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Matt Ford - UFOs, Government & Politics
1.2k Plays1 year ago
Matt Ford is an Emmy Award-winning Los Angeles-based political activist, influencer, and host of The Good Trouble Show. He is the founder of the Political Action Committee Stand For Better and has produced dozens of hard-hitting political ads for social media with over 20 million video views on Twitter alone. He has published op-eds on the UAP phenomenon, in addition to United States and Russian nuclear policy.
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Transcript
Alien Abductions and Air Force Cover-up
00:00:12
Speaker
They were complex narratives of being taken by alien beings into UFOs on beams of light. The Air Force is trying to cover up with a picture of Venus and the Moon. From my own point of view, I'm going to be very disappointed. If UFOs turn out to be nothing more than visitors from another planet, because I think there could be
Introduction and Interview Setup
00:01:07
Speaker
Welcome back to Disclosure Team. Thank you guys for being here. This is a pre-recorded video, so no live chat today, guys. I'm not going to waste any more time. I'm looking forward to this conversation. This guest today, Matt Ford, is a friend. I consider him a friend. I've had the honor of appearing on his show, The Good Trouble Show. So without further ado, let me bring him in. Welcome, Matt. How are you doing?
00:01:34
Speaker
Vinny, I'm doing well, thanks. I was worried I was going to get punked and Nick West was going to show up on the screen first. So it's nice to see your face. How are things across the pond? Everything is very good this side and I would never do that to you. It would be interesting. It would be a good laugh nonetheless.
00:01:54
Speaker
Anyway, super glad to be here. And yeah, I have to say this is the first time that I've been invited on as a guest. Usually I'm the one doing the interviewing. So I hope I don't mess this up. It's going to be fine.
Matt Ford's Influence in the UFO Community
00:02:08
Speaker
And I mentioned there in the brief intro that I had the honor of appearing on The Good Trouble Show with yourself and Dan last year. That was great. I really enjoyed that. And you've really made quite an impact in the time that you've been
00:02:20
Speaker
you know, visible in the UFO community, especially on UFO Twitter. And, you know, you've really done some great stuff. So, you know, I commend you on that. And I suppose that leads into my first question. In fact, before I go into that, let's take a little, let's take a step back.
Ford's Background and UFO Interest
00:02:34
Speaker
I'd love to know just a little bit of your brief background, if you don't mind.
00:02:38
Speaker
Sure, yes. So let me start off. I am completely new to the whole UAP UFO topic. I'm not a UAP UFO historian. I don't claim to be. Much of what I learn, I pick up by listening to podcasts from people such as yourself. So it's really been a great way to kind of
00:03:06
Speaker
get myself up to speed on this topic, but I have a long way to go.
From TV to Politics and UFOs
00:03:10
Speaker
So yeah, so I've worked in the television business for over 20 years behind the camera, and I guess I was probably in about 2016.
00:03:22
Speaker
I decided to get into more of the politics end of things and formed a political action committee, Stand for Better, where we were producing content, mainly political ads, supporting the Democratic Party. And it was just kind of something I fell into. This happened during the COVID epidemic when things here in Hollywood were shut down.
00:03:43
Speaker
and was a way to sort of do what I felt was supported my political views. And it was great. We quickly became the third largest producer of political content supporting democratic causes on Twitter and in other platforms secondarily. So that really grew. And one of the things that that
00:04:07
Speaker
sort of opened the doors for were developing relationships with folks on Capitol Hill. And that was kind of the beginning of that. It was really kind of before my interest in the UAP subject.
Nuclear Policy and UFOs
00:04:22
Speaker
where the UAP thing really began. So back in the early 90s, when I was in college, I had this sort of bizarre interest in U.S. and Russian nuclear policy and began studying it quite a bit. And it's always was something of interest. UAP side of things, or back then UFOs of course, was something of interest
00:04:47
Speaker
that started when I was about nine years old when Close Encounters, the third kind, was released. And my interest in the UFO topic just kind of came and went every five, six years.
00:05:04
Speaker
I remember what got me sort of interested in it again was I came across Leslie Keene's book. I'm blanking on the title. You probably helped me with that, but it was she had interviewed all of these folks in the military that had encounters with UAP. I'm blanking on the name. Do you remember? I can edit this now. I've got it next to me. It's UFOs pilots in general and all that.
00:05:28
Speaker
It was something like that, right. So I read that book and I actually read that book and I was like, wow, there truly is something to this. And I think it was right around after that that I picked up the John Mack book and that really kind of blew my mind. So, excuse me.
00:05:51
Speaker
So fast forward probably early 2000s and as part of my interest in nuclear policies and then also UFO, I came across Robert Hastings book, UFO and nukes.
00:06:06
Speaker
And that was something, again, I was like, wow, this is really interesting stuff. Again, sort of shelved the UAP topic, began producing political ads. And I guess it would have been probably around this time last year that I decided, you know what, I really want to start looking into this again.
2021 UAP Report and Capitol Hill Reactions
00:06:27
Speaker
And backing up a bit, actually, yeah, rewinding a bit, it was when I first heard about this UAP report coming out of the ODNI back in summer of 2021, that was really what started it all, or sort of reignited the fire of me being interested in this stuff. And
00:06:47
Speaker
And so all of that developed and that report came out. And that right around that time when I decided to really start doing something about it, I decided I'm gonna reach out to Robert Hastings and see if he would be interested in chatting about the nuclear aspect of this. And that really kind of started the ball rolling, did some extensive telephone interviews with him that hopefully I'll release.
00:07:17
Speaker
and not too long after interviewed Bob Salas, Captain Robert Salas, Bob Salas, and David Shandelli. And that really sort of was the beginning of all of that. And then at that point, I decided, you know what, I'm going to reach out to my contacts on Capitol Hill and see if they would be willing to talk. And that was where it sort of took off.
00:07:46
Speaker
Yeah, that's great. Thank you so much. And you mentioned there the June 2021, the preliminary assessment on UAP. Did you have conversations about that specific assessment with any of your contacts on Capitol Hill? And if you did, or what was the kind of tone of it or what were you getting from them? Was there genuine interest from them or were they brushing it off like it was a bit crazy?
00:08:09
Speaker
No, surprisingly enough, one of the things, so I think I had written an article for the debrief. My timeline gets a little bit screwy. Regarding the US Air Force being silent on the whole issue,
00:08:25
Speaker
And my hypothesis for that was that it's mainly driven by the history of UFOs interfering with our land-based strategic nuclear deterrent, but more of a reason for Air Force not to want to talk about it than that.
00:08:43
Speaker
And it was either right before that or right after that that I reached, oh, sorry. I know I tend to jump around a bit. It's my ADD kicking in. So I'd written an op-ed for that on that subject for the debrief. And at that time, I was for Twitter, I was going for the illustrious blue check mark.
00:09:07
Speaker
at that point before Elon bought everything, one of the workarounds to getting your account verified, even though we were a really large account, was writing op-eds. And so I asked around in one of my private groups if anyone knew a certain person in Congress. And someone in my private group said, yeah, actually, I'll introduce you to this person's chief of staff.
00:09:34
Speaker
And I emailed this person and said, hey, I'm interested in writing an op-ed. Would this particular lawmaker be interested in going on the record? And the chief of staff set up a Zoom call. And when the Zoom call happened, I thought it was simply going to be OK.
00:09:56
Speaker
What are you wanting to write about? What are you wanting this person to talk about? Blah, blah, blah. So I hop on the call. It was the cell lawmakers comms person, national security advisor. Then there was a third person who I'm not quite sure who it was. So I hop on the call and tell them who I am and what we do.
00:10:18
Speaker
And I don't remember who it was on the call, said, OK, what do you want to know? And again, I was I was primed for just saying, oh, we just want to write a story about this and was frankly caught very kind of unprepared and and said, OK, you know,
00:10:35
Speaker
This is what was in the report. Is this really occurring? And I'll never forget it, but there were several things that we spoke about. It was about a 10 minute long call. It was a voice only. There were no pictures.
00:10:52
Speaker
Uh, but the the main element that that stuck out was that yes, these things were real It's considered a national security threat, uh that they were being observed on our space-based platforms and the thing that really Kind of threw me the most which was from the national security advisor. Uh, this guy said look we may never understand where all of this stuff is coming from and he he was a
00:11:18
Speaker
the discussion wasn't about a terrestrial source. So after that, I would say probably about a one to two day period. I was kind of in shock. I think it's one thing when
00:11:31
Speaker
when you hear people on UFO, Twitter talking about it or on YouTube podcasts and you know it's real. But then to have somebody on Capitol Hill on this person's staff tell you that it is indeed real and that they're very much aware of it. That was a good bit of shock to be honest. It took me a bit to digest it.
00:11:58
Speaker
I can imagine that. And I also imagine that they're saying this to you after having briefings as well, closed door briefings. So potentially seeing stuff that we, the public haven't seen and may never see. Right.
00:12:11
Speaker
Yeah, the one part of the conversation when the satellite stuff came up, this guy was extremely careful about how he worded it. Obviously, our space-based platforms, ISR stuff, and intelligence surveillance reconnaissance, those are
00:12:30
Speaker
probably the most best kept tightly held secrets. So I knew it was something not to particularly push on. I am aware of the open source stuff as far as satellite platforms, namely stuff that's geared towards missile launch detection, that kind of thing, S-bears and things like that.
00:12:58
Speaker
It was something I knew kind of not to really push too much on, but it was a surprise and it wasn't a surprise. And there was also, and I don't remember the exact, I'd have to go back and look at my notes, but there was also reference to pushback from the DOD to try and
Bipartisan Congressional Efforts on UAPs
00:13:17
Speaker
put this stuff not back in the can. I don't remember exactly how it was put, but it was basically an inference to do what they could to push back on the congressional efforts to get this out in the open and wrestle it away from the DOD. I mean, there's no surprise there to hear about pushback. I think
00:13:37
Speaker
That's just a given with this subject, looking back over the decades, the many decades. So coming from this political background of yourself, how does it feel to see something become such a big bipartisan effort? Because there's not that much from my understanding in the US that brings the two sides together. Is that something that you were surprised about? Is it good? What are your thoughts on that?
00:14:00
Speaker
Well, I think, I mean, obviously, primarily what I do comment about on the Good Trouble Show is mostly political commentary. And politics in America is extremely tribalistic. And it's kind of been heading that way for a very long time. But in many ways it's surprising, but in some it's not. I think that
00:14:30
Speaker
I think that when, so people that sit on these Senate intelligence committees, armed services committees, all those sort of things that deal with the nation's national defense,
00:14:48
Speaker
These folks are clear to be able to see this intelligence product. Obviously, some of this, as many people talked about, could very well be surveillance by China or Russia.
00:15:04
Speaker
But as people like Lou Elizondo and others have spoken about, these same vehicles have been observed going back all the way to World War II when there was no such thing as jet propulsion. So when these folks, I think, see this stuff, it's very clear that it's not made by human hands. Republican representative Tim Perchett has spoken about that.
00:15:30
Speaker
And so I think in general that I would say Congress
00:15:38
Speaker
is probably a bit perturbed by being kept in the dark. And I think probably more perturbed too that the Pentagon seems to, or an element of the Pentagon has seemed to really want to bury their head about this when it's clearly a national security risk. I think it was Senator Kirsten Gillibrand had stated, if you have some submarine that's gone way up into the Potomac and conducting surveillance,
00:16:06
Speaker
You don't want to just go, oh, whatever, and go about your business. You want to find out why it's there, what it's doing, what it wants, what intelligence it's trying to collect, what its capabilities are, what its intent is.
00:16:23
Speaker
And at the end of the day, while I may disagree with my Republican friends, I know at the end of the day, they love this country as much as I do. We may just differ on policies. So really in many ways, it's no surprise that this is a big deal and that they're taking it seriously. And my hope is that it will continue to be a bipartisan issue as it should be. Excuse me.
00:16:49
Speaker
Which is why, by the way, when I do shows or message on the UAP topic, I'm very apolitical about it because it should be apolitical and it should remain that way.
00:17:03
Speaker
Completely agree. And I think you do it absolutely fantastically. Thank you. Yeah, definitely. And we're talking about pushback and different sides and that. Regularly, there's chatter on UFO Twitter by certain naysayers, let's say. And I don't normally I don't usually like to highlight any kind of drama or negativity, but there are certain naysayers that say that Congress has just been duped by a bunch of UFO activists on UFO Twitter. What can you say to that?
00:17:33
Speaker
Oh yeah, you're talking about Green Street and Nick West. By the way, for the longest time I referred to him as Dick West. It was totally by accident. It's my ADD in full effect.
00:17:52
Speaker
The thing you have to understand, these congressional staffers, they all, especially if someone is a Senator's National Security Advisor, they are going to see the same product. They're going to have TSSCI clearance. Not all of them are going to have that.
00:18:10
Speaker
They have to have these clearances in order to discuss security matters, intelligence matters with their lawmakers in order to advise them. I believe it was in McWest that it said something, or maybe it was the other Green Street guy, about
00:18:30
Speaker
that just kind of dumb staffers that know nothing. And that is the farthest thing from the truth. These young staffers, they're overworked, they're underpaid, and they are not going to, let's say you're Lou Elizondo and you're initially going to go talk to a staffer who's then going to brief the senator and then make that connection.
00:19:03
Speaker
waste their bosses' time, a senator or congressman, with an issue that's frivolous. And so I think that's really kind of a straw man's argument that these staffers that work so hard for these folks on Capitol Hill, that it's all fluff. It makes absolutely no sense. And the other thing, too,
00:19:24
Speaker
They're not, these people aren't just going to
00:19:33
Speaker
All of this stuff, you're not going to have any particular lawmaker that's going to, A, do something on a bipartisan level that they're going to stick their ass on the line and walk across the aisle and say, hey, you know, there's this UAP subject and maybe just be a bunch of baloney and nothing happens.
00:19:56
Speaker
It's a serious subject, it's serious enough for them to produce legislation on it that became law, to do so in a bipartisan sense. If this were just something that the people on the left were into and the Republican side wanted to make hay of,
00:20:16
Speaker
that would most likely happen in today's tribalistic environment. But I think that in and of itself tells you to a great deal, the seriousness and the awareness on both sides of the aisle, the people in Congress that are able to view the product and receive these briefings, that this is a really big deal and it is a national security problem. And this is something that it's high time that
00:20:45
Speaker
they need to come clean about or spill the beans on on why this has been kept under wraps for you know for such a long time yeah absolutely i've had a very similar conversation with a few friends about the importance of staffers when it comes to to this subject you know it's they're not just there as minions let's say uh they are a vital part of this and they you know can get this issue up to the
00:21:14
Speaker
to the people that it needs to go to. So I've been taught and told about US politics a lot in the last couple of years and that these staffers are genuinely vital and very important pieces of the puzzle. So I appreciate what you said there.
00:21:28
Speaker
Yeah, sure. And going back to that conference call that I had, these folks knew what they were talking about. This wasn't some guy fresh out of college. And they were very well versed on the subject. They were very aware of the politics at play with the DOD.
00:21:51
Speaker
and, of course, very aware of the reality that what we're talking about is not Russia or China or seagulls. It's a very real thing. There was nothing that I asked that they weren't able to answer in a very informed, quick way. They were very briefed on what was going on with the subject.
00:22:20
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And another thing I suppose that's related to this is the National Defense Authorization Act over the last few years. We've seen UAP related language in the act that's been signed into law every year.
NDAA, Whistleblower Protections, and Historical Disclosure
00:22:32
Speaker
And it almost seems like each year that goes by it's more advanced developed language that really is trying to pinpoint
00:22:40
Speaker
where we can get this information to be able to bring it out or at least let Congress understand some historical significance of what's been happening behind the scenes. So I'd love to know your thoughts on the NDAA and especially this one that just passed in December of 2022, because we're now having this word whistle blowers thrown in there, whether that's in the act or whether that's just kind of this buzzword that's flying around UFO Twitter. But I'd love to hear your views on the NDAA, but also this language that we're now seeing.
00:23:10
Speaker
I mean, I think this is really significant. When I interviewed Robert Salus, that was the first time I had ever heard of these non-disclosure agreements. Excuse me.
00:23:23
Speaker
Not everybody from what I understand has been required to sign them, but he was, for instance. I forgot exactly the details, but he had heard someone else speak about his incident at Momstrom, and therefore he assumed that it was okay for him to speak about it. The thing to understand with these folks, and I have family that has served and continue to serve in the military,
00:23:54
Speaker
When you have a clearance, that in many ways is gold to these people. So there's a huge amount of money that's spent on giving someone or someone obtaining a top secret or TSSCI clearance, the maintaining of it. It costs a lot of money to do that. And that is also that person's,
00:24:19
Speaker
golden ticket for when they decide to exit the military, retire from the military and go into the private contracting world, if they are holding that clearance or a company is holding that clearance for them, that is what guarantees their employability, their future employability. So there's that aspect of it.
00:24:42
Speaker
So if you if you signed a non-disclosure agreement and you're involved in a historical UAP legacy program and you're threatened with if you break that that secrecy oath with losing your secrecy or your your clearance that's
00:24:57
Speaker
That's going to affect how you're going to be able to put food on the table. Not to mention the other aspects of it, such as time in Leavenworth Prison, $10,000 fine, loss of retirement. So these secrecy agreements are significant.
00:25:13
Speaker
And from what Robert Salus had shared, that that was actually fairly common with anyone in the nuclear ICBM world that had these incidents happen where their missiles were shut down, that almost nine times out of 10, they had to sign a secrecy agreement. These folks are not going to break it, obviously, because of the legal jeopardy that they would put themselves in.
00:25:41
Speaker
So the whistleblower protection in the NDAA, I think is significant. Again, I'm not an expert on this or people much more informed about this than I am. But it seems to me that that is a really significant step forward that will allow people, you know, for instance, what I understand is Bob Salus has been called to testify in front of Arrow. Now, as I think everyone here probably knows,
00:26:11
Speaker
part of the whistleblower protection doesn't mean you can go and testify in front of Arrow or testify to their senator or congressman and then go chat about it to the New York Times. Obviously, it wouldn't be Julian Barnes, but maybe somebody else at the New York Times, Leslie Keene or Ralph Blumenthal. But
00:26:37
Speaker
But yeah, my understanding is that it is significant. And I mentioned this, I think, in a tweet. In addition to the political contacts, it's also that we've developed since doing this, we've also developed contacts with folks that are involved in this disclosure process in DC.
00:26:58
Speaker
And that was one of the bits of news, I think it was a week or a week before last, that we broke was that people this month were going and testifying directly to the Aero Director, Sean Kirkpatrick, people that were involved in these legacy UAP programs. And so, you know, so that's pretty significant news that it's opened the door up that
00:27:20
Speaker
people that were involved in these programs feel compelled, which I'm glad they are. Obviously they're doing us a great risk to go and talk to people in Washington because obviously this has been hidden from a great number of people in DC and especially Congress about what's been going on.
00:27:40
Speaker
Yeah, absolutely. And I just brought up the tweet there that says that you can confirm from a source directly about what you just mentioned that people are coming to testify in front of Dr. Kirkpatrick.
00:27:54
Speaker
One thing that I have to ask about, and this is something that comes up with me all the time, I'm lucky enough to have sources in various places when it comes to UFOs and UAP, but a lot of people seem to have a problem with
Confidential Sources in UFO Discussions
00:28:04
Speaker
sources. What is your kind of response to that? Because, you know, I've built source trust and I respect source anonymity.
00:28:13
Speaker
and source protection in general. Do you ever get any pushback on that? You've got to name names, you've got to divulge. Yeah, I think and I can understand that skepticism. The way I look at it is I'm a messenger, I'm putting out information.
00:28:31
Speaker
You can either choose to believe it or choose not to. I'm not here to convince you one way or the other. The viewer decides what they want to take and what they want to set aside. As far as sources go,
00:28:51
Speaker
People that are involved in this stuff in D.C., they often can't speak about it officially. If they're a staffer for a congressman, that person, unless they've been specifically authorized to speak on behalf of that senator,
00:29:10
Speaker
they're not gonna do it. So they may, it's gonna be off the record. So they'll say, okay, you can't say where this is coming from, but this is what is going on behind the scenes. Now, the onus is on people like myself or yourself to vet those sources. Obviously, you don't wanna be talking to somebody that doesn't know what the hell they're talking about.
00:29:35
Speaker
uh and and repeating that information because then it it has no value but but anonymous sources i mean that's that's been something that's been part and parcel of of this sort of thing for a very long time i mean if you go all the way back to Watergate uh deep throat was the anonymous uh source uh to the washington post and i think it wasn't until like 30 years later that that that source was finally revealed to to be who
00:30:03
Speaker
uh to be the I don't know who it was I don't recall but uh but that's just kind of the way uh that's just kind of the way it works and I know I think it was a Jeremy Corbell spoke about this a while back that uh that the way to be trusted with information is to be trustworthy
00:30:23
Speaker
So if somebody that's sitting, a staffer in Congress that deals with national security issues is telling you something about UAP and saying, okay, you can talk about this, but you can't talk about this and all of this is off the record, you respect that because the minute you burn that source, A, that person could lose their job. They could lose their security clearance.
00:30:45
Speaker
And it's just not the right thing to do. So building up that trust takes a while. And as Jeremy Corbell said, you gain trust by being trustworthy.
00:31:03
Speaker
My hope, and I do think that that will be the case, is that you will hopefully in 2023 see more politicians be a little bit more upfront about all of this. Tempershet pointed out, which is very, very true, that if you're a congressman or senator and you go and you view this ISR product,
00:31:26
Speaker
that senator or congressman, they legally cannot talk about that. So it doesn't matter that they're in Congress and they've been elected to that office. If it's classified material, they can't talk about that.
00:31:43
Speaker
So I think in many ways the staffers tend to be the vehicle to get some of this information out without obviously crossing a line that is going to legally jeopardize their well-being as well. Absolutely.
00:32:03
Speaker
I completely agree.
Bipartisan Conversations on UAPs
00:32:04
Speaker
I like the outlook that you've got. And, you know, like I said, I've got sources who have, some have become friends, some are just there if I need them, let's say. And, you know, I've tried to wrangle information out of them. I've thought of every little thing I can and every single one of them respects their TSSCI clearance. They are patriots to the, you know, to the core.
00:32:27
Speaker
I can do nothing but respect that and as much as I want to be a messenger and bring forth all the juicy UAP information at the same time, I would not expect anybody to put their livelihood, their family or anything in their lives at risk for me and that. So completely understand where you're coming from.
00:32:46
Speaker
Yeah, I mean, you really hit the nail on the head. All of these folks, we all love our country, and I would certainly never divulge anything that would jeopardize national security of the United States, and these folks wouldn't either. I mean, there are often times when I do ask questions and they'll just say, I can't talk about that.
00:33:06
Speaker
And and I don't push because I know that that question is pushing the line a little bit further than they're comfortable talking about but but that is how all of this how at present all of this Stuff is entering this sort of public conversation and I do hope it changes because I think
00:33:24
Speaker
I think until that happens, there will be the naysayers that will be skeptical about what I may present or what someone else may present. And that just comes with the territory, frankly. Going back to that original call, it was very clear that
00:33:45
Speaker
that it was a bipartisan issue. And I think that really speaks to the seriousness of the subject in that it is time to have a conversation with the American people about this stuff. And if you have something that is this bipartisan in United States politics, I think that that tells you quite a bit about the gravitas of the subject.
00:34:12
Speaker
I like the way you put that, absolutely. And like you mentioned earlier, you're quite new to this and you've jumped in quite quickly. But from my outside perspective, looking into the work that you've been doing and the content, you've really, in my opinion, grasped onto the right people, the right aspects and that. So I'm really looking forward to what you've got coming
Future Interviews and Developments
00:34:29
Speaker
up. Is there anything or any interviews that you have in mind or that you have coming up that you're able to divulge?
00:34:36
Speaker
Not at the moment, actually. I mean, it's kind of been sidetracked with some other stuff, but I certainly hope that some stuff that we're working on will come to fruition. I'm hopeful that 2023 is going to reveal, bring some significant news to this whole subject. The other thing I want to touch on too is that
00:35:06
Speaker
We really, I think as a nation, as a species, owe a huge debt of gratitude to these folks that have really weathered the arrows and brought this subject forward. People like Lou Elizondo, Chris Mellon,
00:35:24
Speaker
Chris Sharpe, who I think is doing treating at the liberation time, the journalist Chris Sharpe is treating this with the journalistic rigor of the journalists that worked on Watergate. There are a lot of people that are
00:35:43
Speaker
are standing up to the criticism and the shame. Listening to Dr. Gary Nolan, who I'm a freaking huge fan of, I think he's one of the most
00:35:56
Speaker
well-fought, well-spoken individuals on this subject. And I always recommend anyone that's new to the subject to listen to some of the things that he's talked about on various podcasts.
Shame, Skepticism, and Open Dialogue
00:36:12
Speaker
But one of the things he touched on recently in someone's podcast, and I don't remember which one,
00:36:20
Speaker
The shame element is something that's been instilled in us since we were a little kid. You do something bad, your parents say shame on you, and it's such a visceral emotion.
00:36:36
Speaker
And what better way to control the conversation on this subject than to shame somebody about it? And you saw this going all the way back, really beginning in the 50s and 60s and 70s with what went on with the government. If you thought you saw something, you must have a tinfoil hat on or swamp gas or
00:37:05
Speaker
or something like that, any number of excuses that you go, oh, maybe I was seeing something. And you begin to self-doubt. And I think that this whole use of shame, especially in the debunker community,
00:37:26
Speaker
I can understand people being a healthy skeptic. Everyone should be. Don't believe everything I say or anyone says for them. I should always have a healthy skepticism. But I think it becomes a different thing when you're a debunker that is really
00:37:54
Speaker
How should I put this? The underpinnings of it is by shaming the conversation. As opposed to saying, okay, we're going to have this UAP conference in this tiny country that happens to be a member of the UN.
00:38:14
Speaker
So what if they're a tiny country? Let's have this conference. Let's find out what the science, what the evidence is going to be, rather than saying, oh, this is a tiny country. This tells you that the topic is irrelevant. And I think you've seen that, too, going all the way up to people like Neil deGrasse Tyson, who I understand seems to be changing his tune. But you go back and you read the tweets and the comments by Tyson or
00:38:44
Speaker
uh dick west or green street or any of these guys and and you know you really you really there doesn't seem to be a healthy skepticism it seems to be more of an agenda to to uh derail taking this thing seriously so i i think i i be be healthily skeptical but don't you know don't try to bury the conversation in shame and um
00:39:12
Speaker
and going back again to kind of my interest in the subject.
00:39:18
Speaker
I had never had anything happen in my entire life. I'm 54 years old until I started really sorry. Can I just cut you off? I have, I'm literally got to take a bathroom break. I'm so sorry. I'm just making a note. I was like, don't, don't cut him off. Don't cut him off. But I had an extra glass of wine before cause I thought we weren't coming on. I made the note of the time to edit. They're with me. I'm so sorry. No, no, no positive necessary.
00:40:50
Speaker
Right. Thank you for that. Am I too rambly? I'm not used to being the one talking. I love it. Honestly, this is the best thing that I could have hoped for because I keep looking at the clock and I'm like, yes, we hit 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. I was just like, this is brilliant. This is absolutely fantastic. The one thing I was going to say is, we mentioned before about how comfortable you were talking about your own experience.
00:41:17
Speaker
And I don't want you to take this the wrong way. It might be best not to talk about it because the tone of this conversation has been really serious and really, this is one of my, this is one of my favorite interviews I've done in a while. And I don't want anybody to see this. And then at the end you talk about your experience and they go, there it is. He's just a kooky experiencer. That's probably why Lou doesn't talk about his stuff or any of these guys. That's exactly why that happens. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I hear that a lot.
00:41:43
Speaker
Yeah, you know what? Yeah, I won't. I won't touch on that. You know what? I will. I do want to touch on Julian Barnes and Hallman Jenkins. Is that the Wall Street Journal guy? Yeah, yeah. That was next on my list.
00:41:56
Speaker
Okay, cool. Is there a good edit point that you can get out of this last conversation or do you need me to pick up? When I stopped you, when I did, it's because I found a good edit point and I had to come in with them because I had a good edit point. So if I do a few taps on my mic, it'll give me a jolt on the editing suite. Do you wanna come in on this? How do you want me to lead into it?
00:42:22
Speaker
Actually, I'll come in and say I'll talk about pushback in the media and then leading to Julian Barnes New York Times. Okay.
Media Criticism in UAP Discourse
00:42:32
Speaker
Another thing that I noticed towards the end of last year, primarily around the time when we were expecting to see the UAP report release on October 31st, but what we did see were these articles coming from the New York Times, Julian Barnes, and we saw them coming from the Wall Street Journal that almost seemed like they were premeditated to come out at this time, but there was serious pushback and real negativity around the UAP subject. And I'd just like to hear your opinions on those, if you don't mind.
00:42:58
Speaker
Oh yeah, yeah, no, I definitely have an opinion on that. So Julian Barnes of the New York Times, so he has a history of trying to poison the well on this stuff. And this goes back to what Dr. Nolan, Gary Nolan was touching on as far as the shame aspect. Actually, I'm gonna cough and pick that up again, hold on.
00:43:34
Speaker
Do you want to set that up again? Yeah, absolutely. I've just made a note of the time.
00:43:41
Speaker
Now towards the end of 2022, we were expecting the UAP reports to come out from the ODNI around October 31st, which we didn't get. But funny enough, around that time, what we did see were a couple of articles that really stood out from a negative angle. One from Julian Barnes at the New York Times and the other one from the Wall Street Journal. And I just felt that that was kind of premeditated like it was meant to come out that time to really push back on the subject. And I'd really love to hear your opinions on those.
00:44:11
Speaker
Yeah, I, yeah, I, yeah, I'm not fans of either of them. And I think that it was, in my view, a clearly coordinated effort. I don't know who from, what was the department that Lou used to work for, ODNI, or something like that. Oh, USDI. Oh, USDI, yeah, we know the government loves all these acronyms. I am sure, I am,
00:44:39
Speaker
I don't have firsthand knowledge of this at all. No one has ever said anything to me. But I think it is pretty clear that this was some kind of coordinated effort. And I believe it's either Jenkins or the other guy. Julian Barnes? Julian Barnes, yes.
00:45:02
Speaker
uh worked with each other or are at the same publication either Wall Street Journal or New York Times who knows I mean I'm purely all hypothetical there but it it this all touches back on what Dr. Gary Nolan said of this whole thing of um
00:45:20
Speaker
of using shame to control the narrative. Hallman Jenkins, who I like to call Jackass Jenkins, that's just me. I think it was an article shortly after the report was supposed to come out, he said something about, I forgot what the exact headline was, but it was something about that the real national security threat are the UAP crowd, or I forgot how he put it. I mean, you read these things,
00:45:51
Speaker
You know, first of all, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times in the United States, that carries a lot of weight in the political world. Everybody reads that stuff. So if you are someone in the DOD and you see this train heading down
00:46:08
Speaker
the track and you're looking for ways to derail it or slow it down or or or let's just say so doubt uh in the minds of lawmakers what better way to do it or better yet so doubt in the constituents who elected these folks and for the constituents to go oh hey why are these guys spending money on this whole UFO thing
00:46:33
Speaker
What better way to do that than to enlist the guy that is your national security correspondent, Julian Barnes, for instance, in the New York Times, to
00:46:47
Speaker
go to him and say, okay, look, we've given you, you know, I've really helped you out with these stories on Afghanistan or whatever. Now it's time for you to scratch my back. This is what we would love for you to say, hint, hint, wink, wink, nudge, nudge, about this topic.
00:47:06
Speaker
Hallman Jenkins, I think, is on a different level of jackassery, to be honest. I don't know what the hell is wrong with that guy, but just the spewing of what comes out of these folks
00:47:23
Speaker
is, again, I'm no journalist, but I think if I were the editor of The New York Times and The Washington Post, I would, I'm sorry, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, I personally would be embarrassed as an editor to be putting forth that kind of junk journalism. You know, a good example with The New York Times, Ralph Blumenthal, Leslie Keane, and Helene Cooper,
00:47:52
Speaker
From what I understand, when they came up with that bombshell story in 2017 in the New York Times, they had to show backup. They had to provide sources to the editor in order for this article to fly.
00:48:11
Speaker
Julian Barnes, there was none of that in that article that was clearly meant, when you read that thing, it's obvious that he thought that the UAP report was going to come out in the next day or two. Which, by the way, he did the exact same kind of a dick move
00:48:32
Speaker
to be honest, with the previous one as well. So in this last instance, he quoted anonymous Pentagon sources. So my question to the editor of the New York Times is, why is that okay for him to do that and quote anonymous sources and present bunk
00:48:53
Speaker
bunk journalism whereas Leslie keen and you know you You as the editor of the New York Times. Why were you holding? Or as a publication why were you holding them to a different standard than Julian Barnes? I think it's it's in my opinion. It's it's a
00:49:15
Speaker
a clear-cut effort to try and derail this thing as much as they can as a publication. And then on the other side of the coin, you have, I'm going to leave names out here,
00:49:34
Speaker
I don't like naming names because obviously I leave people out. Or as I spoke about, Chris Sharp, who are approaching this in a very
00:49:47
Speaker
in a very ethical way from a journalistic point of view. They're running rings around Hallman Jenkins and Julian Barnes. And frankly, if I were them, I would be embarrassed about what they've put out. I clearly have some pretty strong feelings about this.
00:50:09
Speaker
I understand. And I mean, that goes from both sides. And we can't please everybody. We follow our own paths and that. But I appreciate the comments and the insight that you gave there. Sorry, let me just add this. Sure. Obviously, the power of the media is enormous in people's thinking. And we've seen that, the power of social media.
00:50:37
Speaker
There are there are a lot of people in the world that you can tell them something is a certain way. If you're a Fox News or New York Times or whatever, and they're going to take it as a gospel, I mean, it's the same thing with with a lot of politicians. President Joe Biden, who I love, he'll say this is how things are and they're going to be people that are going to go, OK, that's it.
00:51:04
Speaker
So words have power. And when you attack a subject with the veracity that these Jenkins and Barnes have done, it really does a disservice. And again, going back to the debunkers, I feel it's very much in the same vein, going all the way to Neil deGrasse Tyson. They have a voice and people listen to those voices.
00:51:32
Speaker
I think if none of us know what the hell this thing is, this phenomenon is, I think if anyone does, it tells you that they have the answers, take that with a grain of salt. No one knows what it is. So everyone should be asking questions. No one should be poisoning the well, encouraging people not to ask questions. I completely agree. Unfortunately, you know, it's not that black and white in this community.
00:51:59
Speaker
We get accused of being believers purely because we're not ready to be complete debunkers and take a certain road or a certain narrative.
00:52:11
Speaker
I'm in it for the long run. I'm here till the end and that's it.
The Tic-Tac UFO Case
00:52:15
Speaker
Listen, I appreciate everything we've talked about, but one thing I'd really like to end on, just to lighten up a little bit, is in your time here when you've talked to a few different people and spoken about different cases, is there a case that really stands out for you as one that would be your top case?
00:52:34
Speaker
That's a really good question. I have to think about that. That is a tough one. Yeah, yeah. No, I think it would probably have to be the tic-tac case. You had Traver talk about it on 60 Minutes, and then you had his wingman, I'm bad with names, I'm blanking on her name.
00:53:00
Speaker
Alex Dietrich, back it up. And the thing I think I would like to end on is the people that serve our country, that protect our country, that
00:53:16
Speaker
Our government has invested millions upon millions of dollars into their training. Our naval aviators, our airmen, all of these folks that our government has dumped huge amounts of capital into to train these people to operate some of our most expensive military machines for
00:53:43
Speaker
someone like Nick West to say, oh, they're just seeing a seagull. Come on. Come on. So yeah, I mean, these folks, they know what they're looking at. And yeah, I'll just leave it at that.
00:53:58
Speaker
Matt, I really appreciate the conversation. You've been really, really a joy to talk to. You're very welcome. Thank you enough. Okay, hope I didn't ramble on too much. I love rambling. I love tangents. So please, honestly, trust me, it was a great conversation. I'd love to have you back. Hopefully, you know, six months, 12 months down the line, we can have a whole new conversation about this subject moving forward. But I love that. Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Thank you so much for having me. Take care.
00:54:27
Speaker
OK, thanks. Cheers. Goodbye.