New Realities recorded on June 24, 2008
Summary
In this interview, Alan Steinfeld speaks with Stanton Friedman, a prominent ufologist, about the history of UFO sightings and investigations. They discuss the Kenneth Arnold sighting, the Roswell incident, and the evidence supporting extraterrestrial visitation. Friedman explains the government’s motivations for covering up UFO data, the role of skeptics like Carl Sagan, and the implications of alien technology and abductions. He also touches upon the lack of academic engagement with ufology and the shift in public consciousness regarding the phenomenon.
Transcript
Alan Steinfeld
Welcome to New Realities. This is Alan Steinfeld, and each week on this program I like to bring guests who are really at the cutting edge of new information, new paradigms of thought, and how we are really considering new realities. That’s the name of the show, New Realities. My name is Alan Steinfeld. And tonight I have a very exciting guest, one of the experts in the field of ufology, a real master, a real, I would say, godfather and grandfather in the field. His name is Stanton Friedman. And particularly tonight, I’m very happy you’re a guest on the show because you realize this is the anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold sighting that started the whole flying saucer craze. June 24th.
Stanton Friedman
I certainly, I certainly realized that. As a matter of fact, in 1987, on the 20th anniversary of Kenneth Arnold’s case, I was on Nightline with Ted Koppel and Philip Klass.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh, Philip Klass, actually, who you mentioned the other night on Coast to Coast. We were just on four, you were just on four hours and they studied that very carefully. To take it even further and, let’s start with Kenneth Arnold because that’s really beginning of modern UFO studies. And he saw nine silver ships. Now, I don’t get, were they saucer shaped or were they flying like saucers? What was…
Stanton Friedman
Well, there was a bit of both. When the first term was used, it was they flew as a saucer would if you skipped it across the water, which is a rather unusual flight behavior. You know, plop, plop, plop kind of thing. But the shape, one of them was a little different in the back end and people have often shown this round but curved, not a full circle. And so sort of boomerang-ish. But I just watched on YouTube thing about some skeptics saying, well, you know, actually the Roswell incident, the rancher had found something early in June and then when he heard about Kenneth Arnold, he came forward and so forth and what a bunch of baloney. The guy had everything wrong about Roswell, which was after Kenneth Arnold.
Alan Steinfeld
Like that is like the one-two punch. Here we are June 24th and Roswell is what? July 2nd is it?
Stanton Friedman
Well, the first press coverage of it was July 8th. The discovery might have been the 3rd or the 4th. He went into town on the 6th.
Alan Steinfeld
Who was the Marcel? Who was the person who found the wreckage?
Stanton Friedman
No. The wreckage was found by a rancher named Mac Brazel. He was operating the Foster ranch. This is way out in the boonies. And there’s no road out there the last 10 miles across country. And he had heard a tremendous explosion, which he didn’t think was from lightning or anything. And there was a big storm. But the next morning when he went out to check on water, water is a very important commodity there, he had a sheep ranch there. And he found this wreckage and strewn all over a large area, small pieces, shiny stuff mostly. Nothing conventional. And the sheep wouldn’t cross the debris field. And so that was of concern to him, plus the fact that sheep will eat almost anything. He certainly didn’t want them eating any of this junk that was lying all over the place. And so…
Alan Steinfeld
So he called the army, huh?
Stanton Friedman
No, he didn’t. No, that’s he didn’t have a phone. He didn’t have electricity. He goes into the small town of Corona, that’s why my book about this is Crash at Corona, for his Saturday morning, the 5th of July, to get supplies. He always went in, took his little old truck and went in there. And he’s telling the guys there about what he had found. And they tell him about the newspaper articles about flying saucers. The July 4th weekend was chock full of saucer sightings all over the country.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh, it was? Oh, it was…
Stanton Friedman
Oh, yes. The Kenneth Arnold story got things rolling. And then all kinds of other people, including airline pilots, reported what they saw. And as one newspaper said, I mean, ridicule was part of the story then too. There were sightings in 44, almost all the states except Kansas. But of course, Kansas is dry. Ha, ha, ha, you know. But there were even some sightings overseas. And I’ve got loads of clippings about these other cases. But the Roswell story hit it big in the evening papers on July 8th, from Chicago west. This has to do with when the press release went out from the Roswell Army Airfield, which was about noon, New Mexico time, too late for all the Eastern papers and just making it into the evening papers from Chicago west. As a matter of fact, it’s kind of funny. The Los Angeles paper has both Roswell Army finds flying saucer and General thinks it’s a radar weather gadget. The cover story was already out by that time.
Alan Steinfeld
Already out the next day the cover story out.
Stanton Friedman
Same day. Same day. In Los Angeles, it was the same day. Now, the next morning’s paper, it was in all the papers, including the New York Times, etc., that Ramey emptied the Roswell saucer. That’s General Ramey in Fort Worth, Texas, head of the Eighth Air Force, of which the 509th, which was in Roswell, was an important part. The most important part. A lot of people forget, intentionally, when it comes to the skeptics, that the 509th was the most elite military group in the entire world, the guys at Roswell. They dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They exploded two more atomic bombs in Operation Crossroads in 1946. Hand-picked officers, hand-picked men. You know, this was not a bunch of…
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, you know, I know because you said that’s possibly one of the reasons the UFOs targeted New Mexico because of the atom bombs that went off there and the other technologies they were developing in that area.
Stanton Friedman
Rockets which were being launched and the good radar there, yeah.
Alan Steinfeld
So you’re actually the one person who brought the Roswell story back into popular view or into common knowledge, right?
Stanton Friedman
Yeah. Well, it was a very short half-life in 47 and there’s only two places where it’s even mentioned. Frank Edwards’ book, Flying Saucers Serious Business in the mid 60s, has about a paragraph in which he gets almost everything wrong. And Ted Bloecher has a report on the UFO wave of 1947. He only lists 800 cases because he was an actor who traveled around and checked libraries and newspapers when he traveled. But he missed many of them and other people have come forward and we have now over 2,000 reports from the summer of 47.
Alan Steinfeld
But how did you… yeah, how did you bring it back into public awareness?
Stanton Friedman
Okay. It really, like I say, it had a very short half-life back then. But in 1978, I had first heard early 70s from a woman who worked at a had been working at a radio station in Albuquerque. And it had a good sighting, a colleague and I went to her because her son told her he was a forest ranger and had a good sighting. So we called her. Lydia Sleppy was her name. And she told us about her sighting, which was a good one. And but then she got into this story that when she was working at the radio station, they had a call from their Roswell affiliate saying that a saucer had crashed and it was going to be sent to Wright Patterson Air Force Base and he wanted her to take down his story. She wasn’t a reporter, but she was a good typist. And he was dictating and she was typing. She was putting it out on the wire. And then a bell goes off, do not continue this transmission. FBI. And she asked him, well, what should I do? And he says, stop. Do what you’re told. And people wonder, what the heck is the FBI doing watching the wire service? Well, very simple. New Mexico had more classified work going on there than any place.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. Los Alamos, development of the atomic bomb, all that stuff.
Stanton Friedman
And Sandia Corporation, a second nuclear weapons lab. And Kirtland Air Force Base was the biggest employer in the state and Roswell was the home of the only atomic bombing outfit in the world. And so…
Alan Steinfeld
But what did you do to get it back?
Stanton Friedman
Ah, but that that’s the next step. So I put that on a back burner. I went so far, she remembered some names, I checked with them and I sort of hit a stone wall. Then in 1978, I was at a television station in Baton Rouge, Louisiana because I was speaking that night at Louisiana State University. And I was scheduled to do three interviews to promote the lecture. And I did the first two and the third reporter was nowhere to be found. And they didn’t have cell phones back then. And so the station manager, Johnny Allen, is giving me coffee. He’s embarrassed. He knew the person who brought me to the station, he knew I had other things to do, where the heck is the reporter, you know? He’s giving me coffee and talking. And out of the blue, he suddenly says, you know, the guy you ought to talk to is Jesse Marcel. And being the brilliant investigator that I am, I said, who’s he? Well, he handled wreckage of one of those saucers you’re interested in when he was in the military. What? You know, that totally out of the blue and what do you know about him? Well, he lives down in Houma, Louisiana. I didn’t know where Houma was. I’ve been there since they interviewed Jess. And he’s a great guy. We’re old ham radio buddies. So I did my interview. We had a great crowd that night and riding high. The next morning I call information from the airport in Houma, Louisiana. Get Jesse Marcel. And he tells me his story. Now he didn’t come looking for me. And one of the reasons he talked to me was A, I mentioned Johnny Allen and B, his picture was in the newspapers. He couldn’t hide his role in this stuff.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, that was in 47. You’re calling him in 78. That is 31 years later. That’s pretty amazing.
Stanton Friedman
That’s right. Yeah. And so he tells me his story, but he doesn’t have the exact date. And I share it with Bill Moore. A few months later, I’m in Bemidji, Minnesota at Bemidji State College, now a university, of course. And after my lecture, somebody comes up to me, a couple, and says, every hear anything about a crash saucer in New Mexico? And I said, well, yeah, I’ve heard some things. Tell me more. So they told me a story of Barney Barnett, who was a soil conservation service, helped ranchers with water problems, stuff like that, in New Mexico. And I shared that with Bill Moore, who was living in Minnesota at that time. And he had a third story. And that was from an English actor named Hughie Green, this was in Flying Saucer Review, an English publication. He was listening to the radio, driving from Los Angeles to Philadelphia, heard on the radio about a crash saucer in New Mexico. And he could pinpoint the date because it wasn’t a trip he made very often. And frankly, cars weren’t so great back then, you got to patch in. And he said early July 47. So Bill goes to the University of Minnesota library, looks into periodicals, and there’s the story confirming what Jesse told me, naming other people. And in the next year and a half, two years, we found 62 people in conjunction with Roswell.
Alan Steinfeld
30 years later. 31 years later. And then it just became a kind of national, myth almost. In a positive sense of a myth. It became a kind of anchor for the UFO movement in a sense, Roswell. I mean, all you have to say is Roswell.
Stanton Friedman
Well, yeah, the first book, The Roswell Incident came out in 1980. Bill and I found 62 people. By 1986, we’d found 92 people. And I instigated, I guess would be the word, the Unsolved Mysteries program on NBC in 1989 and was in the show and found some people for them and stuff. And that was seen by 28 million people.
Alan Steinfeld
Wow. Wow. And we got further leads from that, would you believe?
Stanton Friedman
Well, I do believe it. And you know that picture of Jesse Marcel in some book of him holding the weather balloon that wasn’t the footage. There’s a great look on his face. You know that look where he says, you’re joking. This isn’t the stuff I found, right? I mean…
Alan Steinfeld
Well, yeah, yeah. I was the first to get that picture from the Fort Worth paper way back in the 70s.
Stanton Friedman
But that that look on his face. Do you know what I’m talking about?
Alan Steinfeld
Yes, I do. And his son has commented about that. Jesse Jr. His son, of course, was a colonel in Iraq, a medical doctor, a flight surgeon, a pilot at 225 combat flying hours.
Stanton Friedman
But let’s talk about you. Because you’re a new, you were a nuclear physicist and then you sort of got into, ufology, you said because you had to order a book. But what was the case? What was the incident that convinced you that this is real? I mean, there must have been one thing where you said, oh my God.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I suppose the first book I read was The Report on UFOs by Captain Air Force Captain Edward Ruppelt. That intrigued me. He had headed Project Bluebook in the early 50s. And then I moved to California, read 15 more books, and I was on the fence, maybe, maybe not. And then at the University of California library in Berkeley, I found a privately published version of the largest study ever done for the government, Project Blue Book Special Report 14. I was in data heaven. 240 charts, tables, graphs, maps, very exciting. And the press release that the Air Force put out when the report was completed. That was in 1955, and they lied their head off. And that shocked me.
Stanton Friedman
What did they say?
Alan Steinfeld
Well, the Secretary of the Air Force in the summary, they didn’t distribute the report, but they distributed a widely distributed press release, October 25th, I think 1955. Most newspapers carry it. The Secretary of the Air Force was quoted as saying, and I included it in the version of Blue Book Special Report 14 that I distribute, so you can see the lies. Donald Quarles was his name. He said, quote, on the basis of this report, we believe that no objects such as those popularly described as flying saucers have overflown the United States. Even the unknown 3% could have been identified as conventional phenomena or illusions if more complete observational data had been available. Unquote. Now, the only trouble with the quote is that the unknowns weren’t 3%. I looked at the data. This isn’t in the press release. I’m looking at the report. The unknowns were 21.5% of the 3201 cases. And there was a separate group for insufficient information. 9.5%. So it was a total lie.
Stanton Friedman
So they lied out of their own report in order just to get people not to look at it.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right. And similar lies have been repeated many, many times. And they also, the press release cleverly didn’t say who did the work, didn’t give the title of the report. If they had, surely some newsmen would have said, well, what do you mean Special Report 14? What happened to 1 through 13? They were all classified. So they didn’t want to talk about them.
Stanton Friedman
So you read that and you said, oh my God, there there’s something here because why are they lying about this stuff?
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, I mean, I worked under security. I had a clearance at the time and I understand that sometimes you have to be evasive, let’s put it that way. But this was more than being evasive. This was lying, flat out lying. And this is a piece on my website at www.stantonfriedman.com, government UFO lies. This is one of them, but there’s a whole bunch of others. They’re all lying.
Stanton Friedman
Well, just last, was it a couple of months ago with the Stephenville, Texas case where they said, oh, there were no F-16s. And they said, oh, yeah, there was excetings. And in fact, what you saw was an F-16. I mean, you know, it’s just like…
Alan Steinfeld
They lost 10 of them somehow. First there are none and then there are 10. I mean, that’s pretty neat.
Stanton Friedman
So they’re still lying. But is it becoming very obvious to the public? Or is the public still like sheep, you feel? Or what do you think is happening?
Alan Steinfeld
There’s two different things here. What is what the public thinks and the other is what they do. In a class of a hundred students, I asked for their opinions about something. But I said, I want you to vote with your hands. Close your eyes. I don’t want you to be influenced by the other people around you. Well, it turned out the class of about a hundred, 80% I said, well, your instructor and I will count the votes. 80% thought most people didn’t believe in UFOs. 80% of that group did believe in UFOs. That’s a big gap there. But it turns out that people’s actions, will they report a sighting? Will they teach a course on UFOs at a college? Will they sponsor a PhD thesis? There’s only been a dozen. There’s room for 50. That’s dependent on their perception. Mistaken as it might be that most people don’t believe in UFOs. And that’s further established by the fact that at the end of my lectures, I always ask, I never ask at the beginning. I don’t have guts enough to. How many people here believe they’ve seen what I would consider to be a flying saucer? And the hands go up hesitantly. I’ll make a crack about, we didn’t let the CIA in, it’s okay. And I point in count 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. As I move across the room, the hands go up much more readily. The first hands are hesitant. Why? Because suddenly everybody who thinks they’re the only one who’s had a sighting realizes they’re not the only one. Typically, it’s 10%. That’s a lot of people. But then I ask, how many of you reported what you saw? 90% of the hands go down. And so…
Stanton Friedman
I mean, I’ve seen UFOs. I’ve seen ships. I mean, in New Mexico, actually Lamy, New Mexico, outside of Santa Fe, I saw a light that circled around, came close. Actually in just in New York, in November, I saw something appear in the southern part of the sky at six in the morning, it floated around. There was this comet that or meteor that went right towards it, disappeared. And it’s like, well, I told some friends, but who do I report that to? I mean, I mean, who I mean I’m an act.
Alan Steinfeld
The Mutual, the Mutual UFO Network you can report it to. If you call the Air Force, they’ll tell you to report to a local scientist. Funny story incidentally. I was a consultant to Universal Studios on the UFO incident, which is a dramatization of the Betty and Barney Hill case. Starring James Earl Jones back in…
Stanton Friedman
And Estelle Parsons, I actually saw that on television years ago. Yes. Yes. Yes.
Alan Steinfeld
Right. Good memory. Well, I was referred to Universal Studios by the United States Air Force. They were called for the name of a scientist in the area and they were given my name.
Stanton Friedman
Well, you know, I have to say your book, you captured about the Betty and Barney Hills case. That that story in Look Magazine and for some reason my family got Look and was it 1965. Instead of Life Magazine, we got Look and I read that story and there was just something very creepy about the whole thing. It felt creepy. And it’s like, I I don’t think anyone was hoaxing Look magazine at that point. So that that case, a little, you know, the Betty Bonnie Hill case opened a whole other doorway about the UFO phenomena.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh yeah.
Stanton Friedman
Oh yeah. And we’re, and we’re still sort of integrating that. I mean, now there’s David Jacobs is saying there’s actually hybrids taken from these abductions walking around. Now, now how far do you go with the abduction material?
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I’m convinced, I mean, I, of course, spent time with David and with Bud Hopkins there in New York who’s done some fine investigations. And with John Mack up at Harvard and.
Stanton Friedman
Truly the patron saint of ufology. I call him now. He gave his, his, you know, official blessing to it as a psychiatrist for Harvard. But anyway, so, yes.
Alan Steinfeld
And fought, and fought against the guys who tried to take away his, his position.
Stanton Friedman
Yes, yes. Good for him.
Alan Steinfeld
Good for him. And they tried to, to, to get rid of a tenured forum. Well, I, I’m convinced that, many earthlings have been abducted by some aliens. Yes. And, you know, what all is going on, what the purpose is, maybe it’s classroom training for alien abductors. Here’s how you go about it guys. You know, I cut up a frog when I was in biology, didn’t I? I mean. I don’t think they do that anymore.
Stanton Friedman
Right.
Alan Steinfeld
But, you know what I’m saying is that there was a very frequent event. Everybody was cutting up frogs. Cuz, not because they were finding out anything new, but it was for the individual. Now, I think aliens are here for a number of purposes. And people want a, you know, one stop. They, they just popped in here to grab a hybrid and doesn’t that sound silly. And then they went back home. I don’t think it works that way at all. I think they got a quota to fill. They home, they may not get home very often. The example I use and it sounds homely I suppose, but my longest tour when I was young was 25 lectures in 35 days in 15 states. Now did I go from home to lecture A back home to lecture B, etc? No, of course I didn’t. I went to A to B to C to D. I got home when I was finished with the 25 lectures. So the aliens may be stopping here today, Mars yesterday, you know, they could be on a sampling mission in the asteroid belt. We don’t know what’s going on.
Stanton Friedman
I know we don’t know, but the people that I’ve talked to and respect, it seems to them and to me, from my own experience, that the nature of the abductions is changing. It seems like they maybe fulfilled their quota of sperm and ovum and they have enough of these, you know, interbreed children. It seems like people seem that it seems to be convinced that something else is going on. Do you find that to be true in your research?
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I I I leave plenty of room for what’s going on. They may be preparing a generation to take us over. To replace us, to develop genes and genetic material to get rid of the nastiness in us.
Stanton Friedman
Or possibly some of us are already partly hybrids and we are, yeah.
Alan Steinfeld
Yes. I leave room for that. Hey, 60 years is a long time, you know. The the hill case was not the first abduction. It was the first one we heard about. That was reported on and investigated and because Dr. Simon did such a great job. It it was very convincing. But there are Bud Hopkins has abductions back in the 30s.
Stanton Friedman
Well, Jacobs, David Jacobs says it goes back to the 1890s when probably, well, he doesn’t say the first wave, but really the first wave of airships began in the 1890s and I think…
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah. Wouldn’t surprise me. And the thing is, they may have been doing it on a retail level and then a wholesale level. And, you know, what people forget is that the 20th century was a remarkable century. In terms of two very, very different things. And they’re interlinked, but the two different things are the development of technology. You know, the first airplanes, the first rockets, the first television, the first radio across the ocean. A whole long list of these things. The neutron and nuclear weapons and all the rest. But it’s also the bloodiest century in man’s history. And World War Two alone, we killed 50 million of our own kind. We destroyed 1700 cities. So we clearly demonstrated that while we are capable of developing new technology, we don’t seem to have the sociology to control how we use it. And what we’re using it for primarily is killing people.
Stanton Friedman
Ah.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s a pretty sad message, don’t you think?
Stanton Friedman
Yeah. Yeah. And so our friends and neighbors, you know, want to take a, you know, they want to keep an eye on what the kids next door are doing because they might blow up the neighborhood, right?
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah. Maybe quarantine us. I mean, I’ve asked a lot of people this question. If you were an alien, would you want earthlings out there? The answer invariably is no. I mean, you know, it may sound like a silly comparison, but every single day at least 30,000 children die needlessly of preventable disease and starvation on this planet. At least that many. I’m sure the number’s gone up with what’s going on in Africa. However, this year, the United States will spend half a trillion dollars on things military. And the rest of the world another half trillion. Now there’s something strange about that comparison, isn’t there? That would sure feed an awful lot of kids.
Stanton Friedman
We claim that we care, you know, but we don’t.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I love what you said what you said the other night about us being a primitive society whose major activity is tribal warfare. I mean, that’s that sums it up really.
Stanton Friedman
It does and I hate to say that, but it’s true. And until we learn from history, we’re doomed to repeat it somebody said, Santayana, I guess.
Alan Steinfeld
I think George Bernard Shaw said what we learned from history is that we learn nothing from history.
Stanton Friedman
Yeah, both of those together make well, hey, the saddest interview I ever did was with a woman from CBS who came up here. And I went through this bit about you know, there are three signs to anybody in the neighborhood that soon we’d be moving out. Nuclear weapons, rockets and radar, good technology. Because after all, who’d want us out there, we only killed 50 million of our own kind. And she stopped me. I don’t believe that. What don’t you believe? Well, I don’t think we killed 50 million of our own kind during World War II. And I said, well, how many do you think we killed? I thought she was going to say 40. Oh, only three or four million people. Here’s a college educated woman working for CBS and she doesn’t really.
Alan Steinfeld
The Russians killed 20 million of their own people, you know, I mean…
Stanton Friedman
That’s right. Six million in the Holocaust. The Chinese and Japanese lost gads of people and we killed an awful lot of civilians, which had never happened before. You know, trench warfare in the First World War, armies camped across from each other and blowing each other to bits. But in the Second World War, wholesale bombing of civilian populations. All over the world. I mean, what we did.
Alan Steinfeld
Even if it was only 3 million, that’s still not, I mean, not that it was, but even if it was, that’s still awful to kill a million, to kill one person because of territorial rights, I think is an awful signature for humans to have. So…
Stanton Friedman
Yeah, that’s that’s why I say I think they’ve dumped the bad boys and girls here and that’s why we’re so nasty to each other.
Alan Steinfeld
But I think we seem to be getting help. What do you think of Dan Burisch and his meetings with the J-Rod at Area 51?
Stanton Friedman
I am not at all convinced that he’s telling the truth. I like the work George Knapp has done and his story about his degree and where he was how he was living in Las Vegas but commuting to someplace but nobody’s got a diploma. I mean you know I’ve asked…
Alan Steinfeld
Bob Lazar too, right? Yeah.
Stanton Friedman
Well, yeah, and I checked quite a lot on Bob Lazar. He’s from your neck of the woods, actually. I talked to his high school. It shocks people when they find out that he was in the bottom third of his high school class and graduated in August, not with his class. And this guy supposedly went to MIT? Forget it. You can’t get in if you’re not in the top 20%.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay, but those… yeah, go ahead, sorry.
Stanton Friedman
And just that he had one science course and we’re supposed to believe that he got into MIT?
Alan Steinfeld
Well…
Stanton Friedman
Yeah, it’s ludicrous.
Alan Steinfeld
Anyway, what do what do you now, what do you think of this other phenomenon that I think is closely related, the crop circles, especially in southern England. What do you think they are signs of?
Stanton Friedman
Well, they’re an interesting phenomenon, but I don’t know if any link between them and flying saucers. As opposed to the physical trace cases of which Ted Phillips has collected over 4,000 from 70 countries. These are cases where people see the saucer when it’s on or near the ground, then after it leaves one finds physical changes. The equivalent of burn rings, landing gear marks, whatever. Not crop circles. Remember there’s one case where maybe somebody saw something like a light moving across a field. Otherwise they show up, that’s it. And I don’t know whether they’re intelligence agencies from Zeta Reticuli competing for who can make the most complicated pattern in the shortest time. You know, who knows what’s going on.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I think they’re teaching us a language of geometry and mathematics. And I think they somehow are related. I mean, I don’t have any proof of this, but they seem to be somehow related. Especially the…
Stanton Friedman
At best in my gray basket.
Alan Steinfeld
Okay, I know you have a gray basket, but the but the grays themselves are not in your gray basket, I know that.
Stanton Friedman
No, that’s right.
Alan Steinfeld
Because the work that you did about Zeta Reticuli, I think, is fantastic that you were able to really pinpoint who the who these gray beings with the big eyes appear to be from, is that true? Is that true to fair to say that we think they’re from Zeta Reticuli because of the star map?
Stanton Friedman
Well, we think that’s a home base for those guys. That doesn’t mean they live there all the time. Zeta 1 and Zeta 2 Reticuli, two stars 39.2 light-years away, a billion years older than the sun. Billion, you know, that’s a long time. And those two stars are only an eighth of a light-year apart from each other, as opposed to us out here in the boonies where the next star over is 4.3 light-years. They’re 35 times closer, and a billion years older. And from a planet around one, you can see the other one all day long. You can directly observe planets around the other one. One would expect that they’d get started a little earlier on interstellar travel and would have more reason for it and more time to develop new technology. I mean, look at the last 50 years, you know.
Alan Steinfeld
I know, I know. We how much we’ve developed from just simple flying machines to, you know, interplanetary travel. But do you think that we’re all related, I mean the Zacharia Sitchin 12th planet thing, is that somehow we’re all related genetically to these other, other alien races. Do you believe that? Is there anything…
Stanton Friedman
I certainly allow that for a possibility because, and I’ve asked audiences this, I say, how many of you had your ancestors 20 generations back living here? Practically nobody unless a Native American is there. Then I say, well, how did you get here? Colonization, migration, crash landing? You know, and that’s one of the things that the SETI cultists leave out of their discussion is colonization, migration, interstellar travel. An important part of the Drake equation is the lifespan of a civilization. Which we have a lot of data to fit in. We don’t even know the lifespan of our own, no less any others. So, you know, throw darts at a dartboard with numbers on it to come up with an answer to that. But they assume no colonization. Now, what if the Zeta Reticulans set up a colony and then the original guys died? Their colony goes on with the same technology. They set up a colony, they set up one. So what’s the lifespan of a civilization? It’s the sum of all those. And, you know, when I say it’s a cult group, and some people get mad at me for saying that, and they also get mad when I say SETI stands for Silly Effort To Investigate. But in the book, I try to pin down why, the unscientificness, if there is such a word, of the whole SETI movement. Aliens are going to send messages our way, and we’re so smart we can figure out how these guys work, what their techniques for sending the messages are, and what those messages mean. And I suppose what they assume they’re going to use English. I mean, I somehow don’t expect that’s the case. Did Columbus send a message to the natives before he went to the New World?
Alan Steinfeld
Well, that’s that’s that’s in your latest book, Flying Saucers and Science. And it seems well, it seems like, you know, at this point in our history, there’s probably 10,000 photographs, thousands of videos, hundreds of thousands of eyewitnesses, and these guys are still beaming radio signals out into space. It’s it seems.
Stanton Friedman
No, they’re listening. They’re listening. They don’t want people to, you know, we have a crazy situation. They’re arguing. Some SETI specialists are very upset because a couple of scientists have sent signals out. Better not let them know we’re here. Well, why would they send a signal here if they didn’t know we were here? And secondly, that implies that they can do damage to us, which means they can get here. And if they can get here to do damage, then they could have already gotten here to deliver their little Earth excursion modules with their little guys doing their thing. So there’s a whole logical fallacy.
Alan Steinfeld
None of these SETI people up called you up and say, hey, Stanton, and, you know, Jamie Foxx, hey, maybe you guys are onto something. Are these true different paradigms of thought that will not meet? I mean…
Stanton Friedman
Well, I debated with Seth Shostak on Coast to Coast. We went at it for three hours. We each gave three lectures, which the other attended, on the Queen Elizabeth 2 about three years ago, on a week-long voyage from England to New York. And when I give my lecture, Flying Saucers Are Real, I asked after I talk about each of five large-scale scientific studies, they’re discussed in the book, how many people here have read this? And he didn’t raise his hand for any of them. When we did our debate on Coast to Coast six months later, he still hadn’t read any of them. So I don’t understand, except that they’re being self-protective. If aliens are coming here, who needs to listen with a radio telescope? Just slow conversation after all. Maybe they need to learn sign language.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I think it is, and I think it’s the problem with the world itself, because people are so locked into their belief systems that, you know, this is how it is for them, that they won’t even consider anything else is possible. And so, you know, all we have to do is keep giving more and more. Eventually, there’ll be a shift. But it probably won’t be, as they say, scientists. Science moves one funeral at a time. That’s how it progresses. So it seems like that’s the situation we’re in, paradigm, world views versus world view. I think Danny Sheehan really sums it up. You know Danny Sheehan’s work? Yeah.
Stanton Friedman
Yeah.
Alan Steinfeld
I think he’s great in presenting a new paradigm that includes our friends next door. But most people can’t include that in there.
Stanton Friedman
Well, the polls, now that’s one of the chapters in my book, Flying Saucers and Science, deals with the public opinion polls, many different ones. And it’s clear most people do believe in UFOs, unfortunately, and that includes scientists. Unfortunately, they believe other people don’t believe, so they act accordingly. But if people would start expressing their own beliefs, I mean, to give you an example of this, I’ve given over 700 lectures. I’ve had 11 hecklers, two of whom were drunk. Right. And you get that many if you talk about sports, religion, politics, whatever. Right. So obviously, and I come on very, very strong. I start every lecture by saying the evidence is overwhelming that planet Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft. In other words, some, underline 47 times, some UFOs are alien spacecraft. I further go on to say we’re dealing with the biggest story of the millennium. We’re dealing with a sort of a cosmic Watergate, meaning some people within government have known ever since the Roswell incident, at least, that indeed aliens are visiting. And I say that there are no good arguments against these two conclusions. Only people who haven’t studied the relevant evidence, and you certainly don’t find any references to my work in their books. I reference their books in mine. And the fourth conclusion is, because I’m a shy, retiring kind of guy, that we’re dealing with the biggest story of the millennium. Visits to planet Earth by alien spacecraft, successful cover-up of the best data bodies and wreckage for 61 years.
Alan Steinfeld
Absolutely. No, no, that does say it all in a sense. But you know what I find, and people have also talked about this, and, you know, Carl Jung and Jacques Vallee only go so far. I find that the encounters actually have to do with a state of consciousness and awareness, you know. Am I, or am I losing you here? In the sense that when you see a UFO, it’s as if another state of mind that occurs. Sometimes, not all people, but I find there’s a shift somehow in perception. Have you?
Stanton Friedman
Sure, for some people, seeing one answers all their questions, gets rid of all their objections. You know, all the rest of that is poppycock. I saw one, I know what it was, it wasn’t ours, wasn’t from Earth, don’t tell me they don’t exist, because they do. You know, for some people it’s like that. Now, remember, I’ve never seen one.
Alan Steinfeld
Right.
Stanton Friedman
That bothers some people, but as I tell them, I’ve never seen Tokyo either. I’ve never seen a neutron or a gamma ray. I’ve been chasing them for a lot of years. You don’t have to see something to believe that they’re real.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, is it one of your dreams to see a ship?
Stanton Friedman
Not especially, because, you know, it’s funny, I get two exactly opposite reactions when I say to people, no, I haven’t seen one. One is, oh, well, you can be more objective. And the other is, how can you talk about something you’ve never seen? Neutrons are a good way to do that.
Alan Steinfeld
No, I think it’s more convincing because you haven’t seen it, that you’re even more convinced by the evidence that you’ve researched. So it works that way.
Stanton Friedman
Well, for some people that’s true. And, you know, I don’t care what the response is. It’s funny about everything. There are two sides to every story. Oh, I hate that expression, because you see all these television mockumentaries. On the one side, we have the, quote, believers, the buffs. Now, of course, they don’t say these are the people who study the phenomenon in depth for a long period of time. On the other side, we have the skeptics and the disbelievers. And of course, they don’t say these people have done no investigation, they do their research by proclamation. But two sides to every story, we’ve got to give them equal time.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, there’s actually a third side besides the skeptics, and there’s the disinformation people as well, you know, that… I need you to talk a little bit about Carl Sagan a little bit and his story about abduction in Parade magazine. Now, can you just go over that?
Stanton Friedman
Well, Carl was a very popular writer and very popular on the Johnny Carson Show and so forth. And we were classmates for three years. So I knew him for three years back at the University of Chicago. Right. And I spoke to him at his house not too long before he died. And Carl had, he did more than anybody else to get people interested in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence. I’ll give him that. But what he wanted to say was, we should listen for signals, but there ain’t nobody coming here. And so he did an article for Parade, which I think at that time was being read by 15 million people.
Alan Steinfeld
Wait, what year was that article?
Stanton Friedman
Oh boy, mid-nineties, mid-nineties, I guess. I’ve written a response to it, but I don’t have it right here. But, and he included the Betty and Barney Hill case, and he said a whole bunch of things which simply weren’t true. And he did that in Cosmos as well. And one of the things he had said in other places, but which reflects what this public face on this, is that there are interesting sightings that aren’t reliable, which is true. There are some reliable sightings which aren’t interesting, which is also true. But then he says, there are no interesting and reliable sightings, which is totally false. In Blue Book Special Report 14, the better the quality, the higher the reliability, in other words, of a sighting, the more likely to be unexplainable. More likely.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, give me what, which sighting would you say from the record is, fits that category? Sighting and…
Stanton Friedman
You mean that’s high, high quality and can’t be explained? Yes. Oh, there’s a whole bunch of them. One of them would be, let’s say the RB-47 case. This is a reconnaissance plane equipped with highly trained people and very sophisticated equipment to monitor incoming enemy aircraft and stuff like that. Check what’s going on on the ground beneath flying near the other countries, et cetera. Big crew, flying over the Gulf of Mexico, then over Texas and then into Oklahoma, lasted about an hour. That Jim McDonald talked to, Dr. James E. McDonald talked to all the crew members. They picked not only do they see this thing visually, it’s daytime, but they picked up signal, they have a lot of signal receiving equipment there, not only radio, but light and all kinds of stuff. They picked up signals from this thing. And they reported to the ground, which had them and the UFO on their radar. And it stayed with them, and it followed them. It was on their radar, and on the ground radar, their own radio contact with the ground, and Jim talked to all the witnesses. A very outstanding case, highly trained people, high reliability, high strangeness. This was back in the 60s.
Alan Steinfeld
Back in the 60s. So, and there’s been lots. Even the one in Stephenville, Texas, even the Chicago airport last year. I mean, there’s, there’s hundreds of cases.
Stanton Friedman
Oh, there’s loads of them. Well, McDonald, in his congressional testimony, this his separate papers listed on my website as well. In his congressional testimony in 1968, on my birthday, July 29th.
Alan Steinfeld
This was a UFO investigation by Congress, huh?
Stanton Friedman
They had hearings with spoken, oral testimony from six scientists and written testimony from six more of us. I was one of the latter group. I think I was the youngest contributor and also the only one without a PhD. July 29th, 1968. Okay, Congress. Is that the only time Congress… But anyway, go ahead, finish this.
Alan Steinfeld
No, they had one, they had one two years before, but that was only Air Force people testifying. Okay, so…
Stanton Friedman
This one, Jim’s paper has information on 41 separate cases. It’s a 71-page paper. And it includes multiple witness settings, radar visual sightings, sightings by pilots, sightings by meteorologists, sightings by astronomers, sightings over big cities. All the objections you can think of, he deals with them and demolishes them. Right. Outstanding report. So anytime people say, well, there aren’t any good settings, just lights in the sky and that kind of nonsense, I refer them to Jim’s favor.
Alan Steinfeld
But even the Jamie Foxx press conference that happened a few months ago with all the pilots from around the world, it was a pretty amazing demonstration. So…
Stanton Friedman
Yes, it was. There’s a movie that should be out, Beyond the Blue, which will have all that in it. So is it just, of course the government, they probably have all that footage of chasing all those UFOs. I mean, is it just that they are just refusing to or they’re waiting? I mean, of course you might not know, but I don’t think you do.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, the government doesn’t tell me its motivation generally speaking, but…
Stanton Friedman
No, no, of course not. Cause you’re the other side, yes.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah. In my book, there’s a chapter on the UFO-why questions. And there’s a paper on my website, The UFO-Why Questions. And one of the why questions, of course, is why don’t they tell us what’s going on? And I usually give six reasons. First, they want to figure out how the things work. They make wonderful weapons delivery and defense systems, and we spend billions on building better weapons delivery and defense systems. Nobody can say we’re not interested in doing that. We spend the money. You know, so that’s the first thing. You want to figure out how they work. You got wreckage from Roswell, maybe other places. You set up your secret group. Rule number one, you can’t tell your friends without telling your enemies. Second problem is the other side of the coin. What if the other guy figures out how they work before you do? How are you going to defend against him? You don’t want him to know you know he knows. You know, that kind of thing. Weapons, counter weapons.
Stanton Friedman
Well, they obviously know. So, but is it just a matter of time? I mean, other people have answered this question their own, but that the government says, yes, you know what, we’ve known all along and they’re here. I mean, will they be forced?
Alan Steinfeld
I don’t know, because, you see, there are a couple of more reasons. One is, what happens if you make an announcement, I think not only will church attendance and mental hospital admissions go up, but the stock market will go down. But I think the important thing from the government’s viewpoint is that there’ll be a lot of people, especially the younger generation, who will push for a new view of ourselves, instead of as Americans or Canadians, I’m both, or Chinese or Greek or Peruvians, we’re all Earthlings. But that is…
Stanton Friedman
That’s our evolution. That’s our next Marshall McLuhan. We’re in a global village. It’s obvious that that’s our next step.
Alan Steinfeld
Yes.
Stanton Friedman
But do you know of any government on this planet that wants their citizens to owe their allegiance to the planet instead of that individual government? Nationalism is the only game in town.
Alan Steinfeld
No, it’s not the only game, because look at the European Union. Those countries were killing each other, now they’re sharing an economy. There is, there is progress that’s being made on planet Earth. You know…
Stanton Friedman
Would the United States join them? Would we have an election for a world president when the Chinese have four times as many people as we do, and the Indians three times as many? I don’t think so.
Alan Steinfeld
But part of possibly meeting an alien race is suddenly we find ourselves all in the same boat. I mean, I think that’s part of, you know, what they’re here eventually to show us. Hey, you guys, look, you’re all Earthlings. So, I mean, that’s that’s one yes. And who knows, but I think it’s it seems like the question, the situation is not going away, right?
Stanton Friedman
Oh, no. No, certainly not.
Alan Steinfeld
And it’s just gained more popularity since 47 and since, you know, the 60s. And, and so…
Stanton Friedman
MUFON had 600 reports. Mutual UFO Network had 600 sighting reports received in the month of May.
Alan Steinfeld
So I mean, I know that you talked about Jacques Vallee and then I started with Carl Jung saying, well, it’s all a state of mind and consciousness, but it’s obviously, there needs to be a shift in awareness in consciousness in order to embrace these physical objects, but, you know, most people. And you’re saying the. So what is the public opinion poll now about how many people in this country already or have seen or open to this phenomenon?
Stanton Friedman
Well, okay, you’ve asked several different questions. It depends on how you ask the questions. Do you think some UFOs really in space craft, more than half the people think so? As a matter of fact, I was on a show in England where 100,000 people called in, a television show, national one on ITV, Independent Television Network. The question was, are aliens visiting Earth? Basically. And 100,000 people called in, you call one number to say yes, another one to say no. 90% said yes. Even though it was a debate between three of us pros and three of the con men, and they were all PhDs, but we weren’t, Nick Pope, and I, and Timothy Good. And, like I said, we only got 90% of the response favorable. Now in the studio audience, which was pretty good size, what ins, 300 people or so, only, only 75% said yes to that.
Alan Steinfeld
So, it’s obvious we’re ready, we’re ready for something to happen here.
Stanton Friedman
Sure. I’ve only had 11 hecklers.
Alan Steinfeld
No, I know. You come on very strong.
Stanton Friedman
I think I saw you in 1978 at the University of Buffalo. SUNY Buffalo. I think that you actually opened up my awareness to what’s possible.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, good. A lot of people have seen me.
Stanton Friedman
No, you’ve you’re probably the guy that is part of inspiring a whole new awareness. So let me just ask you another question as we come to. Now, it’s one that may be out of your area, but John Mack sort of related UFO sightings and abductions to a sort of spiritual awakening. Do you find any connections?
Alan Steinfeld
Well, I think I think John was backed into a corner because we talked about this. We were both on the same stage in Australia. So we had a chance to chit chat and he came after me so he had to listen to my talk twice, different days. And he just hadn’t realized at all that interstellar travel was feasible. And so he was forced to other explanations. And that’s where this, the spiritual stuff comes from. And, you know, he had a worldview that thinks people ought to try to be better people and, you know, get back to Jung and all the rest of that. So John was surprised, and he admitted it, that I made the case that, you know, you can get here. See, most academics think only in terms of what’s done in academia. Now all the advanced technology is developed mostly, almost all of it, in industry. You know, stealth airplanes and nuclear submarines and atom bombs and other good laser weapons and all this good stuff. That’s not an academic sort of thing. So academia, and you know, I didn’t publish in Physical Review, I published classified reports. So they’re totally unaware of this whole black world and great world.
Stanton Friedman
I like that, grey world. But you know, I think John Mack was also aware, and who knows, this is just my analysis, that of this state of consciousness, because you know, let’s say you do encounter an alien, they do not think like humans, their consciousness I suppose is far vaster and their perceptions of human behavior and cognition. And so when you’re in the presence of these things, you’re not in the presence of an ordinary human being where you could sort of understand it. So there’s a there’s a shift that happens, I think, on a conscious level when you encounter these beings.
Alan Steinfeld
Oh, yeah, and, well, there’s an important part of that, and I didn’t fully appreciate this until I was with Kathleen Marden, my co-author on Captured, The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience, right at the exact location where the abduction had taken place. And it’s perfectly obvious that somebody was controlling the fact that Barney took two turns off the main road to a secondary road and then off that to a tertiary road. He would never have done that. So the ability to control people’s minds, now, don’t you think every government would love to be able to do that? You know, make everybody drop their arms, you know.
Stanton Friedman
I know. But you have to sort of be an evolved being to actually tap into and even understand what consciousness is. I mean, this is really the area of investigation that’s most exciting to me. States of consciousness. So, yeah, they manipulated Barney’s thoughts, and they have lots of abductees who forget their experiences right after they happen.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, that’s pretty neat.
Stanton Friedman
Right, so there’s an understanding of real advanced psychology that I think is truly the answer. I mean, the science, yes, we’ll eventually come to that science in a couple hundred or thousand years. But the understanding of psychology is is much more exciting for me about how do they do that? How do they manipulate people’s minds? Where are they? How do they move through walls? What is the, what is that all about?
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, I’d like to know the answer to that.
Stanton Friedman
Yeah. Well, that’s what I’m writing about.
Alan Steinfeld
Well, okay, but but what I’m saying is, it’s clear it would be astonishing to me if an advanced civilization didn’t have all kinds of talents that we don’t have. And maybe they know about reincarnation, for example. Right. And what happens to the soul and all of these kinds of things. Isn’t that exciting? I find it, I’m a physicist, a dumb old physicist, but I still decide.
Stanton Friedman
You’re starting to sound religious there, Stanton. What?
Alan Steinfeld
You’re starting to sound a little religious there with that with some of those speculation.
Stanton Friedman
Well, okay, but I would expect aliens to know about that larger picture. What’s the concept of God mean to them? I mean, when the Pope jumps in, and his chief astronomer within the last month saying it’s okay to believe in aliens, that’s a remarkable move forward, as far as I’m concerned. Maybe they know something we don’t know about who’s going to say what, when, to whom. Wouldn’t that be exciting? You know, he’s made it okay for Catholics to jump on the bandwagon.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, something very exciting is happening. I think it seems like UFO sightings are increasing daily, and more people are opening up and accepting this. So I don’t know if you know, you’re on the fence about the 2012 thing, but many people have said that might be the day where we realize, hey, you know, we’re not alone.
Stanton Friedman
They land in the middle of the World Series. No, that’s wrong. One side. Soccer match.
Alan Steinfeld
No, but no, I I think, you know, all you can do is keep up the work that you’re doing and and the great investigations. And what do you have coming up? You said you have another book that you’re writing?
Stanton Friedman
Well, I’m working toward another book. It’s Impossible, Isn’t It, that’s not written yet. But I’m writing, speaking. Publisher is interested in getting the outline and all the rest of that. And I’ve got conferences in Roswell, and conferences in Chicago, and conferences in Burlington, they’re listed on my website. That’s Burlington, Wisconsin. And West Virginia in September. But I hope to do this other book, The It’s Impossible, Isn’t It. Because, you know, if you look at medicine, if you look at a whole bunch of areas of science, progress has often been stymied by some ancient academic or fossilized physicist saying, it’s impossible. Don’t waste your time and our money on that.
Alan Steinfeld
Right.
Stanton Friedman
And how many lives could have been saved if they had moved sooner in certain areas?
Alan Steinfeld
Right. Like it’s impossible to have a flying machine in 1904.
Stanton Friedman
1903. 1903, October, Simon Newcomb, great astronomer, said he was sure the only way he’d ever fly would be with the help of a balloon. Two months before the Wright Brothers’ first flight.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s right. And no one even believed the Wright Brothers flew until Teddy Roosevelt did those investigations into the facts.
Stanton Friedman
Well, yeah, I mean they didn’t have television cameras then, you know.
Alan Steinfeld
But um, just like one last thought or question in a sense, what would you, how would you feel if you actually did see a UFO? I mean, what would that do to you?
Stanton Friedman
It would make me feel as if my life had been appropriate somehow. That I was ready to watch and observe and make notes and share in an adventure that a lot of other people have had, and I’ve only heard about firsthand it would be nice, you know. There are a lot of things that, as Kenny Flyer, flying on the ground is one thing, flying in the air is something else, you know. So yeah, seeing one would be great.
Alan Steinfeld
Yeah, yeah, no, I’m I’m sure well I’ll see what I can do for you.
Stanton Friedman
Okay. Talk to your friends.
Alan Steinfeld
Um, but anyway so your website again is…
Stanton Friedman
www.stantonfriedman.com. All the books and DVDs and all that good stuff is on there.
Alan Steinfeld
You can order.And the recent book by uh New Page is it? New Page Press?
Stanton Friedman
New Page, the last two, yes, New Page Division of Career Press. Uh it’s Flying Saucers and Science and the previous one was Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience. Uh same publisher, co-author on that one is Kathleen Marden, Betty’s niece.
Alan Steinfeld
Kathleen Marden. You have a great foreword by Edgar Mitchell, the astronaut who’s really come out there.
Stanton Friedman
Yeah. It’s kind of nice to have an astronaut, sixth man to walk on the moon, say nice things about your book.
Alan Steinfeld
That’s very nice. And of course, there’s so many people coming out now. Paul Hellyer from Canadian Foreign Ministry, the governor of Arizona, so I think, you know, it looks good for our side.
Stanton Friedman
Yes, yes it does.
Alan Steinfeld
Uh, thank you so much, Stanton, for being… My pleasure. And when you come back to New York we’ll do a television show, okay?
Stanton Friedman
Okay. Sorry about the last one, I couldn’t control it.
Alan Steinfeld
I know, you were snowed out, but um this was great. I’m going to put this as a podcast, and this will also be archived on DBS Radio and on newrealities.com, and you can link to it to your website. I’ll call you in a week or so to let you know where it is at.
Stanton Friedman
Okay, thank you.
Alan Steinfeld
I’ve been talking to Stanton Friedman, one of the foremost authorities and researchers on UFOs. The mysteries of UFOs, it’s amazing career he’s had and traveling around the world showing proof, documented proof and government coverups that these things really do exist. So keep looking up. My name’s Alan Steinfeld, and this is New Realities. And if you want to reach me, email me at newrealities@earthlink.net, check my website newrealities.com. I welcome comments. Thank you for listening, and I’ll go out with this song by Duke Williams, who’s had his own UFO sightings, called Night Before the Future.