SHATNER:<i> The New York Times</i> publishes an article that reveals the existence of a top secret military program known as AATIP, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program. Its purpose: to identify and investigate UFOs. Congress was informed about AATIP in a letter dated January 2018.
And the Defense Intelligence Agency wrote to Congress and said, "The AATIP program was designed "to look at far-term aviation threats to the United States "out to maybe 40 years into the future "from Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, secret prototype aircraft, missiles and drones. " But there was an attachment to the letter, and said, "Please find attached a list of all the products produced under the AATIP contract. " Antigravity, invisibility, warp drive, wormholes, stargates.
And when I looked at this list, it-it was astounding. SHATNER: In the weeks that follow, a number of previously classified videos are leaked to the public. Among them is footage of an encounter that took place in 2004, between a squadron of fighter jets and an unidentified flying craft that appears to be not of this world.
TAYLOR: Whatever this thing is in this video, it goes from a couple hundred miles per hour to thousands of miles per hour like that. That's the equivalent of going many hundreds of miles per hour and hitting a brick wall. So, what would that do?
It would turn your brain to mush. It would turn your body to Jell-O. I mean, you-- it would kill you instantly.
So, there's a technology in there that would protect a biological thing if it's a biological thing in there. We don't have that type of technology yet. We now know much more about the AATIP program and indeed government UFO investigations more generally than we knew a couple of years ago.
So, we have pilots who are involved in these incidents. We have radar operators, we have former intelligence officers who handled this, all going public, going on the record and saying this is real. SHATNER: Is the footage proof that UFOs not only exist, but that they employ technology that far surpasses our own?
It's certainly a far-fetched notion, but according to one man who was there, the answer's yes. On the day of the incident, Petty Officer P. J.
Hughes was stationed on the nearby USS<i> Nimitz,</i> the aircraft carrier from which the fighters were launched. His job was to facilitate the storage of radar data by an E-2C Hawkeye aircraft that was in the air at the same time that the fighter jets encountered the UFO. The easiest way to explain what an E-2C Hawkeye is is by saying it's the quarterback of the air wing.
It's got a bunch of sensors, it's got a bunch of communications equipment. We were doing some testing, and before that exercise was actually able to start, the object actually came up, so everybody got a good look at it and then it just took off. I wasn't in the plane, so the information I'm getting is secondhand from the multitude of sources who've seen it.
HUGHES: It's a giant white cylindrical object, roughly 48 feet, 49 feet, somewhere in there. No windows, no engines, no flight control surfaces, a smooth object, basically. It looked like a white Tic Tac.
No visible means of propulsion, but be able to go from full blast to zero in time we can't measure. When the Hawkeye left, it was recording. When it came back, the recording was stopped.
I took the bricks. They're classified hard drives that basically record everything it saw. Went down, put them in our safe.
20 minutes after I locked them in that safe, my executive officer shows up at my door with two uniformed Air Force officers, and he asked me for all the hard drives that were in that Hawkeye that went flying. 'Cause normally we'd sign them out in a logbook saying, you know, "XO took these-these serial numbers," and as I started to write, he's like, "Don't do it. " So, I hand them over and away they went, and I never knew what happened to them.
SHATNER: On April 27, 2020, the Pentagon officially released the three now-famous AATIP videos. By doing so, they acknowledged that the UFOs depicted were genuinely of unknown origin, although they stopped short of admitting they might also be extraterrestrial. HUGHES: The fact that the government wants to know more about things that we encounter in the sky and that the pilots see, there's something to it.
The universe is way too big for us to be alone. There's something else out there. SHATNER: Tucked away in the shadow of a rocky plateau, is a 512-acre property that is famous for having a long history of eerie UFO sightings.
This mysterious place is known. . .
as Skinwalker Ranch. WINTERTON: Skinwalker Ranch may look like any other ranch on the surface, but you get to the ranch, you realize that just below the surface lies one of the strangest and most unexplainable places in the world. Skinwalker Ranch is a hot spot of many reported phenomenon, such as a large number of UFO sightings, along with a lot of strange energies, cattle mutilations, and all kinds of unexplainable phenomena.
ERIK BARD: Through the years, folks have reported unusual atmospheric phenomena, and UFOs or what we call UAPs today. But also, so-called "orbs," balls of light moving around on the property or in the sky. Really, just a lot of strange things that affect human beings viscerally.
This has been going on for quite some time and so, there must be something unseen that makes this a very special place. The lore associated with the ranch goes back at least as far as the Native American tradition of the skinwalker, from which the ranch receives its name. WINTERTON: The story is told that back in the early 1800s, a Navajo shaman cursed this particular piece of ground with the Curse of the Skinwalker.
And the skinwalker is this shape-shifting, demonic being that can take on the form of many different animals, including that of a man. We have stories of the skinwalker traversing Skinwalker Ridge, which runs the entire east/west length of the ranch. SHATNER: For more than a century, local Indigenous tribes have firmly believed that Skinwalker Ranch is cursed by a shape-shifting creature.
And in modern times, many people consider the property to be a UFO hot spot. The ranch attracted so much attention, that in 1996, billionaire aerospace tycoon, and UFO enthusiast, Robert Bigelow bought the ranch to try and solve the long-standing mystery of this remote location. After the ranch was sold to Robert Bigelow, he created the institution known as NIDS, the National Institute for Discovery Science.
And he hired some very excellent scientists for the purpose of setting up a genuinely scientific investigation of the phenomena that were happening there. DENNETT: Robert Bigelow was able to, in fact, record a lot of UFO activity of all kinds. However, they were never able to discover the mechanism behind this or what is truly going on at Skinwalker Ranch.
SHATNER: In 2016, Robert Bigelow sold Skinwalker Ranch, effectively ending his UFO investigation there. The property was purchased by real estate mogul Brandon Fugal, who assembled a team of scientists and investigators that has spent the last several years conducting the most comprehensive investigation of Skinwalker Ranch in history. Our team has demonstrated an unequaled dedication to finding the truth at Skinwalker Ranch.
Oh, oh, oh! Right here! -Over here!
-Right there. FUGAL: We may be embarking on some of the most important work of our time. We are looking for the nature of the universe and I truly believe that Skinwalker Ranch is a place where some of these questions may be answered or at least better understood.
TAYLOR: I'm a scientist who is looking at the question of what are the UAPs and UFOs, and are we alone in the universe? There are so many different phenomena that happen at Skinwalker Ranch. And we have physical evidence of these phenomena existing, with actual, real scientific equipment.
Whereas the previous researchers were dependent upon VHS technology for recording things in time-lapse format, we're taking full, high-definition video using a combination of what are called bullet cameras-- PTZ or pan, tilt, zoom cameras-- that allow us to look around and zoom in on features of interest, to discern between the mundane and the exceptional. SHATNER: An unidentified object slams into a hill DOLAN: They went out there eight miles northeast of the Kingman Airport. Within moments, the United States military springs into action.
This time, they won't repeat the mistake they made at Roswell of letting the public find out about it. BIRNES: The Army descends on that hill, locks it down. Onlookers are trying to climb the hill to see it.
Nope, can't see it. The Army puts up a tent, but it invites different scientists to come out and kind of examine it. It was estimated to be about 14 feet high, classic flying saucer shape.
It had, like, rows of lights along the perimeter. And they were all told to examine this site and provide their assessment. And then they were told, like, "You are to take an oath, and you are never to talk about this again.
" SHATNER: Unlike the crash at Roswell six years earlier, the U. S. military's response to the Kingman incident was so swift that it wasn't until years later that the world knew anything had occurred there.
But how was an event of this apparent magnitude kept secret for so long? In my experience of government, there would need to be what we would call a standard operating procedure. And it's claimed that one was drawn up for UFO crashes after Roswell.
And it seems that this was used in 1953 in relation to the Kingman UFO crash. SHATNER: An operations manual on how to deal with UFO crashes? As far-fetched as it sounds, UFO researchers believe that such a handbook not only exists, but was put in place to avoid the mistakes the U.
S. military made trying to contain the earlier crash at Roswell in 1947. And they claim that the authors of this handbook were members of a shadowy organization known as the Majestic 12.
DOLON: Majestic 12, or MJ-12, is believed by many researchers to be a group of individuals who essentially are controlling the UFO cover-up. MIKE BARA: There are many, many documents that exist that say that MJ-12 actually was a real government organization. Majestic 12 was signed into existence by President Harry Truman in September of 1947, shortly after the Roswell incident, when the U.
S. government decided it needed to have a main central oversight committee that would handle the so-called alien problem. And it contained many, many prominent members, including the head of the CIA at the time, or what became the CIA.
Of all of the documents that I have ever received, most important to me is the <i> Majestic 12:</i> <i> Extraterrestrial Entities and Technology,</i> <i> Recovery and Disposal. </i> The document is about how you would take military units out into a field, gather extraterrestrial biological entities, alive or dead. How you would get the craft.
And it has top secret classification throughout. SHATNER: This small village lies about 30 miles east of the city of Edinburgh. On the surface, Bonnybridge seems to be merely a quaint rural community.
But appearances can be deceiving. Because even though the town has a population of less than 10,000 people, there are approximately 300 UFO sightings reported here every year. (camera shutter clicking) So many, in fact, that Bonnybridge has become known as the UFO capital of the United Kingdom.
According to locals, the sightings began in 1992. EGHIGIAN: James Walker describes having witnessed a strange set of lights that really caught his attention. And that seemed to be the spark for what was going to become a wave of sightings over the ensuing years.
SHATNER: In the past 30 years, there have been more than 6,000 UFO sightings over Bonnybridge. Many of them have been reported to a local councilman named Billy Buchanan, who is concerned about what is causing the phenomenon. SHATNER: For years, Billy Buchanan and other local officials have asked the British government to investigate the UFO reports over Bonnybridge.
But, curiously, their requests have been denied. SHATNER: Is the United Kingdom's Ministry of Defence trying to cover up the UFO sightings at Bonnybridge? Some researchers believe that it's a distinct possibility.
And they further claim that Bonnybridge sits in the middle of an even larger Scottish UFO hot spot that is referred to as the Falkirk Triangle. DOLAN: If you look at Glasgow and Edinburgh and you go north in a kind of triangle, you'll get to a place known as the Falkirk Triangle. And when you look at the sightings, there's a lot of video and photographic evidence that's available of some of these, and they are quite interesting indeed.
SHATNER: In recent years, some researchers have theorized that the British government dismisses all of these sightings in order to hide the truth not just about extraterrestrial spacecraft but also. . .
classified military technology. POPE: There are some people who believe that some of this UFO activity, not necessarily all, is attributable to secret prototype military aircraft from a particular remote Scottish airbase called Machrihanish.
