The missing scientists at the centre of a UFO conspiracy

Summary

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Today in Focus: The Missing Scientists at the Centre of a UFO Conspiracy

Podcast Date: July 10, 2026
Host: Nosheen Iqbal
Guests: Phil Tinline (author, broadcaster), David Ambrose (author, screenwriter)

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Overview

In this episode, Today in Focus explores a spate of recent disappearances and deaths among American scientists, delving into the feverish online conspiracy theories tying them to UFO research and government cover-ups. The episode traces the roots of contemporary paranoia back to a British broadcast hoax from the 1970s, examining how fiction, media, and politics can blur the line between credible concerns and mass hysteria.

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1. The Case of the Missing Scientists

Key Points:

• William Neil McCasland, a 68-year-old retired major general and former government lab engineer, went missing in February 2026. His disappearance became national news, especially after having been associated with top-secret UFO-related work at Wright Patterson Air Base—linked to the 1947 Roswell incident.
• At least 11 scientists have gone missing or died under suspicious circumstances in the past few years. This pattern has provoked widespread speculation of an “orchestrated cover-up” or foreign interference.
• Phil Tinline describes the basic plot fueling conspiracy theories: “...what seems to have formed in people’s heads is the idea that these scientists are going missing essentially because they know too much… that’s all connected somehow or another to UFO technology and anti-gravity technology and nuclear scientists.” (04:23)
• McCasland’s personal troubles—including brain fog and withdrawal from work—provide plausible non-conspiratorial explanations for his disappearance, but these are often overlooked by those seeking a grand narrative.

Notable Segment:

“William McCasland retired from his job as an astronautical engineer at a government lab over a decade ago. But his name recently appeared on a list, a list with 10 others who appear to have gone missing or have died in the last few years.” — Nosheen Iqbal (01:56)

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2. Other Cases and Theories

Cases Discussed:

• Carl Grillmayer, astrophysicist at Caltech, shot dead outside his house—presented in the media as a carjacking.
• Nuno Lourero, MIT professor and nuclear scientist, killed in his home.
• Jason Thomas, Novartis chemical biologist—disappeared December, body found in a Massachusetts lake.

Critical Thinking:

• Tinline cautions against linking these disparate events: “...that doesn’t mean to say you should just steam in and answer them with UFOs.” (07:13)
• The challenges of making credible connections in conspiracy theories are highlighted—diagrammatic “red string” links in media (07:33).
• Monica Razor, a scientist involved in “futuristic metals,” disappeared while hiking—another case eagerly absorbed by conspiracy theorists.

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3. Why Conspiracies Take Hold

Cultural Background:

• American culture’s suspicion of its own secretive state dates back to the dawn of the Cold War and the creation of agencies like the NSA and CIA.
• Tinline: “...the whole point about America, right, is America is the rebellion against the Death Star… But it wakes up in 1945 as the most powerful nation... and it creates the National Security Agency and the Pentagon and the CIA, none of which it had had before.” (09:08)

Media Amplification:

• The Daily Mail and other British sources re-popularized the “missing scientists” motif, increasing its reach and legitimacy.

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4. The Origin: "Alternative 3" and the British Hoax

Historical Context:

• The 1977 “Science Report: Alternative 3” British TV special—created by David Ambrose—manufactured a story of missing British scientists being secretly relocated to Mars as part of an international government conspiracy to escape an impending Earth cataclysm.
• The broadcast’s realistic documentary style caused widespread panic; thousands of viewers called in believing the story was true.

Memorable Moment:

“A young man arrived at my door in Hampstead on his bike. He’d come from California...he was convinced that I was telling an essential truth... he was deeply crestfallen when after about 45 minutes, I persuaded him that the whole thing was a made up piece of fiction.” — David Ambrose (16:20)

Ambrose reflects on the intention:

“All I’m prepared to say is there were three alternatives for discussion. The first two were crazy. Forget about them. The third alternative, maybe not so crazy.” — David Ambrose (13:34)

• Alternative 3 inspired books and fed into American conspiracy culture—especially via Milton William Cooper’s “Behold a Pale Horse,” influencing pop culture, rap, and TV (like The X-Files).
• The legend persists as internet memes and new “missing scientist” narratives arise.

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5. From Hoax to Mainstream Anxiety

Conspiracy Theories in Contemporary Politics:

• The “deep state” trope, nuclear secrecy, and UFO cover-ups are intertwined in American political narratives, fueled by figures like Donald Trump and Robert Kennedy Jr.
• Phil Tinline: “...the conspiracy theorists are in charge now... the appetite for useful narratives that are obvious. Balderdash, you know, is right there in this administration.” (27:34)

Dangerous Impact:

• Media diagrams connecting the dots can lend unwarranted credibility to fringe theories.
• Journalists must interrogate the “significance of links,” not just their existence.

On Personal Costs:

• Speculation and misinformation “muddy the waters” for families seeking real answers.

• Tinline compares the current situation to the Sandy Hook conspiracy tragedy: “If it’s a search process, then muddying the waters with nonsense is not going to help you...” (29:47)

• Ambrose’s meta-reflection:

“We are all hardwired, I think, to believe in conspiracies, aren’t we? ...We automatically assume there must be more to what we’re being told.” (30:45)

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6. Reflection and Skepticism

Critical Thinking Takeaway:

• Drawing connections is easy; interrogating them is hard—and essential.
• There is a need to remain skeptical of stories that satisfy our thirst for drama but lack evidence.

Ambrose on the Hoax:

“I think actually it was perfectly healthy because... it was considered a healthy reminder of the fact that we needed to be skeptical and critical of what we were officially fed.” (32:13)

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Key Timestamps

• 00:58 — Introduction of William Neil McCasland’s disappearance
• 02:25 — Timeline of McCasland’s disappearance relative to government UFO disclosures
• 06:08 — Summaries of other scientists’ deaths/disappearances
• 10:11 — Historical surge of conspiracy theories in post-WWII America
• 11:48 — David Ambrose recounts the making and impact of Alternative 3
• 16:20 — Ambrose’s reflections on accidental public panic and personal encounters
• 20:24 — How the Alternative 3 book and meme spread through US culture
• 25:28 — Phil Tinline’s critical analysis: conspiracies thrive on connecting unrelated incidents
• 27:34 — Discussion of the Trump administration and mainstreaming of conspiracy narratives
• 29:47 — Real-life impacts on families caught in the crosshairs of online speculation
• 30:45 — Ambrose on the universal allure of conspiracies
• 32:13 — Arguments for skepticism as a societal good

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Memorable Quotes

• “What seems to have formed in people’s heads is the idea that these scientists are going missing essentially because they know too much.” — Phil Tinline (04:23)
• “Makes no sense. I mean, how can people just vanish off the face of the earth in this day and age?” — David Ambrose (03:23)
• “I think if I was to do something similar again, I’d do something about UFOs, because... 80% of people’ve ever thought about it genuinely believe that they're real.” — David Ambrose (30:45)
• “It’s complicated.” — Phil Tinline on tracing the origins of conspiracy narratives (23:42)
• “If it’s a search process, then muddying the waters with nonsense is not going to help you.” — Phil Tinline (29:47)

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Conclusion

The episode deftly unpacks the interplay between real-life tragedy, government secrecy, media sensationalism, and the seductive simplicity of conspiracy thinking. From the cold facts of missing scientists to the cultural echoes of a British television hoax, the story warns of the dangers in drawing easy connections, reminding listeners to remain skeptical—even as the strange and the unexplained continue to fascinate.

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Transcript

[Phil Tinline]

This is the Guardian.

[Noshi Nikbal]

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[Phil Tinline]

So William Neil McCasland is a 68 year old retired major general. He worked at the Wright Patterson Air base or had in the past. Now that was connected to the so called UFO Roswell Incident in 1947.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Phil Tinline is a writer and broadcaster and he's been following the stories of American scientists making news headlines.

[Phil Tinline]

And on 27th of February this year, 2026, he went, he said goodbye to his wife and he just left the house.

[David Ambrose]

My name is Susan Wilkerson. My husband is missing, okay. And it's been about three hours and

[Phil Tinline]

he left the house without his phone, without his prescription glasses, without any wearable devices. He may have also had with him his.38 caliber revolver and has not been seen since.

[Noshi Nikbal]

William McCaslin retired from his job as an astronautical engineer at a government lab over a decade ago. But his name recently appeared on a list, a list with 10 others who appear to have gone missing or have died in the last few years. Because to some, these cases don't seem random. They're understood as some sort of COVID up.

[Phil Tinline]

He disappeared six days right after Trump announced he was releasing the UFO files. And he's not the only one. If nothing else, there could be a foreign actor involved in a circumstance like this. But it just doesn't add up to

[Noshi Nikbal]

me that they go missing or are found dead. 11 that we know of. What did these scientists know? Is there a threat to national security? Questions that even President Trump is asking.

[Phil Tinline]

What do you think is happening here and do you think that this is connected or totally random?

[David Ambrose]

Well, I hope it's random, hopefully.

[Phil Tinline]

I don't know, coincidence if you want

[David Ambrose]

it, whatever you want to call it. But some of them were very important people and we're going to look at it over the next day.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Could it be true? Or are people falling for an American conspiracy theory that can be traced back to a 50 year old British broadcast?

[David Ambrose]

Makes no sense. I mean, how can people just vanish

[Phil Tinline]

off the face of the earth in

[David Ambrose]

this day and age?

[Phil Tinline]

Answer our questions.

[David Ambrose]

What idiots, Please, where did they go and why? And indeed how what, if anything, was the common factor? Foreign.

[Noshi Nikbal]

I'm Noshi Nikbal. Today in Focus, the mystery that went mainstream and launched an FBI investigation. Phil Tenline, welcome to Today in Focus.

[Phil Tinline]

Thanks for having me.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Now, you're an author and documentary maker specializing in conspiracy theories, and you've looked into these claims that scientists have been disappearing under suspicious circumstances. Can you outline first of all, what it is that people have widely believed has happened to them?

[Phil Tinline]

Well, so what seems to be forming in people's heads is this very dramatic story, not entirely coherent, but very dramatic story where people are involved with some sort of secret UFO work. Now, quite what that means is left, you know, enticingly vague and maybe involved with the nuclear program. So if anybody who is in that sort of situation goes missing, you immediately have what appears to be a story. And so what seems to have formed in people's heads is the idea that these scientists are going missing essentially because they know too much. Either they want a house and they're being killed or they're being kidnapped in order to get the information from them. Yeah, there's scientists that have gotten whacked and or missing and a couple of generals as well. That's all connected somehow or another to UFO technology and anti gravity technology and nuclear scientists. Think how little we know, like the amount of like, yeah, like you and I, just human, just like Americans.

[Noshi Nikbal]

And what do we know about what happened to William Neil McCasland and what did his wife say to the emergency services?

[Phil Tinline]

He was clearly, it would seem, in distress. He had apparently been unusually clingy and down that morning, she said and said he didn't want to go on like this. He'd been withdrawing from some of the work he'd been doing. He was a retiree. But people obviously fade gradually from their work sometimes because he was suffering from what they call brain fog. And so I don't want to speculate about what happened to him, but it would certainly seem perfectly possible that there is an explanation drawn from that evidence which has nothing to do with UFOs.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Can you talk to me about some of the other cases on the missing, the scientists list that people have speculated about?

[Phil Tinline]

There's an astrophysicist called Carl Grillmayer who's shot dead outside his house.

[David Ambrose]

The Caltech campus is in mourning tonight

[Noshi Nikbal]

after a renowned astrophysicist was killed during a carjacking.

[David Ambrose]

Carl Grillemeyer was described as a brilliant

[Phil Tinline]

man, a man who helped us. There's a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist called Nuno Lourero who's killed by former classmates.

[Noshi Nikbal]

47 year old Nuno Luro was a nuclear scientist and engineering professor. He was shot several times in the foyer of his Brookline home.

[Phil Tinline]

Let's get out to wb and there's a chemical biologist at Novartis, the drug manufacturer called Jason Thomas who disappeared in December and whose remains were found in Massachusetts in March appears the body of a Wakefield man missing since December has been found in a lake, Lake Quannapowitz. The medical examiner will determine an official identity and the cause of death, but no foul play is suspected Right now. Now all of these again are stories that open up questions but that doesn't mean to say you should just steam in and answer them with UFOs.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Well, quite, because some people have made a connection to UFO research as to why these people have gone missing. Others think it's another suspicious government plot. And on the face of it, there are individual elements to some of these cases on the list that are strange.

[Phil Tinline]

I mean this is not something that's happened sort of in a quick sequence. And one of the things you often notice about quote unquote, conspiracy theories that are constructed out of lots of what I would say are actually, you know, disparate incidents is that in order to make the construction as rich as you need it to be to have sort of diagrams with scientists faces in circles with lines between them, the red string. Right, right. That actually, you know, you need to cast your net pretty wide in order to have, you know, a sufficient number of people to talk about. So there's a woman called Monica Razor who was working in similar territory, working on what some of the journalism has described as space age or futuristic metals. And so she's on a hike with a friend and goes missing. Two developing news tonight, the search is on for a 60 year old woman missing in the Angeles National Forest. Monica Reza was last seen near Mount Waterman yesterday at about 9am the LA County Sheriff's Department. She had been working with McCasland but that finished, you know, over a decade ago. Well, why is this happening now? Therefore, Right. There are more and more mysteries confounding not only the disappearance of General Neil McCasland but the mystery of this scientist and potentially others as well. The other intriguing twist in this, so, you know, the sense that these people are connected is very easy to establish. But actually, you know, the job of an investigative journalist is not to make connections. We can all do that. The job is to check whether those connections mean anything.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Phil, what is it about these stories that has sparked such feverish speculation?

[Phil Tinline]

Well, I think what sparked the speculation is just this idea that these people know something that we don't, that a secret is being kept from us. And that's something that has been playing through American culture ever since the end of the Second World War. That's at the root of it. It's the moment in 1940, but we're not being told. Yeah, the moment in 1940. Because the whole point about America, right, is America is the rebellion against the Death Star. The Death Star being our. But it wakes up in 1945 as the most powerful nation the world has ever seen. And it has the most powerful weapon the world's ever seen. And it creates the National Security Agency and the Pentagon and the CIA, none of which it had had before. And so this kind of high wall goes up around the American security states. And there's this sense for many people in America that the country is becoming something that it wasn't meant to be, that it's becoming this very secretive, centralized power sort of machine. And that just generates all of this stuff, really. That's when the UFO stuff starts kicking off.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Phil, you've obviously looked at this as a culture, as a phenomenon for quite some time. I mean, if you were to draw your own red string theory as to where it kind of emerges, what do you look at?

[Phil Tinline]

Well, it's very curious because one of the media outlets that's done most to popularize this story recently is a British one, even though this is entirely an American subject.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Right?

[Phil Tinline]

It's the Daily Mail, actually. If you look back, you can see another British source which is pointing towards this story as well. If you go back nearly half a century to 1977, there's this very curious documentary called Science Report, which investigates something called Alternative 3. At that point, too, scientists are going missing. And so this science program made by Anglia TV in East Anglia sets out to investigate what's going on. It seems to be at first something to do with what used to be called then the brain drain. People going to work in America because you get paid better. And Britain was falling apart, supposedly in the 70s. But then they discover something much more sinister.

[David Ambrose]

Those people you've just seen have all lost someone close to them. A relative, a colleague, a friend lost in mysterious circumstances. It opened with Tim Brinton, who was of course, known as a newscaster.

[Noshi Nikbal]

This is David Ambrose. He was behind this special broadcast of Science report in 1977. He's 83 years old and still working

[David Ambrose]

today, looking very gravely into camera, saying, we bring you this special edition of Science Report tonight. We were looking for patterns. Who were the people leaving this country? What were their reasons? And what were their feelings about it after, afterwards? Because four stories we've been working on separately have suddenly come together in an extraordinary way that suggests this big conspiracy that we are now going to investigate. The first story was basically the brain drain.

[Phil Tinline]

Like many others in her position, Anne Clark is contemplating joining the brain drain and leaving the country. Well, isn't Crowley.

[Noshi Nikbal]

It's entirely a question of facilities.

[Phil Tinline]

I mean, look.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Look at the mess I'm supposed to work out of.

[Phil Tinline]

Look at this building.

[David Ambrose]

Where were certain very important, significant, capable scientists disappearing to. They weren't just disappearing in a sinister way. They were apparently taking jobs and going off somewhere, but nobody could then trace them. We had a couple on whose son had gone on some experimental project in Australia, but they found out after about a year that he wasn't where he was supposed to be at all and the letters were faked. And there was this friend of hers going out there. And we said, why don't you look up over Ryan and give him a surprise? He got there. The address we'd given him, they never heard of Brian. All these stories that kept coming together built up into, well, what looked like a sort of, well, conspiracy, frankly. Why were all these people disappearing and what was really going on? All I'm prepared to say is there were three alternatives for discussion.

[Phil Tinline]

The first two were crazy.

[David Ambrose]

Forget about them.

[Phil Tinline]

The third alternative, maybe not so crazy.

[David Ambrose]

Can you tell me what it was? We put the whole thing. The whole thing was a succession of talking heads who didn't quite have all the answers. Then a newspaper report which been suppressed, which added something more. And little by little, this picture came together of what was really going on.

[Noshi Nikbal]

And so where were the scientists going?

[David Ambrose]

They were going to Mars. International Cooperation in Space. A space shuttle. But shuttling what to wear, first of all, to the moon, where this gigantic rocket was being built. Of course, you could get off from the moon a much bigger ship with much less power than you could from Earth. So the whole of the NASA project and what seemed to be the competing Russian space projects were actually just ferrying the necessary materials from Earth to build this gigantic rocket on the dark side of the moon, invisible from Earth, that since the 50s, America and Russia had been working together to build essentially a Noah's Ark to get as many people off of the Earth as was possible before the cataclysm, which everyone knew well, everyone at the highest levels of government knew was inevitable, but of course had to be kept from the public because they would be absolutely terrible panic and riots if it were ever to get out. We believe that that operation is Dr. Carl Gerstein's alternative. 3. It has been our task, however, to present the facts as we understand them and to await the response. Good.

[Noshi Nikbal]

And the aftermath of that program airing must have had quite. Must have been quite a sensation.

[David Ambrose]

How did people respond with alarm when the program came to an end? Within seconds, all television companies switchboards were jammed with anxious viewers saying, is this true? Is this true? Newspapers. Newspaper switchboards were jammed, Even police stations were getting calls and there was nothing on any other talk show for about 10 days.

[Noshi Nikbal]

And did you have people approaching you, you know, just wanting to know more about these missing scientists?

[David Ambrose]

Well, one day a young man arrived at my door in Hampstead on his bike and he'd come from California and he said he trekked all across to London to find me because he was convinced that I was telling of an essential truth. I was getting an essential truth out to the world, came in and sat down with my wife and me and we chatted. And he was deeply crestfallen when after about 45 minutes, I persuaded him that the whole thing was a made up piece of fiction.

[Noshi Nikbal]

A piece of fiction? Yes, that's right. David Ambrose, a novelist and screenwriter, made the whole thing up and pulled off one of the greatest hoaxes in British television history.

[David Ambrose]

Well, it was desperation in the first place. I was under contract to write three plays for Anglia Television. I delivered two and was completely stuck for the third. I was scratching around for an idea and I began to wonder about disappearing people, how many people totally disappear in this country every year and where do they go? And then the idea hit me. Do it as a documentary, even more than a documentary, a sort of emergency broadcast, almost a special edition of a program.

[Noshi Nikbal]

And David, how did you respond to the viewers and to the coverage the programme was getting?

[David Ambrose]

Well, absolutely wicked. Glee. Wow. Imagine. This is fun. I mean, thank God it did no harm to anybody, but simply on an artistic level, if you like, it was a triumph.

[Noshi Nikbal]

And so, straight from the Orson Welles playbook where he duped America with his War of the Worlds broadcast in, you created Alternative 3?

[David Ambrose]

Well, I didn't in any way steal it from him. In fact, I worked with Orson in 1968 and it was in 76 that I came up with this idea and wrote it. And it didn't even cross my mind that I was doing something similar to Orson's famous radio broadcast

[Phil Tinline]

spreading everywhere.

[David Ambrose]

Coming this way now, about 20 yards to my right, ladies and Gentlemen, due to circumstances beyond our control, we are unable to continue the broadcast from Grover's Mill.

[Phil Tinline]

Evidently there's some.

[David Ambrose]

Ah, so if there was an unconscious sort of nudge, possibly, but it. I wasn't certainly conscious of it. We became actually very good friends and in fact he gave me a wonderful series of one on one lessons about screenwriting, which is completely fantastic. We got on very well. And I asked him one time, I said, you know, when you did that radio program in 1938 and you panicked America. I'd seen film of him being interviewed afterwards, looking very solemn and regretful and apologetics. I had no idea it was gonna have this kind of him, you know. And I said, did you mean that? He said, nah, of course I didn't. I knew what it was gonna do, that's why I was doing it.

[Phil Tinline]

When we did the Martian broadcast, we were fed up with the way in which everything that came over this new magic box, the radio, was being swallowed. We wanted people to understand that they shouldn't swallow everything that came through the tap.

[David Ambrose]

If you're writing or broadcasting or anything, or making money, you like to have an impact.

[Noshi Nikbal]

This Alternative 3 theory, which is a televisual hoax from the 1970s, you know, it took on a life of its own after it aired. What has that 50 year journey looked like?

[Phil Tinline]

It's been broadcast in multiple countries in, in Australia, New Zealand, Iceland, Canada, but not in the United States. The way it finds its way to the United States is that because it's a big sort of splash, somebody says, let's do a tie in book. The job falls to a journalist called Leslie Watkins. He writes the book and he's then able to refer to the TV show. And so once you start to have that kind of pattern, that more complex pattern of a book talking about a TV show you haven't seen, that starts to add sort of, you know, Erzat's credibility to it. Obviously a book can have more detail. There's a suggestion that the reason it was announced to be a hoax was kind of a cover story and all that sort of stuff.

[David Ambrose]

Right?

[Noshi Nikbal]

So he plays it quite a bit in the book.

[Phil Tinline]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And the book then goes, is published in the States and takes off there. And you know, in this period there's this particular figure called Milton William Cooper, who grew up on, on military bases, his dad working there, then in Vietnam. Pretty troubled guy, you know, alcoholism, domestic violence, you know, some, you know, mental health issues, but who becomes one of the great gurus of UFO theory. I can assure you that Alternative 3 is real. The headquarters of the international conspiracy is in Geneva, Switzerland. The ruling body is made up of representatives of the governments involved as well as the executive members. And so he starts to get very involved in it. He puts together a kind of compilation of these things called Behold a Pale horse, an alternative 3. Bits from the book, I think are in there, if I recall correctly. And there's another similar character called Jim Keith, who is an enthusiast for this sort of thing. And he publishes a book called casebook on Alternative 3 with a chapter called Missing Scientists.

[Noshi Nikbal]

So are these like alternative like publishers who are putting these books out or is it just like, okay, I mean,

[Phil Tinline]

so behold, A Pale Horse is supposedly the most shoplifted book in America, which is a kind of particular kind of.

[Noshi Nikbal]

It's a great conspiracy theory on its own, right?

[Phil Tinline]

It influences the X Files, it influences very influential, or it's visibly influential with a lot of 90s rappers. Nass refers to William Cooper at one point, I think, like William Cooper, who

[David Ambrose]

told you the pale horse is the future?

[Phil Tinline]

Would you testify? And then it just sort of mulches down into the culture really, so that it's just there as a sort of set of memes. People may or may not be consciously referring to them, but you see this with a lot of other conspiracy theories. It's sort of the idea of missing scientists just has a kind of resonant kind of history.

[Noshi Nikbal]

And so not, not to go further down the rabbit hole, how do you draw the link between the original 1970s alternative free mockumentary and. And this contemporary conspiracy theory about the missing American scientists?

[Phil Tinline]

When I sort of saw that this missing scientist thing was taking off, it made me think of Alternative 3 and its sort of history. And so I started having a look and lo and behold, of course there are people saying, ah, this reminds me of Alternative 3. Not in the sense of a mockumentary, which has taken us around this kind of chase before. But you know, this is perhaps further evidence of the theory. It didn't take long looking around online to find people saying that.

[Noshi Nikbal]

But Sandy Corcoran says, does DJ think some of these scientists could still be alive and were they moved off planet? Matthew Jones says it's a Modern Day Alternative 3.

[Phil Tinline]

You know, things like Alternative 3, how the government would take these scientists and

[Noshi Nikbal]

reassign them in kind of a witness protection type.

[Phil Tinline]

But what I think this points to as well is the way that, you know, it's not like alternative 3 is the sole cause of this. Had that screenplay never been written? No, One would be saying this today because that's just not how things work. And actually what that does, if you go down that route, is to kind of construct a counter conspiracy where you trace the one secret source of the whole thing. I mean, the whole point about life as against movies, as against conspiracy theories, is it's complicated.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Coming up, Trump orders the FBI to investigate the missing scientists.

[Phil Tinline]

He's dribbling the ball with everything on the line. He's driving down the pitch.

[David Ambrose]

He's facing price hikes and cuts past him.

[Phil Tinline]

Carrier contracts, tries to block him. Oh, he leaves him in the dust. He's at the edge of the box. He cuts past the non stop group chat, trash talk. He clears on goal.

[David Ambrose]

He shoots no unlimited data for $25 a month.

[Phil Tinline]

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[David Ambrose]

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[Noshi Nikbal]

So to come back to, I guess, the current moment, I mean, there is something deeply compelling and alluring to some people about this idea that very clever scientists who know these classified secrets could just be disappeared. How does, when you've looked at conspiracy theories, how does this one particularly hold up in the sense that, you know, is it remotely credible?

[Phil Tinline]

I mean, I don't think it is at all. I think it's, this is absolutely classic case of taking disparate things and drawing lines between them. And once you've drawn the lines, thinking you've done your work, you know, so

[Noshi Nikbal]

finding patterns where there aren't answers, well,

[Phil Tinline]

I mean, we can all find patterns. I mean, you know, I sometimes think if you, if, you know, if I, if I thought about everybody that you had been at university with and everybody that you'd been at school with and everybody who lived in the town where you grew up and every event you've been to and every, et cetera. Right. And I wanted to make a connection between you and, you know, some nefarious thing, you know, the People's Republic of China or whatever, you know, it would not be that difficult. No, the point is to interrogate the significance of the links. And I just don't think that's what's been going on at all. Now, as debunkers have pointed out, there are huge numbers of Americans who have top secret security clearance. And if about 11 have died, well, that's seriously under the average you might expect for a group that big, you might expect 4,000 but nonetheless, the story takes shape because people have got this idea in their heads about the sort of nefarious goings on in the American secret state. The problem is when it starts to find credence in the mainstream media, because people still rightly look to journalists to do their jobs in the sense of checking things and giving things authority. And so what's happened is the Daily Mail particularly has picked up in these stories and has a big sort of base in the US and it's got the diagram with the faces in circles and lines and so on. And that's where you start to get, you know, you do get the caveats in there. You know, many people have asserted without evidence that. Well, hang on a second. If many people have asserted without evidence that, why is it in a newspaper?

[Noshi Nikbal]

The Trump administration has directed federal agencies to investigate whether a series of deaths and disappearances among scientists with high level security clearances are linked. White House Press Secretary Caroline Levin. Hey, Phil, talk to me about the fact that it's not just, you know, these disparate corners of the Internet, it's not just British media. This story has captured the attention of American lawmakers. And I'm thinking specifically about the fact that there is now a federal probe to investigate the missing scientist claim. You know, it's being headed by the FBI. What do you make of that?

[Phil Tinline]

Well, I think one of the things that's happened in America which has made it so this stuff's so fertile is to a certain extent, the conspiracy theorists are in charge now. You know, not everybody in the American administration is a conspiracy theorist, let me be quite clear. But Donald Trump way of thinking and Robert Kennedy Jr. In particular have, you know, talked about, you know, anti vax stuff is a conspiracy theory, effectively, which Robert Kennedy Jr. Talks about. You know, there's been great replacement types, let alone the kind of nonsense about people eating cats in Ohio isn't really a conspiracy theory. It's just nonsense. But, you know, the appetite for useful narratives that are obvious. Balderdash, you know, is right there in this administration. It's part of the way that it does politics. And the other element to this which sits alongside it is this idea of the deep state.

[David Ambrose]

Here's my plan to dismantle the deep state and reclaim our democracy from Washington. Corruption once and for all.

[Phil Tinline]

And corruption it is now. Actually, if you look at the origins of the deep state, that's not what the term meant until basically, Trump gets his hands on it. Once he gets his hands on it, it stops meaning a combination of wall Street, Silicon Valley, the National Security Agency, and certain people on Capitol Hill. And it starts meaning civil servants. It starts meaning this resistance blob of Democrats in Washington who hate everything about Trump and resist it now, as always, probably based on some truth. But the idea that there is this nefarious presence in the heart of power that refuses the democratic will and it want push through its own ideas fits together very nicely with these people won't tell us the truth about the aliens.

[Noshi Nikbal]

Phil. I guess one of the troubling things about this is that, yes, there are people going wild on the Internet about conspiracy theories about this one in particular. But at the heart of this case are real people who have gone missing. And that part isn't a conspiracy. And behind each of those cases are families, loved ones, and some of them are still looking for answers as to what happened to the people who went missing or difficult circumstances in which they died. What impact do you think this kind of thing can have on the people left behind and, you know, for them to be folded into this larger conspiracy theory?

[Phil Tinline]

Well, it's unlikely to be particularly pleasant, you know, if you're already going through either a sort of search process or a grieving process. If it's a search process, then muddying the waters with nonsense is not going to help you. And if you know that your loved one is dead, then people coming up with theories is, you know, we've seen this in recent years is pretty grim. The most notorious example is the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School. You know, where Alex Jones, you know, to his eventual ruin but, you know, started and he has withdrawn this now, but started propagating the idea that the families were making this up. And, you know, that was devastating for those people who had already been devastated. So I do think, you know, you point to some, something really important, that this is people's actual lives trying to do it when someone's grieving and it really doesn't want you to, is something people should just stop.

[David Ambrose]

Well, of course, you know, we are all hardwired, I think, to believe in conspiracies, aren't we? And that's one of the things that help my show work. We automatically assume there must be more to what we're being told. I think if I was to do something similar again, I'd do something about UFOS, because I think 80% of people who've ever thought about it genuinely believe that they're real. I think there's probably something to it. I mean, a scientist friend of mine said to me the other day, do you think. Do you think there's a sort of a very advanced, sophisticated race which is keeping an eye on the earth at the moment and just somehow magically, as it were, pulling things back from the brink when we get too close to extermination? And I said, well, that's possible, but it's equally possible that they're merely observing to see, you know, if we're going to do it as many other civilizations have done it in the course of the universe's evolution. Maybe they're just watching us to see if it always happens the same way or if somebody one day will find a way of averting self extermination. So there's room yet for more of these shows?

[Noshi Nikbal]

I mean, it seems silly to ask, but it doesn't sound like you have any regrets about the hysteria it caused and the impact that it's still having.

[David Ambrose]

No, I think actually it was perfectly healthy because it did a lot of the press about it. Once the panic had calmed down a bit, a lot of the press was simply about, well, about news and communication and so forth and how easy it is to deceive people and how readily they can be persuaded that things are more sinister than they're being allowed to know. And to that extent, it was considered a healthy reminder of the fact that we needed to be skeptical and critical of what we were officially fed.

[Noshi Nikbal]

David, thank you so much for your time.

[David Ambrose]

My pleasure.

[Noshi Nikbal]

That was author and screenwriter David Ambrose and the author and broadcaster Phil Tinline. My thanks to both of them. If you Want to watch Alternative 3 and make up your own mind, you can track it down on a streaming service online that I don't like to plug. However, David's forthcoming book of short stories will also be published later this year, so do look out for that. And if you'd like to delve deeper into this murky world of conspiracy theories, we'd recommend Phil Tinline's book, Ghosts of Iron, the hoax that Duped America and its sinister legacy. And that's it for today. This episode was presented by me, Noshi Nikbal. It was produced by Tom Glasser, May Robson and Hannah Williams. Sound design is by Ross Burns and the executive producer was Eli Block. We'll be back later this afternoon with the latest. This is the Guardian.

[Phil Tinline]

He's dribbling the ball with everything on the line. He's driving down the pitch.

[David Ambrose]

He's facing price hikes and cuts past him.

[Phil Tinline]

Carrier contracts, tries to block him.

[David Ambrose]

Oh, he leaves him in the dust.

[Phil Tinline]

He's at the edge of the box he cuts past the non stop group chat trash talk. He clears on goal.

[David Ambrose]

He shoots mo unlimited data for $25 a month forever.

[Phil Tinline]

Visit your local Boost Mobile store today to get unlimited data with a price that never changes. Boost mobile after 30gb, customers may experience lower speeds.

[David Ambrose]

Customers will pay $25 a month as long as they remain active on the Boost $25 Unlimited plan.