Jacques Vallée on the Status of a Classified UAP Database | The Sol Forum

Transcript

[Music] So I think to to go into the book I have a question for you which is how have things uh changed in in research and inquiring into UAP and our understanding of them and and how have they stayed the same? I ask you that because you you provide a window into what was happening in the background in the BAS group, the OAP group and what came after. um uh you call the the group the lone stars in the the uh book which I think is a euphemism but um uh you give us a window into those conversations and what I see there is that um you know it shows that there's not as much consensus as people think even among the best researchers >> the the first you know interest official interest and and scientific interest in the subject just came from having all these reports from both from military people but mostly from civilians who were exposed to to the phenomenon. And the response was generally skeptical. But there was a feeling that you know we cannot ignore those reports because you know frankly because they um you know the the the the feeling of of danger in international relations. There could be could be something going on that would be that would be a threat.

And that that was not so much the case in Europe. I think in Europe the reaction was always one of curiosity you know and and scientific interest in in a new report because that's where science is is made but in in the US uh everything tends to be interpreted as a threat to the stability of of the country and so on and that's very much a cultural reaction. So that precipitated a number as you know a number of classified studies and then um the the air force with project blue book which lasted most 20 years. the um blue book was not classified contrary to some of the things we still see in the press. And it it at at the beginning it was just eliminating one case after the other to give people the the feeling that nothing was hidden, nothing was classified.

uh you can report this uh although pilots did not report um but the population reported and and and there were radar data they were that kind of that kind of thing. So that triggered a controversy within the scientific community as to the relevance of that and the air force felt that they had other things to do. I mean, you you join the Air Force to to fly, you know, the fastest best planes you can you can you can find, and you don't want to be stuck in an office uh going through files, you know, one after the other of somebody seeing a light at night. I mean, who cares? and the uh the the Air Force finally u created or led to the the creation of the study at the University of Colorado um led by professor Condan who was a distinguished physicist of the Oppenheimer generation. Um and after two years they concluded that in fact there was no implied threat in the phenomenon and uh although they did not explain all the cases they had looked at but that generally they thought and that's almost an exact quote that science would not be uh advanced by investing more people and more money into the study of UFOs which people understood stood to mean go home there's nothing there and it killed the research for over 10 years probably 15 years um fortunately you know there were people like me who had other income I mean you know my I had professional um uh commitments um in in technology and then in the financing of advanced technology and it's it's a credit to the people who invested in the venture funds that I that I ran with a small team of people that uh they they knew I mean I I never thought of hiding the fact that I was spending time my own time studying UFOs and um in Silicon Valley you know people thought that it was important to do that.

So uh I was in fact supported by many of the people who invested in in my funds including the the fund by NASA. So uh I had the the the privilege of having access to um I I I had no real secret access to anything except in in very very specific areas. But but that was not relevant. I mean most of the data data came from from people who had seen something and were reporting it openly um including cops um including university professors and including farmers. The farmers were probably the best because they knew their territory very well and they could see when something was when animals reacted to certain things.

U and they had there were traces you could go to those those places which I did with people who had experience with vegetation with animals with all that and then um Mr. Bigo became interested and I was part of the first approach with Neds and when uh the the team bought the the ranch when Mr. be bought that ranch in uh um in Utah and uh we looked all over Utah and Nevada uh deeply for recurrent cases and as you know people still still are active with those with those properties where things seem to continue happening. So that's that's what brought us here. And then as you know the uh Defense Intelligence Agency took an interest in what was what was going on at um at the Bigalow Ranch and funded a study that I was part of called BAS Bigalow Aerospace Advanced Space Systems.

and um my responsibility there along with you know Dr. Putoff Dr. Keller and and and and many others. Uh all of us um at uh at in that particular study, you know, having uh classified uh access at the top secret level for the duration of the study. And um my particular assignment was the building of a database which has been partially you know not declassified and I understand why um but it um it covers 240,000 cases uh all over the world.

So it's not really a database. It's a what's called a data warehouse with uh 13 or 14 different databases that we reduced all to English to a common structure. That structure was going to feed into an an artificial intelligence system that would have two purposes. is the first one would be to refine it because we don't nobody needs 240,000 cases to know that there is some sort of a phenomenon happening. uh we need, you know, if we had 20,000 of the best ones, we could turn that over to the scientific community in different in different disciplines from medicine to chemistry to architect to uh you know agriculture and everything else and uh based on that there would be a number of teams could feed from that.

That was the idea. It was not done because we were cut off after two years. and I really don't know the current disposition of what we did. So at that point uh the project terminated and I I should make it clear I don't have any uh secret clearance or particular access you know outside of of that that that study. So right now I have no no clearance.

[Music]