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21: Disclosure Team #76 Tim McMillan
404 Plays3 years ago
Tim McMillan is a retired police lieutenant, investigative reporter and co-founder and Executive Director of The Debrief. His writing covers defense, science, and the intelligence community.
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The Debrief: https://thedebrief.org/
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Transcript
Introduction to Anomalous Podcast Network
00:00:01
Speaker
You're listening to the Anomalous Podcast Network. Multiple voices, one phenomenon.
Welcoming Tim McMillan
00:00:38
Speaker
Hey guys, how's it going? Welcome back to the channel. Uh, it's good to see everybody here in the live chat. Um, yeah, let's just jump straight into it because I'm really excited to speak to my guests tonight. I've spoken to him once before, but, uh, yeah, it's always a pleasure. So let's jump straight in with, if I can find my cursor, Mr. Tim McMillan. How's it going, Tim? What's going on, Vinny? How are you, man?
00:01:01
Speaker
I'd be here. Thank you. Thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, I really appreciate it, man. I know you're a busy man. So yeah, it's always good to talk to you. Yeah, no, it's always fun, man.
Focus on Ukraine War
00:01:13
Speaker
Yeah, but I thought we'd jump in to something non UFO related, if that's okay, because a lot of the stuff that you've been covering primarily recently has been about the war in Ukraine. So I think it would be, you know, almost wrong of me not to bring it up at some point. So I figured, I think
00:01:31
Speaker
The first thing I noticed when it started, basically, and it was reported in mainstream media, I very quickly saw things on Twitter that kind of contradict, you know, there was contradictions all over the place and soon learned that it was better to start following the kind of threads that you were putting out with people like Graham Rendell chiming in and, you know, with the knowledge in that. So I don't really know what the question is. I guess it's like, does that worry you that the mainstream media put out such sketchy information?
00:02:00
Speaker
No, I mean, here's the thing. And one of the reasons that I've been covering it so extensively, a couple of reasons. One, obviously, the defense national security beat has always been my beat. I kind of fell into UFOs because, frankly, UFOs fell into national security in the last couple of years, although arguably, I guess, they've always been there. And so this was my beat. But in addition to that,
00:02:26
Speaker
Eastern Europe, and particularly Russia, has always been an area focused of mine for writings that I've done, for the examiner, for a lot of stuff that I've done when it comes to the events is actually focused more on Europe, focused more on Russia and particularly in Vladimir Putin. And so this was kind of my area.
00:02:46
Speaker
There's a couple of things when it comes to trying to cover a war. There's a lot of chaotic information that comes out, but that's really a filter.
00:02:58
Speaker
absolute chaos on the ground, especially in those early days of the war, you know, both sides, nobody knows what's going on. And yet there is a sensational appetite by the public to know what's going on. And so you get this rapid fire pace of information coming. And we live in a day and age where that information, you know, it was surreal at times, especially very early into this conflict, I was able to watch
Social Media's Role in War Coverage
00:03:24
Speaker
live in a real-time Live webcams there were up at different play. I could watch battles as they went on live. I mean unprecedented and so you have this ability there we've got this information that's coming so fast But you're also seeing it, you know, we always think it's the truth on social media But at the same time it's under a lens there. So it's always just we don't know what's going on behind the camera You don't know what's on going on in the periphery. I
00:03:50
Speaker
But there's this insatiable need to share information quick. And I think for a lot of news outlets, the same would be going on for the war in Syria or the Middle East, where my expertise isn't. Or if there was something going on in the Pacific, most news organizations are jacks of all trades, but they have good bureau beat people.
00:04:10
Speaker
But they're just trying to cover as much as they can as well as they can yet competing with that rapid fire I've got to get info out right now right now. It's a it's definitely pardon the pun I know for a lot of the UFO crop It's an alien feeling because if there's anybody accustomed to being patient and waiting months years decades for information is the UFO crop and so it is a different pace but but that's that's
00:04:36
Speaker
Primarily why you've seen a lot of interesting info along with purposeful miss info to sprinkled in there. Yeah, and do you think this initially was?
Russia's Military Strategy and Failures
00:04:45
Speaker
Planned to be a kind of quick invasion quick takeover Because now you know, we're hearing things that it could go on potentially for a year or longer I mean, it doesn't seem to have gone to plan by any means
00:04:58
Speaker
Yeah, no, I mean, absolutely. I think if you look at how the Russian military went into Ukraine, they really launched a pretty audacious plan, which was multiple accesses. So they're coming from multiple directions with the primary objective being the seizure of the capital city of Kiev to force a regime change. So unseat President Zelensky and the duly elected leaders that are there so they could get a favorable government to their interest. That's a
00:05:27
Speaker
It's a really bold plan and it's one that requires extensive planning. It requires well-trained troops and you really have to have so many pieces. I think there's times in which people have seen conflicts like, you know, probably the only thing comparable will be the US invasion in Iraq.
00:05:48
Speaker
And you see that and relatively the United States went in there and it was over in roughly about three days. You had any insurgency that came afterwards and this is how it lingered for years. But this conflict of toppling the power and taking over country happened quickly.
00:06:05
Speaker
but that's not easy, and it takes a really massive combined arms warfare strategy where you're combining all these pieces. It's not easy to do, and frankly, Russia has not even attempted something of this scale since World War II, and so they don't have the experience. They actually didn't really engage in well-combined arms warfare in World War II. It was more of just a blunderbuss of just keep punching through, and so
00:06:31
Speaker
You know, their initial plan, I think, was based on this rapid seizure of the capital. I believe that there was some faulty intelligence, I think that's kind of universally agreed upon, that they didn't expect much resistance. And, you know, very, very quickly, you know, within the first couple of hours when they tried to drop about 200, 300 paratroopers into the Hostomel Airport outside of Kiev, did they suddenly discover, oh, this is not going to be 2014.
00:07:00
Speaker
You know, literally everyone is fighting us. All Ukrainians have come together. They're handing out guns. So on top of a military that was bolstered by help from the United States and the United Kingdom, you've got Ukrainians who are willing to fight.
00:07:16
Speaker
And so now they lost the first battle of Kiev. That plan is over. They were defeated. And now they're trying to launch their Eastern offensive, but even that is a little bit precarious. And so when you hear that it could last for years or more, it really depends on, is Russia able to advance right now? No. I mean, they're taking very small kilometers at a time, if anything.
00:07:43
Speaker
And so it really will boil down to, can they change that tempo while engaged in combat, which is not easy to do? And then will Ukraine have enough combat power and ability to turn the table and start going on the offensive? So we haven't seen that. So that's where you could see it last for years, potentially. I don't think that it will last
00:08:05
Speaker
for years I think that we will reach a point where probably within the next month that Russia is really going to peter out and expend their ability to do anything on the eastern front and then provided Ukraine has reserves and the hardware which I think they're getting in mass from the west they'll be able to turn around and start kind of turning the tables maybe pushing the Russia back out of their territory. Yeah I think it seems as well a lot of pictures that came out that
00:08:35
Speaker
the Russian artillery and their armaments and equipment seemed so old and questionable. And that's why it was funny because you can relate it to our UAP secret Russian technology and you think if they can't...
00:08:51
Speaker
If they haven't got basic weapons, then you think they've got super advanced technology? Yeah, no, absolutely. I think I said that very early on. I said, OK, we can put that issue to rest. The Russian Federation is not responsible for the UAP encounters that, you know, any, in my opinion, and in particular, the ones in the US military have been countering off the United States coast. It's just to me, that's not even something up for debate.
00:09:20
Speaker
even if we were to suggest these were all misidentifications and they were more conventional drones that were Russian, they just demonstrated absolutely horrible ISR, intelligence surveillance, reconnaissance ability, meaning they don't have
00:09:36
Speaker
even basic capabilities to get real-time ISR. So they surely do not have anything advanced, any type of advanced aerospace platforms. You know, we have learned that a lot of their claims over the last couple of years are all just that. Claims, their propaganda, their bluster, you know, we have not their Su-57 supposed first stealth fighters.
00:09:58
Speaker
The first time we'll see them this year will be them flying over the May Day parade, May 9th, or the Victory Day parade, excuse me, in Moscow. They're going to be doing an air show. They're not engaged in combat.
00:10:13
Speaker
And so, yeah, I mean, Russia has never been, their military forces have never been heavy on the aerospace side. And the idea that they could have leapt with the technology was always very unlikely. But now I think we can say with just about absolute certainty. Absolutely not. This is not Russian technology that people are saying.
00:10:36
Speaker
Excellent, excellent.
Gary Reed and UAP Involvement
00:10:37
Speaker
Well, I mean, I could do a whole show talking about Ukraine, but let's move on to UFOs before everybody switches off now. Let's get the Gary Reed thing out of the way because it has been covered a lot. I'm not sure how much we can talk about it, but I just a couple of points that I wanted just to sort of get your clarification on. And is that the first part, I would say, is Gary Reed
00:11:00
Speaker
He was ousted. Now, does he sit within the role still without assigned responsibilities? Has someone temporarily taken over? Where are we at with that part of it right now?
00:11:10
Speaker
Sure. He was ousted. He was dismissed from the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. One of the things that is very important for people to remember is that within the Department of Defense of the U.S. government as a whole, the U.S. government is the largest single, if we consider the government as one entity, it is the largest single employer of people in the world.
00:11:34
Speaker
And on top of that, it also has, it can be more like into a giant industry where you have, let's say the Department of Defense over here is one company. You have the FBI over here, who's another company, that type of thing. And then even within those companies, you've got these sub companies. And so the Undersecretary of Defense is at the pinnacle of the Department of Defense. This is where the Secretary of Defense's office, he has his Undersecretaries, they branch off. So this is really
00:12:04
Speaker
you know the plateau of where you're you're able to get in a career in in the defense uh department of defense and so and particularly the position that he was in where he was a director the only way to achieve position higher to that is you have to be appointed you have to be nominated by the president so this is as high as you can get if you're just somebody who
00:12:26
Speaker
starts from the ground up, theoretically, although they rarely do that. He was dismissed, withdrawn, removed from his position at the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence. He's gone. For all intents and purposes, he is fired from the Undersecretary of Defense's office. Now,
00:12:47
Speaker
It is extremely difficult, damn near impossible to actually fire government employees. Like outright fire them that you think of in the private sector. If you work at a department store and they want to fire you, they just fire you. You're gone. You don't have a job anymore. That's not the case in the US government. It is extremely hard, particularly once you reach senior level positions like this.
00:13:12
Speaker
And so a lot of times they remove you, which is what happened with Gary Reed. They removed him from that position, yet they're still getting paid by the Department of Defense. And they're still in a limbo. They're flying a desk for part of time. So it sounds crazy. And you think, gosh, why does anybody even try to work hard
00:13:32
Speaker
Because I could get fired but still get a paycheck and have an office that I show up to and do nothing and their employees, you know, I can I can think of one right right now off the top of my head who has been flying a desk for Nine months now, you know, they do nothing. They do literally do nothing but they're separated from what they're doing. They have no responsibilities They're not in direction of anything
00:13:56
Speaker
And so that happened with him. And then once you're in this limbo position, it's usually a it's the government's way of saying it's very, very hard to fire you. We want you to quit. We want you to resign. If you'll just resign, we'll give you a cake and you can go about your merry way. And in this case, it doesn't look like Mr. Reid wanted to do that. And so then it becomes a protracted legal battle with general counsel. Can we do this? Can we do that? This type of thing.
00:14:23
Speaker
Or you have the opportunity where, again, you have these separate subcomponents that are spread out throughout government. You can have somebody that says, I'll take you. You can come work for me. And this happens frequently because it is. There's a buddy system. The reason that Gary Reid was in the position he was in was because Michael Vickers, the former undersecretary for intelligence, brought him in.
00:14:48
Speaker
And so Gary Reid was then someone at the Defense Intelligence Agency said, okay, you can come over here. And so now he is at the Defense Intelligence Agency.
00:15:03
Speaker
in an advisory position. So not in charge of anybody, not making any real decisions and offering quote advice. And then how long that will remain is always kind of
00:15:22
Speaker
It's up in the air because these type of positions often is just another way of saying somebody's flying a desk. I just don't have a desk in here to put it. And so stick him over here. That's where he's going to go to work. That's where he'll go collect his paycheck. So he's got to be there every day. And so right now, to the best of my knowledge, last I heard, he is at the Defense Intelligence Agency. So it is a nuanced and widely confusing kind of process.
00:15:52
Speaker
I will say that being ousted or being kicked out as a director of an intelligence, you know, he was up to a month ago, he was the most senior counterintelligence law enforcement security officer for the Department of Defense worldwide. Huge, very significant position. And so being kicked out of that position or losing that position is
00:16:13
Speaker
It's not unprecedented, but it rarely happens and it's a very dramatic event and you have to really screw up for that to happen. Yeah, absolutely. And then his role was directly responsible for AYMSG as well, wasn't it?
UAP Program's Bureaucratic Challenges
00:16:32
Speaker
He was, I can say that for a fact just because I was able to obtain the official classification sheet which lists the employees and their roles and where they fall into under the different programs and everything. And so he was the chief executive
00:16:57
Speaker
So he was the senior person in charge of that. And so it's kind of an interesting thing there because for me, it was very interesting because that's really the collection of UAP data. And this is really a intelligence collection program. It really shouldn't have fallen under counterintelligence law enforcement security. So it's a little odd that it ever fell under that to begin with.
00:17:23
Speaker
But that he indeed was the senior principal executive that was in charge of it. And do you not think that even even the program sitting in the OS OS DI in itself is a bit strange because they surely they can't meet the intent of Congress due to the kind of not being such an operational group compared to maybe if it was sitting under ODNI and DOD collaboration or something like that? Sure, yeah, it's always been in in odd place because
00:17:52
Speaker
USDI, for the most part, is really just a policy and overseer. They oversee all the programs and everything within the Department of Defense. And so at the operational level, they don't have those personnel. So even though they were technically the overseers and still are the overseers of that program, at the operational level, that has to be designated to someone else. And they can hire people in to do that specifically.
00:18:18
Speaker
But the people at the highest levels who are in charge there, they're really not going to be the people who are collecting reports, analyzing reports, surveying reports, anything like that. They're just stamping off on them. And they do have potentially a critical role in this because they can stamp off on how well or not well the program is being handled.
00:18:43
Speaker
And so if you're somebody who certainly doesn't think that this is an issue that needs to be going on in the US government, doesn't need to be handled, you can quite easily stamp off on
00:18:55
Speaker
nonsense or, you know, not definitely make it. It's easy to put it out there and say whether you want a program to fail or succeed. I mean, it's in a highly bureaucratic, highly political system like the US government. And so it's always been relatively interesting, though, because they're not an operational component. It would be. Frankly, to be well done, we'd take
00:19:22
Speaker
you know, almost another act of Congress, you would need a joint, all of government type approach because that, you know, we've, I've discussed this a lot is that, you know, the Department of Defense is limited into what they can look at. And so if something flies over the continental United States, there's not really anything the Department of Defense can do. You know, they're not supposed to.
00:19:45
Speaker
uh investigate over continental united states not supposed to investigate us citizens and so that falls under the fbi or department of homeland security these are totally separate branches of government so you really would need a central kind of whole of government uh you know body that that could that had the authority to investigate all of that
00:20:07
Speaker
Because wasn't that one of the problems with the original UAP task force is that they just didn't have, you know, they were they were roadblocks left, right and center for the almost set up to fail from the start.
00:20:23
Speaker
The thing that's interesting, and I've always said this, is I think a lot of people who have come into this, maybe purely UAP or UFO enthusiasts, have gotten a crash course in government bureaucracy and how the US government operates.
00:20:41
Speaker
And so this is not entirely limited to this topic. I mean, this goes on with intelligence topics, defense topics all across the spectrum. People don't want to share. It's an extremely territorial place. And frankly, if it's not something that particularly interests one group or one agency or one area, they will
00:21:01
Speaker
either not help Stonewall. The opposite end of that is when it does become interesting and then suddenly another group wants to fight and say, well, I'm the one, you know, this is supposed to be my responsibility. That often goes on between branches of the government, like the U.S. Army and Air Force will fight over who has responsibility for certain things. And that's how we get the Apache attack helicopter and the A-10 Warthog.
00:21:27
Speaker
because the Air Force and Army couldn't agree on who provided close air support. So they're like, well, we'll both just develop our own stuff. So you end up, it was always set up very difficult. I mean, it's a difficult topic already. And it's difficult in that you would need all of these different players to play along.
00:21:48
Speaker
And then you run the risk of all of these players also suddenly saying, oh, there's something really to this. And instead of working together as a combined effort, suddenly Space Force starts at their own thing. Air Force starts at their own thing. The DOD has their own thing. The Army has their own thing. And then everybody's actually competing with each other instead of working together. And so it's always been extremely problematic. And unfortunately,
00:22:16
Speaker
really, this is indicative of how a lot of things operate in government. And I think that that's why for a lot of people, that's why a lot of people I've spoken to who were in government being familiar with government, you know, even tangentially, which was always interesting during the Gary Reed investigation, I had connections when I was in law enforcement to that undersecretary of defense for intelligence of law enforcement because they were law enforcement.
00:22:43
Speaker
And so tangentially, there was different times that I worked with the DOD on stuff. And so knowing and all this familiarity of it, that's why I think certain things like how A-TIP came about and how Lou Elizondo has described A-TIP
00:22:59
Speaker
and how it operated. Some people get interpreted outside of the bounds of authority or official approval, but it's not necessarily accurate. But frankly, these types of programs and how that operates are in abundance all across government. If there's anybody you've ever
00:23:22
Speaker
Know that's worked in the Pentagon particularly in intelligence will tell you that anybody who's done any Operational work will tell you that and they will tell you that's where the best work is always performed Because that's the only way you can circumvent a lot of those bureaucratic roadblocks Yeah, absolutely so I had a question in my head and it just jumped out because I saw some comments there and
00:23:45
Speaker
It was about you mentioned a tip there and of course the the debate rages on with the differences between or sap an a tip and Where a tip sat and what responsibilities it had and what Lou had? Do you think it's time that that conversation just gets put to one side because it's kind of really not doing anybody any favors? Um, well For me I already have
Beyond Past UAP Programs
00:24:10
Speaker
I can't tell people what they can do and what they want to argue with them bigger about on Twitter and Facebook or whatever else. I will say that very rarely does anybody ever see me engage in that because I have. It's reached the point now where I don't know what can be gained from getting any kind of clarity or understanding of all SAP. These things, now we're going on over a decade old. I don't know
00:24:39
Speaker
You know, that's certainly, in my opinion, not going to assist in understanding what's going on today, what's going on in contemporary. And it's not going to help solve UAP. It's not going to help solve the government's effort now. And for me personally, I think that the core of the claims that were made by whether it was people in the OSAP program or Lou Elizondo were always that there were
00:25:05
Speaker
Object sightings of things that were of unknown origin that were, you know, they could not place. They were UFOs. There were UAP events that were occurring within the context of military situations. And so that core claim for me has already been substantiated and proven.
00:25:22
Speaker
based on what we've seen in the evolution in the last three or four years. When you're seeing congressional legislation being passed, when you're seeing lawmakers speak about it publicly, when you're seeing that kind of thing that, in my opinion, has established that core claim,
00:25:40
Speaker
Is valid and so we can kind of move forward from there. I don't know what I don't know why or what is the hope to be gained by that, you know other than maybe ridicule and Yeah to that end I would just say that is a an interesting way to go about an argument because
00:26:03
Speaker
They're mutually exclusive. You can have people who believe weird things. You can have people who are crazy. Ramajan, the famous Indian mathematician, believed that a Hindu goddess taught him
00:26:17
Speaker
What we use now, the mathematics that we now use for computers that taught him an entirely new branch of mathematics. Did he? I don't know, but I do know that that is the mathematics. Modular mathematics is what we use today. We can thank that in large part to us being able to communicate right now and use a computer.
00:26:37
Speaker
And so it is mutually exclusive that people can have fantastical beliefs, you know, and claim to have seen a werewolf or, you know, whatever at Skinwalker Ranch, maybe they did, maybe they didn't. But that's mutually exclusive from, are there these events going on that pilots or other service members or just the average public are encountering? Two different things. So I don't know, I don't
00:27:00
Speaker
I don't know what it's kind of the old, you know, it's not even throwing the baby out with the bath water. It's trying to boil the baby while turning the water up. And it's to no end. Yeah, that's what it seems like. It really does seem like it's just a just a recurring groundhog day of conversation and argument and debate. And it's just, yeah, yeah, I agree with everything you said there.
00:27:27
Speaker
Yeah, I don't, I don't, I truly don't know. I don't know, other than I will say that, in my experience, those kinds of questions, even if people have valid questions, there's nothing wrong with answering. They aren't answered typically by Twitter.
00:27:43
Speaker
And they aren't answered on Facebook. You actually have to get out of that kind of echo chamber. And there's, I tell you, I'm an expert of nothing. And so anything that I've commented on, I don't know. I talk to people who know. I talk to people that know in the system. And that even extends beyond. I see this a lot where people are saying, well, Lou said this, or Lou said that, or Chris Mellon said this, or Chris Mellon said that. So this type of thing. We'll find out.
00:28:07
Speaker
How normal is what they're saying in the context of the setting that they're saying it in? And that means, you know, for me as investigative journalist, I don't.
00:28:17
Speaker
I don't ask Lou or Chris if this is normal, because I already know they're biased. I already know what theirs is. Ask people who work in those government systems what's normal, what's not normal, and you can ask those questions outside of UFOs.
Congress and UAP Investigations
00:28:33
Speaker
I saw there was recently a raging debate about the CRADA and the TTSA thing, and I just kind of said,
00:28:42
Speaker
Why doesn't anybody contact anybody who works in government contracts or has worked in government contracts or a government watchdog? There's plenty of those NGOs out there. And just ask them, how does Kratos work? How does this work? Is this normal?
00:28:58
Speaker
Just ask them. We don't have to interpret or debate it. But I'll get off my soapbox. But to answer your question there, I think particularly we seem to beat a lot of questions to death that we don't even try to answer at times. We just continue. Yeah, absolutely. And one question I did have for you was regarding classified briefings. And then literally within the hour leading up to me speaking with you, we saw a new article from Brian Bender in Politico
00:29:26
Speaker
Titled the UFO briefings on Capitol Hill have begun Lawmakers aren't impressed. Have you had time to scan it at all?
00:29:33
Speaker
Haven't you breaking this news to me? So I have not seen I haven't read the article yet. I haven't heard about it. So yeah now I'm curious it's it's I mean I have I've read it once but obviously I like to go back and kind of really sort of Take my time to absorb it, but the it does seem like the Congress are really trying to put pressure on now but there was one statement which I'm just gonna find and read out that did actually stand out to me and typical I'm probably not gonna be able to find it now and
00:30:01
Speaker
Here it is. It says, quote, I have seen everything we have in the files and I'm very confident that they are not ours, said a former senior intelligence official who had authority over the UFO portfolio, referring to classified US aircraft programs. Just stood out and I think. Sure, yeah.
00:30:23
Speaker
That's what I was really curious. Now I'm going to interview you, Vinny. What was your general feel from the article? When you said that they weren't impressed, were they not impressed with the sightings being presented or the work being done? I think they kind of seemed like they were okay with the collection of everything, but then it was kind of like they really need to deal with doing something with it now. That kind of was the initial thing I got from that first read.
00:30:49
Speaker
and it might change the second time I read it, but that was kind of the first thing that really stood out. Sure. Well, and I said, I'll be eager to look at that because that's what I'm curious about, which you mentioned is kind of an interesting aspect of all of this because being familiar with the intelligence collection process, this is a slow moving process. And whereas I know a lot of people in the UFO community, you know,
00:31:17
Speaker
are really kind of aghast at the idea that the government could be treating this as if they're discovering it for the first time and going through this process of what's called the intelligence cycle for the first time. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but they're definitely treating it that way. And so that cycle is a slow-moving process because they're unlike what we see when we see intelligence, whether it's on Ukraine or Russia or whatever else. These are programs that have been going on for decades. They're well-affirmed.
00:31:45
Speaker
They're treating it a topic that they've never dealt with before. And so it's this collection baseline interpretation of the data. Where do we go from here kind of circular process here? And so it is interesting because I think that's what I'm curious about is you reach this part where you've collected.
00:32:05
Speaker
But then I think the thing that frustrates probably lawmakers, just based on the sound of what you said, and the rest of us is that first stage in it is you've got all this, you say, well, here it is, we know this, this, and this is real, or this is occurring. And then when you say, well, what is it? And you go, I don't know. That's frustrating. I think it's frustrating for everybody. And so I'm curious, but that's always been where I have interpreted the process was.
00:32:33
Speaker
Yeah, yeah. A fractal mind here in the chat raises a good point that the lawmakers aren't impressed. Here we go. Agencies need to take this issue more seriously, so the lawmakers aren't impressed that there doesn't seem to be that sense of urgency and seriousness from the multiple agencies. Which, you know,
00:32:57
Speaker
Sure, and that was the other side I was just curious about because I can see that as well wholeheartedly and I think I'm gonna truly believe that if if they're going to be able to achieve what lawmakers want and what the lawmakers have requested and has been signed in law by the President United States, so so they're Obligated to provide is going to require them to really designate specific people to handling this task and
00:33:24
Speaker
outside of how I think they have tried to handle it, especially at the beginning of last year. There was some shuffling inside who was handling it. The people who were handling it from 2017 to 2020 kind of changed hands. And so then there was this hot potato kind of mix of it, but it was handed to people who, this wasn't their only job designation and they had other portfolios and other things going on.
00:33:53
Speaker
I think it's going to be extremely hard to try to investigate this under that precedent because if you're trying to juggle defense and intelligence things, you're always going to have things that are going on in the world.
00:34:05
Speaker
that are more pressing and seem more immediate than UAP does. I know that frustrates some people. And when I say that, but it's the same reason that we opened this conversation. I've been covering Ukraine for the last two months. It's very immediate. It's an area of where my interest and expertise lies. And it's very immediate where there's lives being lost, lives are being changed.
00:34:31
Speaker
you know, the effects of what's going on there, you know, dramatically changed people's lives instantly and permanently. Whereas UAP, you could say, man, this has been around for decades. They're not attacking us, you know, maybe longer. There's always going to be something that seems to be more immediate. And so is Russia going to nuke us? Is North Korea going to nuke us? If you're talking to defense and intelligence people, that is always going to take precedent over UAP. I'm not sure I understand
00:35:00
Speaker
But that is not, I don't even know where that came from. But that is not, I guess it's my watch. I was like, what the hell? Jesus.
00:35:12
Speaker
The CIA is listening to me. See, they're agreeing. They're not sure they understand. But that doesn't mean that there's a lot of issues that aren't as pressing as being as full on nuclear war that still need to be handled and still need to be discussed. They still need to be investigated. And this is one of them. And so I think I would wholeheartedly agree. We certainly spend a lot of money on a lot of different things that are perhaps not nearly as pressing.
00:35:41
Speaker
So I don't want to take anybody away from their national security work. Let's just get some other people to do it.
00:35:47
Speaker
I think one thing that we noticed last year specifically in the lead up to the UAP Task Force preliminary assessment is that there was members, people on Capitol Hill were getting briefings and we saw senators and that talking on the steps coming out saying, yes, we've had briefings. Even though they didn't say anything about them, just the fact that they were there on TV for people to see was a positive thing for the community. And so what I was sort of looking
00:36:14
Speaker
looking at was, will we see that again with the amount of apparent classified briefings that are due this year? Are we likely to see them a similar kind of thing? Because I think it is good to hear from these people on TV.
00:36:28
Speaker
Sure. And I think it was nice. It was very interesting. I think a lot of the responses were really interesting, especially when you saw lawmakers like Marco Rubio and people coming out on TV and discussing them. These are people who are very vested in their political careers. And so if they're willing to talk about it publicly, frankly, that only further establishes the legitimacy of the topic.
00:36:52
Speaker
And so will we see that or not again? I don't know. Obviously, they're very limited in terms of what they can say. You know, classified Congress in and of itself. And I think this is maybe an area where some people have been confused. But Congress has no authority to declassify anything.
00:37:12
Speaker
So they can't even declassify this stuff if they want it to, nor can they discuss it if it's classified. They just don't have that authority. It's outside of their bounds unless they themselves want to get in trouble.
00:37:25
Speaker
However, if it's an issue that they know is significant to their constituents, they know that people are asking about it, they can certainly do what we saw last year. They're acknowledging that we're being briefed on it. And so I think the volume of polar responses will come from the volume in which people ask
00:37:44
Speaker
for public responses, including people in the media and the public. You know, hey, have you been doing what's going on with this? What's going on with this? I think that's the only way that you're going to get anything out of anybody. To what extent, I don't know. But at the same time, we could likely get at least enough that we got last year that at least either establishes what they're being provided continues to. This is a legitimate topic.
00:38:09
Speaker
Or, you know, they're going as is BS. And so be interesting. I think we could likely see all of that. I think especially now with with vendor putting that out in the ether. Certainly, I may try to follow up on there. Certainly, a lot of people who should follow up on it. Yeah. Imagine, imagine the guy, guys are at UAP media.
00:38:33
Speaker
We'll have something else soon. Oh, I noticed. I just want to say this to everybody in the chat. If I've missed your questions, I apologize. But when talking about the US government, I have to focus really hard because it's.
00:38:46
Speaker
It's a lot for me, you know, coming from the UK, especially. So if I missed your question, I apologize. We do have one here from Graham. Hello, Graham. Does Tim think that any lack of cooperation and movement on the USAF's part is down to legacy, lack of urgency or something else entirely?
Air Force's UAP Investigation Approach
00:39:03
Speaker
Great question.
00:39:07
Speaker
all of the above. First of all, it's great. It's great to hear from you, Graham. And all of the above in a couple of ways. So I don't know how much is purposeful in terms of, let's say, a cover up. I know a lot of people say there's a cover up. Maybe there is. I don't know. I've never
00:39:34
Speaker
encountered anything that led me to believe there was some kind of systemic cover-up involving people who absolutely knew for certain what these objects were, that had crash retrievals, this kind of stuff. Maybe there are. I just haven't talked to those people. I know that there are some other people like Ross Kothbert and others who have explored that particular area. So I don't want to make anybody mad by them saying, well, what about the bodies? OK, then maybe.
00:40:00
Speaker
I just haven't encountered that. However, there is
00:40:06
Speaker
de facto cover-up. We have people who feel like this isn't something they want to discuss, they don't want to deal with it, they don't want to be forced to deal with it, and so therefore they're going to diminish it, they're going to tell people not to report it and everything, not to cover up the existence of something per se, but perhaps just to try to make it go away because they don't want to have to deal with it. With the Air Force, obviously they handled Blue Book, they were the ones in charge of
00:40:33
Speaker
really the only official investigations that we saw for the greater part up until recently until the Navy kind of stepped in. And so I would say there's probably some bitter taste that has kind of inherited a legacy that has come down from that because they really wanted to wash their hands of it after 20 years of dealing with it. But frankly, because I don't think they ever had it, they were no closer to
00:40:57
Speaker
any answers by the end than they were in the beginning. It was the same thing. They're real. We don't know what it is. And so I think that you have that. And I think that that comes down almost informally, where it's just the tone and message that's conveyed, and that's the attitude that is conveyed from above. The officers below, and as they go through the ranks, it's the same one. It stays. It's kind of a systemic. Willful apathy is what I like to call it.
00:41:27
Speaker
And so I think that out of all the branches, the Air Force would absolutely be the one that has that the most. The Air Force is also
00:41:39
Speaker
It's an interesting branch out of all the services. It's a different branch, I will say, from growing up and being around army branches my entire life up until recently in Germany, I will say it has been a difference coming around an Air Force post. And so that in and of itself, the Air Force is just, it's a different branch. There's just different people who typically go in the Air Force and different priorities and just
00:42:09
Speaker
different approaches and so I can't say for certain what it is other than it definitely out of everyone the Air Force seems to be the most resistant and I would say that if I had to speculate it's probably a totality of you know certainly
00:42:28
Speaker
There's not 20,000, 30,000 people who are in on the cover-up. So even if there's like this, you know, small level that's setting that tone, the prevailing theme as it's spread out is this kind of willful apathy. Yeah. Jay Allen here says, Vinny, you self-speak. Yep, Jay Allen. Good to see you, my friend. I know you're a regular here.
00:42:51
Speaker
Okay, we admit they are real and they are not ours or foreign assets. What now? Do we admit we can't do anything about these incursions? Where is the panic line? That's a really great question. And so I think that, I mean, first of all, I think that if you reach a definitive conclusion in which you say, okay, these are not a foreign government, these are not ours, these are absolutely real.
00:43:20
Speaker
I think that now at this point in time, frankly, if you want to see anything meaningful done, it has to be brought out of the defense national security sector because they're going to treat it exactly like they would a defense and national security issue. And I'm not going to begrudge them for that.
00:43:39
Speaker
And so when you're treating it like a defense and national security issue, particularly if you're talking about something that you have no actual intelligence on and you have no defense against and it can move with impunity into your airspace, you
00:43:54
Speaker
You're entirely vulnerable to it. That is under the guise of a defense issue. That is a huge defense risk, and it's something that you treat as ultra classified. You're not going to discuss it. It's not going to be a public issue, and it's going to be narrowed to those compartmentalized of scopes.
00:44:13
Speaker
And I don't know that that's actually beneficial whatsoever into solving it, because not only does it cut the public out of the loop, but it narrows the scope of people who could potentially provide scientific or academic research and can contribute to actually solving it. And so I think if that ever becomes the case, it would be extremely interesting.
00:44:37
Speaker
If I was the Department of Defense and I reached that conclusion, I would gladly then say, go to the president, whoever, and say, Mr. President, this is not a defense issue. This is a scientific technological matter, and we would like to hand this off to
00:44:55
Speaker
whoever this is. And I'd pass that book to somebody who could treat it like a scientific, technical matter. You know, still provide assistance. You can still have defense components that provide assistance through classified sensor systems, this kind of stuff. You can still provide that information, but do it under a scientific context.
00:45:18
Speaker
Yeah, sure. Dan's here as well. Hello, Dan. Tim, do you know if sensors have been tasked with tracking UAP using parameters set by previous encounters?
00:45:29
Speaker
And for a fact, no. Have I heard lots of rumors or rumors or have I heard from people who have worked in even the more modern UAP programs or even who have worked in other branches of government who would have tasking on this? So maybe they weren't assigned to the task force, let's say, but they work at an agency.
00:45:54
Speaker
that might have certain sensor suites and somebody the task force might call them up. They might be their billet, their liaison to it. Have they been asked to do that kind of thing? I have been told yes. Now, what those parameters are, I don't know. That kind of stuff is classified. What the sensors themselves or different systems being used, I don't know. All of that is classified.
00:46:18
Speaker
You know, I caveat that when, you know, because I started that by saying I've heard rumors and you're saying, but Tim, you're saying you've talked to people who work in government to work at this place who've said it. That's not a rumor. That should be firsthand. Yes, that's correct. And I think in a lot of instances, maybe that's better than rumors. But at the same time, I say that under the big caveat that that's always first
00:46:41
Speaker
You only have one source that's saying that. You only have one person. And for obvious reasons, there's no material evidence to support that kind of claim. And so for something like that, me to say definitively, I would need kind of multiple people to all corroborate the same thing or physical evidence. And that's extremely hard to do since even hearing about it is kind of dancing the line of what's classified. But I have heard that that
00:47:10
Speaker
is the case. And I don't know if that's, I've heard nuclear as well. I don't know in what context, whether that is just merely monitoring certain nuclear assets when they're in place, such as the aircraft carriers, the nuclear power that are on them, whether it's nuclear powered submarines, whether it's submarines with nuclear warheads. I don't know that, but I do know that nuclear energy has always come up a lot in those kind of conversations.
00:47:40
Speaker
Yeah, for sure. Yone asks, Tim, I wonder, since you live in Germany, does the government pay any attention to the phenomena or is it covered in the news here
UAP Media Coverage in Germany
00:47:50
Speaker
in the Netherlands? Unfortunately, it's not covered at all. Yeah, absolutely not. Absolutely not. I would say that
00:47:57
Speaker
It is almost non-existent in German media and the general German public for the most part, I would say, is certainly not even near as interested as people, especially in the United States and the United Kingdom. But it's absolutely not on the news, I can tell you that much. Even at the height of
00:48:24
Speaker
you know, when the U.S. Department of Defense is talking about it, when the U.S. is passing bills about it. So even when you see Politico and the Washington Post and the New York Times, you know, German media is not covering that whatsoever.
00:48:40
Speaker
So no way it's funny cuz here in the UK we we want more it to be taken more seriously but then we get the sun and the daily star putting out these just sensationalist nonsense stories nine times out of ten and it really doesn't help at all but then the odd the odd article does have you know some some weight to it it's difficult.
00:49:03
Speaker
It is. I would say that the UK media has kind of come in second. And I think that matches with the interest level as well. Australia has done some fairly decent stuff. I think it takes any of the foreign media markets or anybody to specifically task a journalist. An editor say, look, what the hell is going on over there in the United States with this? I need you to try to get to the bottom of it.
00:49:30
Speaker
where you can get a really rich and in-depth kind of article or news piece to be brought to a different foreign market. Unfortunately, that really hasn't been done. It isn't done.
00:49:45
Speaker
I think it's probably mitigating with these news companies, A, resources. So your foreign correspondents are limited. And what do you designate them to do, that type of thing? And maybe the general idea of prevailing belief that it's not going to be very interesting to your audience. And for here in Germany, I would say that that's a big factor. I mean, a lot of things that are
00:50:11
Speaker
It seemed very normal, though we're very accustomed to. You couldn't turn on a television show in the US without some kind of paranormal or ghost hunting show or something like that. That's just not something that the people in Germany are really interested in whatsoever. Yeah, no, I can understand it. I mean, hopefully in the future, as this all picks up, that might change. But I guess again, it's patience and time.
00:50:36
Speaker
I would hope so. I will be the first to admit I like a good ghost story and I'm surrounded by hundreds of years of history and tragic battles. That was one of the things I actually looked for. I was like, man, is there any good ghost stories around here? They're fun legends. I only found one.
00:50:56
Speaker
here near me about a werewolf, which I need to publish that article. I may hold it until Halloween this year, but that's a good idea. I will. I will. I'll give you the exclusive teaser. I actually tracked down the last European werewolf. Whoa, the actual person.
00:51:16
Speaker
the actual person. So the legend is out there. If you look at the Morbach Monster in Germany, which is not far from me, you might be able to find it, but after extensive, I'm embarrassed to even say how much work I did into it. Going to national archives in France, it became an obsession to find this werewolf.
00:51:35
Speaker
And I not only found the grave, but the actual person that is supposedly the werewolf. So I need to publicize it. Maybe I'll handle it. And yeah, I don't have impressed. Like I said, it became an obsession who goes to France to look through archives and stuff to find them. But but it became this interesting thing. Were they real? You know,
00:51:55
Speaker
It's a long way of me saying that I enjoy a good paranormal story. Yeah, absolutely. We're steeped in it here in the UK, so I could fully appreciate that. Absolutely. Now, listen, we're running up almost against the clock. I'm going to ask you this one last question.
00:52:12
Speaker
On another show recently, you asked about the 23-minute video that is now kind of infamous in the halls of ufology.
Advancements in UAP Footage
00:52:20
Speaker
But you stated that you believe there's probably better footage out there. Now, to what extent do you know that that's the case? Or have you been told anything? Can you elaborate on why you made that statement? Sure. Yeah. Yeah, in terms of the 23-minute video, that certainly
00:52:42
Speaker
I don't know what it shows, but I do believe it exists primarily because my sourcing on his existence came from some leaked documents that were official. And so I would assume that one would not just falsify documents to that extent. But again, I don't know exactly what it shows, but it was specific enough that I say 23 minutes and 47 seconds or something. There was an exact kind of timeframe on there.
00:53:10
Speaker
But when I said my belief that there was better information, is that particular video in question there off the top of my head was filmed in 2013, 2014, 2015 timeframe? It was just based on the documents, that's all.
00:53:31
Speaker
there's better technology in the past seven, eight, six years, in addition to tasking different technology. And we have been, there's been a lot of, there's been a lot of different curious defense issues that have arisen in the last few years that don't relate to UAP, but rather let's say the situation in Ukraine, you know, Russia was building up this
00:53:58
Speaker
for this invasion for over a year. You have the situation going on in China, which is really heated up in the last five, six years. And then obviously you've got Iran, you've got all these different issues that require a lot of precise intelligence. You want to know technical intelligence, what are they testing, what are they flying, these types of things.
00:54:17
Speaker
So that means that you both develop and enhance sensor capabilities and intelligence capabilities to gather different forms of data, and you employ them potentially to more extreme than you have in the past. After the early 1990s, we really weren't spying on Russia all that much.
00:54:38
Speaker
We can buy the plans to nukes for a bottle of vodka after the collapse of the Soviet Union. So you didn't necessarily need to rely on some of your more covert or your more technological methods of collection. That's not been the case. And a lot of what we see where we see a really kind of turbulent time right now, I mean, where there's a war, there's the biggest war in Europe.
00:54:59
Speaker
that's been building for the last couple of years, and I think in the defense community has been firmly aware. Didn't know whether it would be China, didn't know whether it would be Russia, but you knew what was going on. And so de facto, in spying on those types of things, you're going to encounter things that are more frequent.
00:55:16
Speaker
And so I think that that in itself, A, the technology is better, B, the potential to encounter it is more frequent. And I think given the fact, particularly post-2017, when Lou Elizondo came out, A-TIP came out, suddenly people in government who had access to these things were like, oh, cool, I can look through this. Let me look through some of my data or let me actually use my assets specifically to look at certain things.
00:55:44
Speaker
You can do that, and that goes back to what I mentioned earlier, this idea that some of the best work in government is done not necessarily by an office with a big flagpole out front that says, you know, UAP agency, but rather by the analyst or the person who has access to satellite technologies or airborne technologies who says,
00:56:07
Speaker
I'm going to go through and look at this. We've got a nuclear carrier that's moving through the Mediterranean and I've got an airborne asset. I think I'm going to watch it for a while. Let's see if anything pops up over here and let's see what we get.
00:56:21
Speaker
And I know, for a fact, in some of the classified, or excuse me, they're not classified, but they're secure. So they're intelligence community-only type chat rooms they have at our space. Especially in the last year, there's been considerable chatter. So it's kind of like Discord for intelligence personnel, where they can discuss different things and they can come together.
00:56:49
Speaker
Particularly with the uap topic you had high-level people that were coming together and discussing it and so suddenly Once it became acceptable. I think that people stopped throwing out Potentially good stuff into the trash bin because they didn't think anybody was they were
00:57:06
Speaker
told to throw it out, or that was the implication, throw it out. And they started looking for it. And so I think that definitely is the impetus behind that statement on top of the fact that there's certainly been plenty of people who were absolutely in the position to know who have said there is much better stuff. Yeah. Thank you so much. That makes so much sense. Yeah.
00:57:34
Speaker
I like that absolutely down to and I because I mentioned this and I'll just say this I mentioned this in an article myself and Tom Rogan wrote for the debrief a year ago Tom Rogan from Washington examiner and I said that some of the best intelligence or some of the best stuff that they had was mason measurement and signals intelligence and I think
00:57:57
Speaker
with the UAP report that came out, the June report, the preliminary report, I think it mentioned something about not having any mason. And I think some people were like, aha, you know, there is none. And to that, the point of that is that measurement and signals that you collect is evidence, the inability to collect.
00:58:23
Speaker
certain measurement and signals is evidence. And so the point there being that some of the best evidence is that when you have some of the
00:58:34
Speaker
world's best sensor suites and platforms that can Tell you the exact plane they can tell you you know that planes being piloted by you know, surgery His wife just left him and he had chili for breakfast, you know, like they're that good But when they're not able to give you anything and they're not able to even register that this is a mechanical device This is an electronic device that in itself is significant evidence because that's not normal
00:59:02
Speaker
So when you can detect even your best adversaries stealth aerospace technologies, but then you cannot detect this whatsoever, that is evidence. So I think there's a lot there. I know everybody wants the pictures and videos though. That's the sexy stuff. Which is understandable, but you know. Yeah.
00:59:26
Speaker
each to their own. I like the data. I like these kind of discussions and what we're seeing happening going through the government. Now, a lot of people will just go, well, I don't trust the government. I'm ignoring that. Well, that's up to them. But I'm different.
00:59:41
Speaker
It's always a totality of everything. If it was just one person saying one thing, then I think there's absolute reason to be hesitant or question or be suspicious better yet. Nothing wrong with questioning. But I think when you've got an abundance of people that are kind of saying the same things, it's interesting. It's certainly interesting.
01:00:05
Speaker
for anyone in the United States, if they really, really, really want to know so, so, so badly, my recommendation to them would be, they're running a little late for this midterm, but the next elections, man, run for office and try to get on the Intel Committee. I know we push them and everything. I know we send a lot of
01:00:29
Speaker
People send a lot of political things and contact their lawmakers as they should. But at the end of the day, if you really, really want to know, you know, maybe launch the campaign, man, you know, so and so for Congress and get the win. Let me know if you do. Let me know. I might have a new source. So keep me. If that happens, don't forget about me.
01:00:54
Speaker
Sound advice. Well, Tim, we've just about hit the hour. I really, really want to thank you so much for coming on. It's always a great conversation. Sure. Anytime, and we have to do it regularly because I could do this for hours. Everyone in the live chat, thank you so much for being cordial, keeping it a really pleasant conversation from what I've seen. Anybody that's listening to this after the fact on the Anomalous Podcast Network, thank you so much as well.
01:01:21
Speaker
I'm going to be back next week with Caroline Corey, director of A Terror in the Sky. I'm also going to be on Instagram this week with Graham Rendell talking about his new book. And then I'm losing track of everything I've got going on. I think later this week I'm on with the guys from UAPX live on Instagram as well. Just follow me everywhere and you'll find it. So yeah, that's it for now, guys. Going to love you and leave you. Take care and we'll see you soon. Goodbye.