade Mountains in Washington State. Around 3pm he sees a flash and nine objects in the sky. Now, he says, although this is his description, does change a bit over time, that these are silvery or metallic, about 100ft long and moving together in formation in incredibly fast, faster than the speed of sound, faster than the aircraft at the time, in a kind of shape of a boomerang. Now, he describes their movement, I think slightly strangely, as like a saucer skipped over water. Not quite sure what that looks like, to be honest.

[David McCloskey]

Like a tea saucer that you flung across a body of water.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, I guess that's what he means. But from that comes the newspaper headlines about flying sources. It's kind of strange, LinkedIn. But that starts to trigger a flood of sightings. And you know, there'd been some before. So if you go back to World War II, pilots are sometimes seeing strange things in the sky and they call them Foo Fighters.

[David McCloskey]

Good band.

[Gordon Carrera]

A very good band.

[David McCloskey]

Dave Grohl, friend of the pod.

[Gordon Carrera]

Dave Grohl, friend of the POD yeah, you're welcome to come on sometimes, Dave, and tell us what you think about UFOs. But it's interesting, isn't it, because the sightings are really taking off now at the start of the Cold War. And I think the context again is kind of interesting because you're in an era of technological advancement. But also you've had things like the V1 and V2 rockets coming out of Nazi Germany. You've had the US developing the Atom bomb. So suddenly there's a sense that new technologies are possible and you've got the kind of Cold War competition. So you've got a kind of, I think, quite heady mix of things going on there, I'd suggest, in this period. And so suddenly this Arnold incident explodes the idea of, are there flying sources? Is there something in the skies? And it's after that that Matt Brazel goes back to the ranch in New Mexico and takes a closer look at what he'd seen a few weeks earlier. So already you got that kind of context for what he's seeing now. He describes finding a material that was lightweight, consisting of items resembling bamboo type, square sticks, metallic reflecting paper, tin foil. Bit like your hat, David.

[David McCloskey]

It's actually a replica of the Roswell debris. Yeah, exactly.

[Gordon Carrera]

You've mirrored it perfectly. And he vaguely recalls finding a small black box, like a weather instrument. No words written on it, but the tape. So there's tape around it and had pictures of flowers, which is kind of weird in itself.

[David McCloskey]

An alien crafting project that has collapsed into the New Mexico desert.

[Gordon Carrera]

And there's a kind of smoky gray color and it's in about a kind of scattered, an area of about 200 yards in diameter. So the following morning, he's in town to sell some wool, goes to see the sheriff, and he whispered confidential, like that he might have found some kind of flying disc to the sheriff.

[David McCloskey]

So good trade. He's using good tradecraft. Proper tradecraft, yeah.

[Gordon Carrera]

Talks to the sheriff, says, I found a flying disc. So the sheriff then gets in touch with Roswell Army Airfield, which is nearby. Base intelligence officer, we'll come back to him. Jesse Marcel, along with a plain clothed counterintelligence corps officer are dispatched to the ranch to inspect the material. They gather it up, put it into their vehicle. It's not too much, obviously, if they can gather it all up, take it away to the base. Now, this is where the story gets a bit out of hand, because the base commander has been reading all this stuff in the news about flying saucers. So quickly and without consulting anyone, he gets his press officer at the base to put something out. And the press officer issues a press release saying the Army Air Force had recovered a flying disc.

[David McCloskey]

It's probably kind of boring down there, right? I mean, this is. This is one of the most exciting things that is going to happen is the potential recovery of a flying disc. Slash, a bunch of tinfoil, and a box covered in floral tape. So I guess I kind of understand the incentive here. He's looking for some excitement, right?

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah.

[David McCloskey]

This is exciting.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. I mean, if you're a press officer and you want to get press for Roswell, this is probably the way to do it, isn't it? Is to kind of go, we found a flying disc at that moment and it worked.

[David McCloskey]

It worked. Here we are. Here we are.

[Gordon Carrera]

So the newspapers go nuts. The Roswell Daily Record runs a headlined article, RAAF captures flying saucer on ranch in Roswell region. And of course the story is as far as anything can go viral in 1947, this goes viral. I think it gets picked up pretty fast.

[David McCloskey]

So up to this point there's obviously there is sci fi, there's novellas, there's pulpy stuff in the 30s and 40s. Is the flying saucer the visualization that we have of an alien aircraft as a saucer, is it from this or does it predate? That's a good question because I'm just trying to. I'm thinking in the War of the Worlds. I don't actually remember there being like a saucer type shape referenced.

[Gordon Carrera]

I think that comes from this period.

[David McCloskey]

Admittedly I didn't reread that for this. I just watched Independence Day and they kind of have a saucer like thing going there.

[Gordon Carrera]

So I think that the kind of notion of flying saucers and discs, that's this.

[David McCloskey]

That's this.

[Gordon Carrera]

That's. Yeah, that's from this. But quickly, at the air base, particularly at the 8th Air Force at Fort Worth, Texas, Brigadier General Roger Ramey, who's the commander there, intervenes because he can sense that this is kind of getting out of hand. And he's the one who's ordered the debris to be flown to headquarters for inspection. Now upon viewing it, he and his staff recognize elements of it. So he holds a press conference saying it's all a misunderstanding, it's a weather balloon.

[David McCloskey]

Which does seem like a very plausible explanation given the debris. Too plausible, perhaps one might say.

[Gordon Carrera]

And you are right to be skeptical about his description because we will come back to the fact there is already a cover up going on here. So he basically tries to kind of kill the story. And the Roswell Daily Record prints a follow up story that reads General Raimi empty's Roswell saucer. Which I think is kind of. That's a better headline. That's a good sub.

[David McCloskey]

That is, yeah, the Daily Records picking up there game here throughout the story. By the way, this has to have been like the most exciting time to work at the Roswell Daily Record. These journalists are like, this is Living the dream. Gold mine. Yeah, exactly.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. And there's another piece I think the next day, harassed rancher who located saucer. Sorry. He told about it. Which could be, you know, misconstrued either way. It could be like, sorry because there's nothing in a weather balloon. It could be sorry because now I've got the power of the state. Now what's interesting, and this is I think really interesting, is that then the Roswell story basically disappears for 30 years. So they effectively kind of kill the story at that moment. And there's very little record of it again until the late 70s, even though there's lots of talk about UFOs and mysterious sightings in the intervening period. Roswell is kind of forgotten.

[David McCloskey]

It's not like the hub of the kind of lore.

[Gordon Carrera]

No. So it only emerges again in the late 70s and then in a kind of much wilder form because at that point there will be the claim that there was a cover up and that General Ramey failed to disclose some of the things that have been found in the ranch. Even more, David, there will be claims that alien bodies were pulled from the wreckage of the flying saucer.

[David McCloskey]

All right, well, maybe there, Gordon, with charred alien bodies being yanked from a saucer outside of Roswell, New Mexico. We take a break and when we come back, we'll see what actually was covered up in the Roswell incident.

[Gordon Carrera]

See you after the break.

[Rory Stewart]

Hi there, Rory Stewart. Here from the Rest is politics. I just wanted to tell you that we have now released the first episode of our miniseries on the real J.D. vance. Here's a clip.

[David McCloskey]

If Donald Trump dropped dead, this guy is automatically president.

[Gordon Carrera]

How is become what he's become from this background?

[David McCloskey]

I'm sitting in the back of this police cruiser. They've just arrested my mom. The relief of having survived another day.

[Rory Stewart]

This is a story about something which we don't often talk about in America, which is class.

[David McCloskey]

Trump. I think that he's leading the white working class to a very dark place. I'm a never Trump guy. I never liked him.

[Rory Stewart]

But in the end, the main thing you need to understand about JD Gantz is given the choice between his intellectual statements and power, he chooses power every time.

[David McCloskey]

I was wrong about Donald Trump. We're seeing migrants kidnap our dogs and cats.

[Rory Stewart]

He needs to prove absolute loyalty.

[David McCloskey]

I think the election was stolen from Trump.

[Rory Stewart]

But there's a bigger story, which is the story about this whole alt right movement. Vance does not exist really without Thiel, either financially or politically because this guy.

[David McCloskey]

Believes that America should be led by.

[Gordon Carrera]

A monarch, which of course Trump believes as well.

[David McCloskey]

He sees him, frankly, as a future king because he says Vance can tell the story of America.

[Rory Stewart]

And in doing so, he crosses the cusp into a whole new vision of the world, at the center of which is not democracy, but the CEO, the authoritarian, the monarch. You can hear episode one right now. Just search. The rest is politics. Wherever you get your podcasts.

[David McCloskey]

Welcome back. We have left you on, of course, the cliffhanger of charred alien bodies being covered up by the US Government at Roswell. But Gordon, as you have said, essentially from the late 40s until the 70s, the sort of Roswell incident goes quiet. But then a participant in the original cover up, I guess we'll say, pops up and starts, I guess, the modern lore around Roswell and aliens, isn't that right?

[Gordon Carrera]

That's right. Jesse Marcel, who we mentioned earlier, one of the people who'd recovered the wreckage back in 47, he claims the weather balloon explanation had been a cover story and that there had been a retrieval of an object which had been an extraterrestrial spaceship. And there's more because also around that time, claims emerge that there were multiple crash sites around Roswell in the kind of broader area, not just one. And the debris included exotic metals with hieroglyphics and fiber optic like materials. And crucially, this is where for the first time the aliens appear. Because there are claims that among the things that were recovered were the bodies of extraterrestrial creatures. And now they're described as humanoid, with features like forefingers, bald heads and hairless bodies, wearing one piece suits which were shiny, silvery gray or grey in color.

[David McCloskey]

It's wearing like a spandex unitard, basically as it's flying the saucer.

[Gordon Carrera]

Roswell and their bodies have been secretly taken to a morgue. Now, some of the accounts also talk about alien autopsies, the bodies being transported to Fort Worth or Wright Field. The number of bodies recovered varies. There's talk of witnesses being silenced.

[David McCloskey]

Is this all coming from Marcel or is it.

[Gordon Carrera]

It just, it's going to be multiple places. So this is really interesting because I think at this point, suddenly Roswell comes alive again. Now, I don't want to suggest this is all influenced by popular culture, but what film comes out in 1977 by Steven Spielberg, Close Encounter, the third kind classic. So I feel like it's in the air again for another reason at this point in the late 70s, the idea of alien encounters. And also at this period, kind of mid late 70s, it's also a more conspiracy Minded, period, isn't it, when it comes to government coverage.

[David McCloskey]

Watergate has just broken Church Pike. There actually is a lot of, I guess, actual cases where the CIA, the intelligence community more broadly, was doing things, I guess, in the name of American national security and kind of ensuring that the public knew nothing about them. And then all this is coming out, you know, heart attack guns and domestic surveillance and all this kind of stuff has popped out in the mid-70s.

[Gordon Carrera]

So the idea that the government could be doing things nefariously and try and keep them secret and have conspiracy, you know, that is now suddenly more resonant in the culture at this point when these new allegations comes out. So a book comes out in 1980. Witnesses come forward. We'll kind of look at those witnesses a bit more detail. This talk about Area 50, which is where the spacecraft have been taken and being reverse engineered. So it's definitely entering into popular consciousness. So there. Roswell is now kind of this thing. In the 90s, though, a congressman Steve Schiff, asked for a report which requires the US Air Force to kind of go and really investigate it properly and look through the records. Now, pop culture is also playing a role here because 1993, one of the great series, I think, comes out, the X Files. You're too young, aren't you, to watch Mulder and Scully and to have a thing about them, weren't you?

[David McCloskey]

I am. I am too young, Gordon. My parents watched the X Files pretty regularly. I remember my dad and my uncle talking about it a lot on vacations. I did want to play the X Files theme music whenever we mention aliens over the course of the series, but was told by our producers that that might violate sort of copyright. We're making it to some legal. Legal troubles. So I'm not doing that. What will be a theme throughout this story, particularly as we get toward the end, is the idea that even among members of Congress, there's an interest, I think, in investigating these incidents. I don't know if we'd want to say that conspiracy theories have seeped all the way into the upper echelons of our government. But, I mean, there is. There's a lot of interest in these kind of ufo, UAP incidents on the part of members of Congress.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. And they're going to drive some of. It's a really interesting story. So, of course, the X Files is about Thebes, though. It's the Phoebes. It's the Phoebe paranormal investigators. One skeptical, bit like us. One skeptical and one believing. In 1994 and 1995, two big US Air Force studies come out which have looked into Roswell in detail. So no sign of UFOs or aliens or autopsies, but there had been a cover up. So this is what's interesting about it. And what was that cover up? Well, General Ramey in his press conference has said it was a weather balloon. Now that is half true, but he had effectively misled people about what it really was and had withheld details because it was part of a classified program codenamed Project Mogul. It's quite a good name.

[David McCloskey]

That's a good name.

[Gordon Carrera]

So Project Mogul was a top secret program ran 1946-49 and it used high altitude balloons to act as a long range detection system for Soviet nuclear detonations and missile launches. So I think this is interesting because we are in the era, aren't we? Going back to another one of our previous series of Klaus Fuchs and the fear that the Soviets are developing nuclear weapons and missiles and the US being desperate to find out about what they might be up to. And it turned out that the idea was you could put, put on the, on the balloons a machine which could detect acoustic sound waves which would be generated by a launch of a missile or an explosion in the upper atmosphere. And then an NYU graduate student working under contract for the Air Force made a breakthrough to find out that you could use polyethylene to make the balloons, which means that it got to a much higher altitude because they're so light. And that means they can carry kind of several tons of up to 170,000ft. So that means you can suddenly put them up high and carry lots of kind of cameras, probe sensors on these balloons. And Mogul was one of these programs. And it starts flying in June 1947.

[David McCloskey]

Now, auspicious timing.

[Gordon Carrera]

Auspicious timing because as you may remember, that is the month of the Roswell incident. When Mac first see something in the desert is June 47. So the idea was these big balloons and sometimes, you know, the idea was to have a kind of trail of them strung over 600ft, sometimes going individually with all these payloads, all this equipment and components, including foil wood and tape. And some of the tape featured symbols such as arcs, flowers, circles and diamonds, often pinkish in color.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, which meant they were getting tape from like a desk at the base and using it to like Jerry rig components together. Right. I mean, it was a U.S. air Force crafting project.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, that's right. And it's a big project because they're kind of transport and sea Vessels to pick up the balloons and the equipment from them run out of airfields in the US and the Pacific. And now it only lasts for a few years because eventually they realize you can use seismic detectors to detect it, explosions and missile launches in the ground, and that's going to be far more useful. But for a while, it ran, and it was very, very secret because they're worried about Soviet nuclear weapons. You know, the technology involved is secret. So very few people were told about it. Only a few US Air Force officers knew the whole project. The academics who were involved in it were told it was just weather balloons. But one of the problems is it becomes quite hard to hide the balloons.

[David McCloskey]

I mean, there's a big thing, giant.

[Gordon Carrera]

It's a giant, giant balloon floating in the air. And so what happens is that they're often mistaken for UFOs in those days. And there's something called the Mantell incident in 1948. Now, this is a kind of tragic one because on the 7th of January, 1948, a Kentucky army airfield gets a report from highway patrol about reports of an unusual object, circular, 250 to 300ft in diameter, moving with a pretty good clip in a westerly direction. Four F51 Mustangs, scrambled, one piloted by Captain Thomas Mantell, approached the object. Now, Mantell climbs to 15,000ft, but it's still above him because, you remember, these balloons fly high. So he climbs to 22,000ft. His wingmen don't follow because they know that, you know, they haven't got the oxygen equipment to kind of deal with that. But once he gets to 25,000ft, Mantell blacks out from no oxygen, and his plane just spirals down to the ground and crashes on a farm near the Kentucky border with Tennessee. Now, it's going to later emerge that what Mantell was chasing in the air was another balloon. But this one's slightly different from the Project Mogul one because it had a basket and some cables attached to it. So it looks like this was part of something called Project Skyhook. And the idea of Skyhook was that you could then use an aircraft to swing by and use a hook, hence the name Skyhook, to hook up whatever the payload is that's being carried from that balloon, hooking around the cables in the basket to pick it up midair or somewhere else or the ground.

[David McCloskey]

The, I guess, operation I'm thinking of was in the ground, early 60s, I think. There had been a Soviet, like sort of research facility in the Arctic that had been abandoned. And some CIA officers I think were sent in to have a look, and they were extracted in something, I think it was called, like Operation Cold Feet or something like that. Also good code name game there, where they basically, like, would fly a plane over that has a giant hook on it, and the person on the ground is wearing an apparatus that allows them to be sort of scooped up by the hook. And the plane never has to land because presumably, I guess, at this facility in the Arctic, they weren't able to actually land the plane. And then the person gets scooped up into the air and taken off, which sounds a bit jarring, but very useful if you're trying to get someone out of somewhere very quickly and you don't have a proper airfield.

[Gordon Carrera]

And crucially, this is also used in one of the Batman films, isn't it, that they use a skyhook.

[David McCloskey]

Yes, he's extracted from Hong Kong, I believe.

[Gordon Carrera]

But I think the idea was that they could use Skyhook to collect the material from the balloons as well.

[David McCloskey]

Like the balloon drops it and the plane comes and picks it up midair.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah, exactly. And a bit like Skyhook in that Arctic operation will, you know, pick up a person. In this case, they can use Skyhook to pick up the kind of payload from one of these kind of secret balloons that have been floating around.

[David McCloskey]

I think that's also how the film was collected from some of the very first few generations of spy satellites, because they were actually. I mean, there's actually film up in the satellite that you need to collect, to develop, to actually look at the imagery. And I think the satellites would essentially drop the payload and it would float down. And if memory serves, it was also captured in a similar. A similar manner before it could, you know, hit the ground ocean to be taken by the Soviets or anyone else.

[Gordon Carrera]

So what you get a sense of here is that at this point in the kind of late 40s, there are just lots of interesting balloon experiments going on in the United States, but which are all pretty secret. And a lot of these are known as Holloman balloons because they come from Holloman Airport Force Base. And what's interesting is they seem to generate especially high number of UFO reports because they're coming in the New Mexico region. And the balloons are flying at about 100,000ft. And there's this way in which they're illuminated during the periods just after sunset and just before sunrise, and they receive sunlight kind of before the Earth. And so the plastic objects appear as large, bright objects against the dark sky. And also the kind of refractive and translucent kind of qualities of the balloons, making them kind of appear to change colour, size and shape.

[David McCloskey]

So that's generating the images that we have of the saucers potentially.

[Gordon Carrera]

Yeah. Now one of the things I think we're going to be is kind of open minded because I don't think it necessarily explains everything, but certainly it explains a lot of the incidents. And what's clear from that US Air Force report in the mid-90s into the 1947 Roswell incident is that Project Mogul is the explanation for the Roswell incident. What's being found matches exactly not a weather balloon, but a Project Mogul balloon which was launched a few days earlier. They even think it's NYU because it was linked to New York University was doing some of the research.

[David McCloskey]

It was the graduate intern on the.

[Gordon Carrera]

Top secret balloon program, NYU flight number four. He said, let's let this one off. Little did he know, know he would start decades of alien conspiracy theories that gets launched number four on the 4th of June 1947. And it does tally very, very closely with the recovery of the elements that we heard about and the kind of talk about the blind disc and all the, the images of it. So. So that is part of the answer of Roswell.

[David McCloskey]

I do want to quibble with the language that you have used so besmirchingly throughout this episode, Gordon, which is cover up. I mean, I guess one man's cover up is another man's protection of a highly classified government program. What are the, the Roswell airfield authorities going to do when they find this stuff? They're not going to come out and.

[Gordon Carrera]

Say, project Mogul project.

[David McCloskey]

This is a Project Mogul balloon. I can, I can tell by the polyethylene and the flower tape that it's one of ours. And oh, by the way, we're using it to monitor for Soviet nuclear tests and explosions. I mean, yeah, so cover up. I think, you know, that's a little uncharitable. I think it's more like properly guarding and maintaining sort of classified information.

[Gordon Carrera]

I'm not going to take any lectures from a man wearing a tinfoil hat is the problem about what the COVID up looks like.

[David McCloskey]

I've actually forgotten that I'm wearing the hat. But we did have reports, Gordon, of charred alien bodies wearing spandex unitards and we haven't yet gotten to the bottom of that.

[Gordon Carrera]

I have not explained that away yet, have I?

[David McCloskey]

You have not managed to explain that yet, so maybe let's leave it there. And when we come back for our next episode in this exciting journey into the world of UFOs and UAPs, we will uncover the truth about those poor, dead aliens and alien autopsies. But, Gordon, we should note that if you don't want to wait, you can Simply go to therestisclassified.com, join the declassified club, get access to all the episodes now, and get all the way to the end, where Gordon will no doubt become a believer in the extraterrestrial, and I will reveal my alien abduction story. So with that, we will see you next time.

[Gordon Carrera]

The episodes, like the truth, are out there. See you next time.