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NJ "Drones," Continued: US Sen. Gillibrand strikes back!
88 Plays3 months ago
Reach me at UFOFocusPodcast@proton.me
WNYC's Brian Lehrer Show Interview: https://www.wnyc.org/story/call-your-senator-sen-gillibrand-on-the-era-drones-and-more
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Transcript
Introduction and Holiday Wishes
00:00:00
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to UFO focus. I'm your host Isaiah and Thank you so much for tuning back in or if you're new for tuning in in the first place I'm glad to have you and I hope that your ah Holiday season at least if if you're in the US is proceeding You know tolerably or you know very well ideally, but I think tolerably is fine. I Anyway, let's get down to it, shall we?
Drone Sightings over New Jersey
00:00:32
Speaker
I think you know what we're here to talk about tonight, again, and that is drones.
00:00:47
Speaker
Drones over New Jersey, drones over other places. mysterious drones, alleged drones,
00:00:59
Speaker
non-drones, or rather, mistakenly, things mistakenly identified as drones. You get the bullshit.
Senator Kirsten Gillibrand's Comments on Drones
00:01:08
Speaker
So the focus of tonight's podcast, I'm gonna try to keep it somewhat narrow um and newsy, as it were. The focused of focus of tonight's podcast is um comments made by ah New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand on the Brian Lehrer show that's on WNYC in New York. um This was on Thursday. So um the senator goes on Brian's show regularly and they talk about different issues. And um Brian did bring up the drone situation, as you'll hear, ah actually towards the end of the interview.
00:01:50
Speaker
which, you know, I'm not throwing shade here, but I think spoke to, as as you'll hear in the audio, I think Brian sort of thought, there's there's not gonna be much here, there's not much to go over. um And I'll bet he was kind of surprised, I sure was, um by Gillibrand's response. And that's what we're gonna focus on tonight.
Investigating the Drone Mystery
00:02:16
Speaker
ah But before we jump into it, I don't want to look I've been thinking about this drone situation a lot over the past week Especially the past few days. It's kind of messing with my mind um And my thoughts on everything are evolving I am working fairly hard here to get you a mix of news, information, perspectives, et cetera, on this drone thing. And I'd like to at least explain why, what why I'm bothering to devote energy to this. um Part of it, I'll be honest, is I guess my reporter's hunch, you know?
00:03:02
Speaker
I mean, throughout my career in journalism, I've relied on a certain amount of kind of I don't know, instinct, hunches, you know, ah sort of calibrated interest to guide me in terms of what stories I think are interesting and sort of worth pursuing. I've always looked for I think I've always been attracted to under covered angles, things where where
00:03:36
Speaker
the mainstream media especially but you know whatever the public in general where I feel like oh no no no ever people think it's this way but it's actually that way I've always loved those kind of stories and you know honestly um in addition to all the fine and noble pursuits of journalism informing the public yeah speaking truth to power, et cetera, like a lot of journalists. I also just, I love a good mystery. I love playing detective and trying to get to the bottom of things that every now and then I've successfully done so and written some cool investigative stories. I think this New Jersey drone, this quote unquote drone situation in New Jersey is mysterious and is baffling and is worth
00:04:28
Speaker
some more investigation.
Drones vs UFO Phenomena and Government Responses
00:04:30
Speaker
I also think that while this is not ostensibly a UFO story, although, who knows, right? um But while this is not ostensibly a UFO story, right? It's supposedly about drones, whatever that means.
00:04:49
Speaker
I think that the mystery around these drones is instructive to anyone interested in the UFO topic, because a lot of the dynamics are the same, right? You have witnesses, including regular people, including sort of local authorities, sort of going up a level, including some cases, seemingly military authorities.
00:05:11
Speaker
um observing, reporting weird sightings. And there's confusion, and there's it's it's unclear what's going on. And then what's happened right is that the you know the government, so know specifically the White House, the Pentagon,
00:05:30
Speaker
uh and then other agencies like the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI you have them weighing in so you have information coming in from them and what's happened and this is what we talked about in the last podcast might with my brother Owen one of the things we were talking about was how the narrative coming from those institutions um seems to be converging around this idea that there is no situation. And that's a change. And I think that's sort of the first clue that something weird is going on here. Initially, the main message coming from the powers that be. So again, it's the White House, the Pentagon, the agencies, ones that um A, we don't know who's these are. B, we don't think it's foreign or foreign adversary, whatever.
00:06:24
Speaker
See, there's no apparent threat. Now, this makes no sense, of course. If you don't know whose they are, how do you know it's not foreign? How do you know it's not a threat? um But that was the initial message. And the important distinction here is that the initial message did not deny that something was going on. In fact, it sort of implicitly seemed to acknowledge that there were drones or whatever.
Media Influence on Public Perception
00:06:55
Speaker
um And then that message just over the last week changed and it changed kind of abruptly. And what it changed to, and this is what you're going to hear in the audio we're about to listen to, is it changed to there is nothing going on. There is no drone situation.
00:07:18
Speaker
This is all basically misidentification. And look, i've I said this last time, I'm happy to say it now and keep repeating it. Obviously, once this story became national news, you have people looking up in the sky and seeing stuff and thinking, that's a drone, that's a miss mystery drone reporting it, and it's not, it's conventional aircraft, or you know, it's whatever. Obviously,
00:07:47
Speaker
That's to be expected one way or the other. That doesn't tell us anything about the underlying ah origin of whatever's happening. And um it also seems pretty obvious to me that the powers that be, again, um specifically ah in this case, the Pentagon, that's who we're about to hear from, is seizing on that sort of obvious fact that like, well, a lot of this stuff is being, you know, it's just mis misidentification.
Historical Parallels in Government Handling of Unexplained Phenomena
00:08:18
Speaker
to push a narrative that all of it is misidentification. And that, of course, makes no logical sense. It also, of course, is a micro, ah what's the word? It's like a little miniature diorama or something of the whole UFO situation for the last 70 years or whatever it's been, which is that you have incredible allegations of Not allegations, but you have you have incredible accounts, descriptions of of amazing things happening, seemingly impossible phenomenon. And then um you mostly have the, you know, you have the government downplaying
00:09:03
Speaker
any reality to it I mean even in if we look at the last arrow report this is how they deliver you know this is the government's UAP office they always begin by saying oh there was lots of sightings and and most of them were we were able to quickly attribute to conventional things well yeah most sure that's to be expected the question is are there things that aren't conventional behind there and I You know, this seems like a pretty ah obvious trick, right? I mean, this isn't like the most complex logistical gaslighting you've ever seen, it's ah but it it seems to be
Senator Gillibrand's Perspective on Government Stance
00:09:45
Speaker
pretty effective. And so what's been happening is that this line, that there is nothing going on, has been kind of winning the day, um but
00:09:56
Speaker
But, Senator Gillibrand, who is a high-ranking U.S. Senator, who created Arrow, the government's UAP office, essentially, um through legislation, who serves on, and yes, I looked this up, who serves on the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, the Senate Committee on Armed Services,
00:10:19
Speaker
um who is in a position to have all kinds of information that you and I do not have access to. Well, I forgot where the sentence started, but Senator Gillibrand says otherwise, and that's what we're going to hear. So without further ado, I'm just going to go ahead and play this segment of ah Brian Lehrer's interview with Senator Gillibrand on Thursday, December 19th. I'll meet you on the other side.
Security Risks and Legislative Efforts on Drones
00:10:48
Speaker
Last topic, Senator, as we're almost out of time.
00:10:51
Speaker
the drones over New York and New Jersey. Here's Pentagon spokesman John Kirby on CNN on Monday. After days and days now of forensics work, analysis, detection work, and looking at the tips that came in. And our assessment is that these drones represent lawful, legal, commercial, hobbyist drones, even law enforcement drones.
00:11:15
Speaker
John Kirby sounding pretty unequivocal there, Senator, about this being a lot of hype over a non-issue. But I think I saw you're not convinced, but you tell us. Well, I'm definitely not convinced. um i don't think I think their statement was too absolute and wasn't sufficiently nuanced to reflect the truth of the matter. For example, if New York received thousands of calls,
00:11:41
Speaker
after there was some drone sightings about people seeing things in the air. Many of those, maybe even 99% of them, are more likely to be known aircraft, helicopters, enthusiast drones, law enforcement drones, 100 different things. But I can promise you, and this I know is a fact, that some of these drone incursions over military bases and over um nuclear sites and over sensitive locations across the United States, including New York, including New Jersey,
00:12:10
Speaker
are not something that we should be dismissing. We should take them down and assess who they are because they cannot say they have no concern until they do that. And I've had no reporting and no information that they've actually done that. We know that there are Chinese companies that own farms and fields um across the United States where these drones could be launched. We know that adversaries could have vessels um on the coast that could launch these aircraft. This is something that we are aware of and we know is possible. So why would you assume that everything is an enthusiast or a friendly? It's irresponsible, in fact.
00:12:57
Speaker
And so I have legislation with Tom Cotton to require that the DOD has the authority to take drones down that are having incursions over military bases and other sensitive sites. um Right now they don't have the authority to take the down unless they show malign intent. The definition of malign intent does not include hovering.
00:13:21
Speaker
if If a drone group of drones are hovering over Langley, for example, they could be stealing data and information, doing intel, um retrievals, and and spying. They could have a weapon, any kind of weapon that's just there waiting to be used. And if you can't take them down until they do something that's adversarial, that's a huge national security risk because they they clearly could be getting digital information and spying.
00:13:48
Speaker
so No one should be so certain that there's no problem here. The drone incursion over Langley lasted for two weeks. The drone technology there was something that radar could not detect. I believe that's going to be that's going to have similar evidence in other places around the United States, other sensitive military sites. um I have not heard um what whether we have any information about the most recent drone incursions. We had them over um Stewart Air Force Base.
00:14:18
Speaker
We had them over an arsenal in, uh, New Jersey. Uh, we had them overwrite Patterson airport base. We had them over, um, several other bases over the last two weeks. So yes, maybe 99% of the sightings that people see may well be accounted for. It doesn't mean we know what these drone incursions are specifically the ones that are over sensitive sites because we have not been told in any hearing in any setting that we know who is flying these drones.
00:14:47
Speaker
One quick follow-up since you talk about taking them down, um what standards of safety would you want them to apply before they shoot down a drone that might come down in a populated area in central New Jersey or wherever it is?
00:15:03
Speaker
So I would recommend and this certainly ah law enforcement and the FBI and Homeland Security and the DOD would be highly responsible for figuring this out. But there's ways to do it. You can capture a drone by using a net. You can capture a drone.
00:15:18
Speaker
and you can hack a drone and change its flight path and have it land, there's many ways you can change ah the flight of a drone without shooting it down. Shooting it down over a population base where it could fall on people is very dangerous, and I don't think anyone is recommending that, but you could certainly do it over a military base if you got drones over your um Buildings are over your um ah runways. They can take them down. They can use multiple ways to take them down. They just don't have the authority to do it right now. They also don't have the authority to track them. So if they're coming and going, we would like to track them and take them down. And so I'm going to try to get the authority to do that. We had emergency legislation on the floor to do something about this and Rand Paul objected because he's afraid of surveillance of US citizens.
00:16:09
Speaker
And I appreciate that concern. We don't want surveillance of U.S. citizens. I need to know that these are domestic um drones in the first place. I don't know that they're not Chinese, Russian or Iranian. I don't know that they're being operated by an American, perhaps who's being paid by the Russians, the Chinese or the Iranians. I don't know that. And until I know that, there's still a significant national security concern.
00:16:31
Speaker
And that's our Call Your Senator segment for this month. Senator Gillibrand, we always appreciate your accessibility for doing this and answering my questions and those from listeners. Happy holidays. Happy holidays and thanks for all the callers. Appreciate it.
Conclusion and Call to Action
00:16:48
Speaker
OK, so there you have it. And thankfully for me, I think the senator spoke spoke very Well, I think she articulated her position very well. I don't think there's a need for me to recap everything she just said. And it's late right now and I've got more coming on this. So I think I'm just gonna leave tonight's pod at that. ah But look, the fundamental question is, what the hell is going on? I still don't know the answer.
00:17:21
Speaker
I feel further from it than at any other point. ah But we're gonna keep exploring and see where that exploration leads us. I think it seems pretty clear to me that if nothing else, there is a mystery here. And let's see if we can solve it, see what's ah what's to be learned. Okay. Thanks again so much for tuning in. um If you could do me a solid and spread the word on social media, et cetera. I am trying to grow my audience. That would be great. If you can leave a review on, especially I guess on ah Apple podcasts, that would be huge, especially if it's a good review. But anyway, I'm so glad to have you and I'll see you next time.