What's REALLY Behind UFO Sightings Dr. Jacques Vallee Speaks Out

Transcript

Are UFOs new? The Pentagon wants you to think so. However, scientists like Dr. Jacqu Valet have studied this for decades. Dr. Valet joins us to discuss his latest book, Forbidden Science, Six Scattered Castles, The NID's Bigalow UFO Government Database, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, and whether he is part of Steven Spielberg's upcoming UFO movie.

Let's get to it. [Music] Hey everyone, I'm Matt Ford and welcome to the Good Trouble Show. On November 16th, 1977, Steven Spielberg's movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind hit the silver screen across America, bringing the UFO topic to the masses like never before. Now, as a kid, this movie sparked my imagination and interest in UFOs, otherwise known as UAP. One of my favorite characters in the film was Claude Lome, a French scientist who led the government's effort to contact the extraterrestrial visitors.

Now, in late March, we were joined by the real French scientist who inspired that character, Dr. Jacques Valet. But first, please hit the subscribe and thumbs up buttons on YouTube. Leave comment and let us know what you think about this episode. You can also find us on X atG good trouble show and everywhere else at the good trouble show.

You can also find us wherever you uh enjoy your podcasts. Search for the good trouble show with Matt Ford. And as always, we really appreciate it if you want to chip in to keep the lights on here. You can become a Patreon member of the good trouble show by going to www.patreon.comthegood trouble show. Sign up and you can support our great work here.

Super chats are also open and another great way to uh to show your uh financial support. We always appreciate it. Okay, today's guest is not only one of the most influential figures in studying unexplained phenomena, but also an astrophysicist, computer scientist, and venture capitalist. If that's not enough, he helped map Mars for NASA and was part of the internet's early development. Here with his new book, Forbidden Science 6: Scattered Castles.

Please welcome Dr. Jacques Valet. Jacques, how are you, sir? How are you? E. Excellent. Well, welcome to the show.

It is an honor to have you here. All right. So, let's let's jump into your latest book, Forbidden Science, Scattered Castle. So, this is the sixth in the Forbidden Science series. What, Jacques? What motivated you to write the book series in this kind of diary style format? The I you know reading diaries is a special only special people read diaries and biographies.

Biographies are easier to read because they have a beginning, a middle and an end. Diaries don't. So there you know on page 25 you may have a particular idea and then on page 51 you you go on to another idea. So it's disconcerting to the readers and I' I've had that criticism. Uh well you know you your ideas change as you get older and you exposed to more more things more people and so on.

Uh I started um going through you know crisis you know at the end of adolescence I guess when I was going to be a student and then a graduate student at University of Paris and so on and I there were many things happening in France. uh the my father had died and and uh I I I felt a need to reenter myself and sort of look at do an inventory of the things I knew and try to define where I was going and and making notes of all the things that were happening. There was a war in Algeria as you remember France was in deep political uproar and and and all those things and as a student that was fascinating but it was also very scary. So I think I started writing it uh to center myself and then I found that it was um a a great way to sort of as as a scientist to calibrate myself to see you know why am I thinking this at this particular time when some of my friends don't I mean they think something else you know who is right and how would I find out And so I kept uh doing it and then in volume two when I was uh when I came to the United States then I found that it was an invaluable tool to record all the things that I had to learn and of course I had to to to learn English. So I started writing writing it in English and then I never I never stopped because it was a reference for for me and my wife and my family and and something I could go back to to understand uh because by then I was working with Dr.

Heck and I was uh you know doing my PhD at Northwestern in artificial intelligence 1967. Uh artificial intelligence has a long, you know, a long tale. Talk about going back 50 years to learn about the next 10 years. Okay. Um that's always what what I've done including as a now as a as a venture investor you know looking at the past to understand what a new company is doing.

So all that goes into the into the journal. It's not for a mass market. It's for people who uh enjoy the journey and want to have a perspective on on things. there may be one more, you know, if uh if the good Lord gives me the ability to continue writing. I I I certainly hope so.

I I think one of the things that I've really enjoyed about reading this these books is you know a lot of times when when you're reading books uh you know strictly about like the research uh or or whatnot and and it it those books they don't really give you an insight into the human being you know so who is Jacques Valet and so much of what I read especially you what you wrote about your wife and and just your personal experiences outside outside of the UAP topic. I just I found it was really I I just absolutely love it. I I found it touching and um I I wish more people would would follow that that same uh same writing format. Uh I want to switch to your your research and it's it's something that uh a question I've always had sort of like how do you reconcile it? But how do you approach your scientific research regarding witness testimony? Because you'll you'll hear critics uh say or these debunkers that will say that that witness testimony does not constitute any sort of evidence. How do you how do you figure that into your research work? Um, that's a question for any scientist who leaves the laboratory and goes out into the world.

You know, it's a also a question for physicians. You know, physicians are uh don't don't have a perfect human model. they they take whoever comes through the door, you know, with whatever ailment they have and you start from there. So, um I felt that the I I had seen a UFO myself. I think they I I never tried to hide it.

I was very clear about that. Yeah. And by the way, I mean, it it's never harmed me really in my scientific career because uh for one thing, many people have private observations of their own. So when you're very clear about who you are and what you've seen, they want that engages an interesting conversation. Sometimes uh it may not be published, but it's it's interesting also.

Um people judge me by what I actually did and produced in my work and not by the fact that you know as a teenager I had seen seen something in France. What I saw was very clear because the uh this was in the middle of a beautiful summer afternoon. Uh I my mother saw it first and called me. I I came down from inside the house and joined her in in the yard. The thing was very not moving.

It was clearly over a church in Portto, which is a small town um about an hour out from Paris. And um the object was very clear. It was about half a mile away. It was like um um if if you took um a spoon, you know, a silver spoon sideways with a little dome on top and it was uh above a a church that was half a mile away. uh we saw that and then the next day I spoke to a friend of mine from school who uh told me that he had seen the same thing and in fact uh he had looked at it with binoculars.

His house was another half mile up the hill from where we were. So you have three witnesses u middle of the afternoon very clear day uh no clouds in the sky uh and one of them you know looking at it with binoculars and I got him to draw it and he drew the same thing I had seen. M so um I told my father my father was a judge was a president of the tribunal in in that area and you know the the family of a judge doesn't go around looking at flying saucers so we we never published it at the time. Um and he you know he was um a man with as you may know judges in instruction judges in France do the investigation you know with the jeams or the police but they run the investigation the police doesn't. Okay.

So he was very experienced with was very experienced with war and he was very experienced with with the the area and with people and so on. He had done a number of field investigations around the town. So um he didn't uh question the fact that we had seen this and that it was unusual but he said look there are new aircraft coming up. you know the jets and so on, the Meteors, if you remember, the Meteors were some of the first, you know, jet fighters and so on. And he said there are new new technology and in the next couple of years probably this will become a common knowledge.

Well, it didn't. and I started cataloging the cases that I had access to, including the early uh files of the French Air Force in the late 40s and early 50s that that were there before the the current um you know committees that that are in place now with the the space agency in France. So um that's how I got in I got into it and the the subject became more and more interesting. Uh as you may know I I was married for a long time with a woman who was a child psychologist. Many of the witnesses were children.

So and and children don't don't lie or if they lie they lie in you know a as in in a as a joke or as a in a particular way. Uh she was a student of PG in in Switzerland and and Paris and u had had been a school teacher. So had long experience with kids and very often uh the when we were looking into a case uh you know the whole family had seen the thing. So she would take the she would go into the kitchen, talk to the wife and the kids when I was talking to the pontificating uh men, you know, adults who were speculating about what what they had seen. So, um the the kids are wonderful and I I learned to listen to kids carefully and and uh try to to put the different pieces of a of an observation together and that has helped me a lot, you know, throughout my life.

I'm I'm curious, you know, you're talking about how you saw what you saw when uh I'm sorry, what age were you? Eight or nine? I think I was uh 14 or 15. And that was in pto. How much do you think the let me back up a bit. So I have not seen any or I had not seen anything UAP wise literally my entire life until I uh began communicating with Robert Hastings. I decided I was going to do some writing about it and had it also communicated with the national security staff of a United States senator and and literally about I think it was you know just a few days later started having some paranormal stuff happen in the home and then a few days later uh I was outside at night and a orb appeared above above the home and I posed this question to you know to Chris Melon because I I asked myself it's like well if my entire entire adult life, I'd never had anything happen.

And then all of a sudden, I'm actively mentally engaging with a phenomenon, thinking about it and whatnot, and then poof, it it appears. And I've had this orb appear probably around uh 10 times so far. The the sort of poltergeist activity only lasted for around four to six months. But do you think that mentally engaging with the phenomenon causes it to react? Well, you know, that's that's a possible hypothesis. I I would be the counter example because I've never seen anything else since what I saw as a teenager.

my my wife did and it took me a long time to really uh get reconciled with that. We um we I I built an a little observatory on my own up in the forest in the Redwood Forest north of San Francisco. And we had that property where we went mostly on weekends and holidays with the kids uh for uh over 15 years. And that would have been an ideal place for something to happen because the nearest neighbors were half a mile away and and and there was this observatory with a dome on top in the middle of a redwood forest. So, um, that that's something that it was a discontinuity in the landscape and it should have attracted the attention of somebody.

It didn't or at least I wasn't aware of it except for the bear who were coming roing around eating for garbage. So, that was the only intruders. the um one night uh we were sleeping in in that little observatory. There was a one bedroom and uh my wife woke up and saw two little lights like you know like those those little globes that people describe you know quite small moving around. There were books all around the the walls as they are here.

As you can tell, I I I I love books and it was just going around and uh by the time she woke me up, it was it was gone. So, I did not see it. And then we eventually the our kids grew up and we sold the the ranch. Uh moved back to the city. By the last night she was still there finishing, you know, wrapping up things that we had sold the place to our neighbors uh who were a winery that wanted to expand.

And so this was all very, you know, very friendly and she was ready to leave. The last night there are no curtains on the windows anymore. There is a big light, big bright white blue ultraviolet light moving down the path in front of the house slowly illuminating the forest, illuminating everything. She gets up, goes to see it. Uh, and the thing follows the the driveway all the way to the to the road that goes goes back to the town.

Uh, you know, as if to say goodbye. Um, and this was exactly what I was hoping to catch. Uh, although you know this was at ground level. I don't know why it used the road. Sure, it certainly was not a car.

Uh it was sort of a symbol of, you know, leaving. And that's of course the road she took in the morning to uh as we left the property, things like that. They they they seem to engage definitely um at but they engage at their own level in in their own template, their own vocabulary of of events and that can be very very disconcerting. Um uh and uh you know I'm I'm a little uh angry that uh I wasn't there at the time you know to to see it. Uh and uh no I have had no no other strange experiences of that of that type.

I've I've certainly studied parasychology know had as you know experiments with people like Gingo Swan and and and Yuri Geller and so on but they had nothing to do with this subject. Okay. Let's let's talk about uh in your book you discussed the database you created for Nids and Robert Bigalow. Um I I had um much of my work in in computer science northwestern Observatory had uh the the task to maintain the catalog of bright stars. You know there are about 10,000 bright stars that you can see visually and uh it 10,000 is not a big number but every star we know a lot of things about that star.

So it it gets to be an interesting an interesting file and I was maintaining it at uh the University of Texas first working with Gerard Devoker. I had recompiled the the catalog of galaxies observatory had uh the the task to maintain the catalog of bright stars. You know there are about 10,000 bright stars that you can see visually and uh it 10,000 is not a big number but every star we know a lot of things about that star. So it it gets to be an interesting an interesting file and I was maintaining it at uh the University of Texas first working with Gerard de Vocular. I had recompiled the the catalog of galaxies that that we were maintaining uh which was the first complete you know at the time catalog of of galactic spectra and galactic astrophysics and uh the team had been working on that and was my my job to reformat it so that it could be published.

Uh so I I had that background with large large cataloges in astronomy in astrophysics and then I did the same thing for UFOs and I started corresponding and in part inspiring others to do the same thing. So when uh not only at NIDS but later at BAS which was classified uh I was in in in charge of the computer project and almost half of the budget went into deploying a team that could translate. We had four translators in the team. you know, Russian, Spanish, uh, Portuguese, and French. Uh, re-ransating the the the the other files we had.

I had I had built really a series of databases which people call a data warehouse where because you can you cannot have the same structure for a database from pilots and a database from farmers because they measure different things with different instruments or different visual impressions. So uh we we did all that and it to my knowledge it's still classified. Uh the there are there have been a couple of couple of books that have mentioned the structure that I put together you know to begin this the project was stopped after only two years. So we never got the chance to introduce the what I had designed already which was the AI you know the validation of the data and then the AI processing of the data. We thought we had five years and the project was killed after only two years.

So I cannot go into into that but the um that would be the way to one way to assertain the the validity of theories about the UFO phenomenon in connection with the visual sightings that we have and the sightings from pilots and every all the recordings that we we have now. we don't have the database. So, and the to me the thing that's emotional about this uh is that we let the whole team go. You know, a team that was that had been very carefully assembled by Dr. Kellher and uh by Mr.

Big was a great team uh you know about 30 people who worked on that on that database uh including reinvestigating certain cases and so on and doing all the translations. That's that's a treasure and it's lost. So the treasure was in the heads of people because what what people don't seem to understand is that in in a novel area like this you can you can hire you know a PhD in astrophysics from Harvard and uh you know an an expert in uh the medieval records you know from uh from Colombia and you put them on your team to study this problem. They will be useless for two years. you know, they have to absorb the history of how the research has been done, where the records come from, how they've been calibrated, uh what were the records that they don't have that they should go out and look for maybe uh given their their skill, but they they they have a skill that they've acquired in another area, you know, uh as as I did with u computer programming and astrophysics, but that doesn't make me an expert in UFOs, you know.

Then you you have to apply what you've known to that material and you have to do it as a team. Well, we had the team, you know, and Mr. Bigalow built the team for, you know, for the government in a classified project. All of us had top secret clearances and you know, we were talking about the physics with Dr. put off you know Dr.

grain for the medical side and so on and uh all that has been dissipated for reasons unknown in Washington somewhere. Somebody just, you know, essentially took the money and did something else with it. So, um that I'm not getting into another government project of any kind. you know, I'm going to concentrate on what I know, what I can do with myself. Now, it turns out that with the progress that has been made in computer science just in the last five years, I can do a lot of things with just a few friends and and a couple of modern computers.

So, that's what I'm going to do now. Do you know have you heard for instance if if uh Arrow like and Dr. Sean Kirkpatre did did they ever request access to this database? Are you aware of any request of that nature? A request by whom? Uh by Arrow. You know, Pentagon's Arrow, all domain anomaly resolution office or any other organization. I I uh do not know the answer to that and if I did, I probably [Music] uh couldn't we couldn't talk about it.

Sure. The only thing I did is at the time of the hearings, um I I was asked to go back to Washington and uh uh record, you know, the go over those those times with uh uh someone from the uh from the intelligence committee of the Senate. Uh and I I did that went into a skiff with him where I could talk about at the level of of the Clarence and and tell him about what what had happened and what had happened to the database. Uh but uh at this point but you know when you come right down to it people are impressed with the numbers. We we had over 230,000 cases filtered and and and rationalized in this large database uh to 12 databases.

Um yeah, but it's at the end of the day it's you know it's a bucket of bits. Sure. uh the the intelligence was in the heads of the people we trained to at the beginning we gave a series of lectures uh Dr. Putoff and Dr. Green and I and of course Dr.

Keller trained the that that team of investigators mostly and and translators uh to compile the database and they're gone. So the the the We may still have the information somewhere but we don't have the intelligence. The intelligence is has been uh vaporized. Now in your book you discuss uh or you use the term active measures which that I mean that really caught my eye. What are active measures and do you think that those uh these measures measures excuse me I can't talk.

Do you think these measures are still in effect today? Um, well, active measures is uh, you know, I certainly enriched my vocabulary when I started working side by side with uh, people from the classified world. It's like scattered castles, you know, the scattered castle castles is the database of classified projects that you want to uh go to if if you you have a you know a clearance and you need to know about some other projects that might correspond to your I don't know if the term comes from the CIA or from the Russians. Uh I I I believe it's a translation from the Russian. It's the um the art of it. It's an art.

It It's not a scientific methodology. It's the art of taking information that either is true or might be true and twisting it for a political or propaganda gain and uh and then inserting it into the news in in in a way where it looks like uh it looks like news. Uh it just um isn't true. Oh, it it is but it it's not false either. It's almost it's partially true.

So, it's believable if somebody does research on it except that something has been twisted to represent something else. And it's it's extremely powerful. It's extremely uh deceptive. Uh, I think future historians are going to have a very hard time looking at our news and uh, reconstructing what really happened. I mean, who who who did it? Who did the the the you know, who who had the knife? Um, and it's it's a game that we're playing with the Russians mainly and also with the Chinese of essentially polluting everyday information in order to twist the the the the data in in a particular way that's harmful to the other side.

Now the fact that UFOs of course can be used to do that you know there are there are stories planting that well thanks to our uh close friendship with the aliens we've already been on Mars you know the and uh there are all kinds of stories like that one one way I can and this was explained to me I mean They sat me down and they said, "Jac, you need to learn about a few things. Suppose that you have you're building an atom bomb. You're at, you know, in New Mexico building an atom bomb and you know that among the thousand people who build who work on the bomb, there must be spies, German spies, Russian spies, whatever. uh you want to find the spies, but you can't because they are very good. You could find them if you could find the people they talk to when they send a report to Moscow.

So, you're going to plant a story in Moscow, not in New Mexico, at the other end. and you're going to work your way backwards into the people who might have some communication with Moscow that could be carrying information back and forth about the secret thing you're doing. What better way than seeding a rumor in uh an innocuous little rumor about something of interest that's very specific and then seeing if it pops up in New Mexico and who knows about it in New Mexico. And then you have you may have two ends of an interesting string. You see what I mean? Mhm.

Now, uh that's going to be to do that you're going to come up with a and bull story. I mean, it doesn't matter what it is. It could be about soccer. It could be about the moon. It could be about anything.

It it just has to catch the attention of specific people at a specific time. That's I I never knew about that. I mean, it's not even in spy novels that you can uh it's it's just a technique. Now, the problem to me, I mean, I don't care about what they do with that. It's their job.

The problem with me is that it pollutes my database. And I, you know, I I I'm trying to keep it clean. Uh in in my in one of my books I mentioned some cases from Russia where um there was a there was a man who u told a story uh in in Russia that came came as you know I I I went to Russia several times u looking for information uh about their space program and so on and actually invited there with journalists from from France and I' I've published what we found out because they were open to talking about UFOs at that time. Well, there was um a man who had been told by a friend of his uh who worked in a um um in in the Russian space program that there were UFOs that they were seeing and that if he came with him to the top of the hill in the evening, they would he could show him a UFO. So they did that.

They they got to this this place in the evening and he saw a saw essentially a a fan of of light of intense light that was yellow and orange and red and and that that sort of disc went up in the sky and disappeared. Well, um I I published that as an interesting thing that somebody told me and a skeptic um actually from from Los Angeles who follows the space program uh wrote to me and said uh he saw the proton rock kept taking off. They were miles and miles from the launch pad. Uh and uh of course the the the it was a launch. It was an illegal launch of the satellite that carried radioactive uh radioactive uh stuff in violation of the agreement we had with the Soviet Union at the time.

And uh they they they violated the agreement by carrying nuclear mater nuclear radioactive material in their in in in their satellites. Um and the um he of course couldn't see the rocket, but he could see the exhaust. Mhm. And the exhaust was like, you know, like this this cone of of extremely ranting light going up in the sky. Uh, and he was uh he was told it was a flying saucer because then the story for people like me, the story can get into the literature and then the next time people see a yellow light going up in the sky, you know, over Siberia, they're going to say, "Oh, that's another flying saucer." And they won't think of an illegal satellite launch.

Um the stories like that, you know, I I I was never taught about about that uh about that that part of of the game, but it's it's sort of fascinating and to me again I I need to know about that because then it pollutes the actual databases that we have and I I certainly don't want to be fooled by that. the same thing about all the crashes and so on. I've learned to Yeah. Some of them are true and some of them may may not may not be true. Sure.

I want to want to ask you a question about you know where this is where all of this may be from. So, probably two, three years ago, I had a conversation with a national security uh individual that worked in a senator's office. And this uh person said, it was about a 30-minute conversation. And at the end of it, this person said, "We may never know where this is from our entire uh entire life." If if this did turn out to be extraterrestrial and and that's solely where it's from, uh would that disappoint you? And if so, why? Well, it's yeah, it it's shocking, but you know, in any science, uh you have that problem. You work on this, you work on something all your life.

You you become a great professor. You have you teach your students and so on about what you know today. Cannot reconcile it with quantum mechanics. Really um there will be that branch of science will die probably both of them will die and something else is going to replace it. You know that.

Okay. uh in um the same thing in medicine. I mean we if you talk to medical researchers they they will admit that there are many things they've been researching. Well for example a very simple example uh in in in medicine is we don't know what determines the time of birth of a baby. Uh there are now now there are you know hypotheses about exactly what triggers it.

But you know you may have a woman with a baby and the baby is ready um but uh and should be born but it isn't and then uh all of a sudden you know the the the birth process starts. Well what is it that determines it? uh an an astrologer would say it's a conjunction of Venus with Jupiter, you know, that that times it. Uh but it it's more likely that there is a an exchange of signals between the organism of the baby which is now, you know, ready and and the mother. I'm ready when you're ready. Well, tell me when you're ready and I'm ready and so on.

And that can go on for a long time. You have the same thing in electronics. You know that and then then there is a signal that ends the exchange and then the the baby is born very quickly. So the we don't understand that process. I mean it's a part of information exchange very complex very subtle information exchange and the the biology of the mother and the biology of the baby.

Okay. Um the you have the same thing in astrophysics. I mean I worked for professor Sturak for two years. uh we published a number of uh papers about the structure of the sun, the structure of a corona and and also about um uh you know neutron stars and things like that. That's what we were researching.

Well, try to explain the corona of the sun. The corona is completely outside the sun. The sun surface is cold in astrophysics terms. It's it's it's you know the inside of the sun is at millions of degrees. the surface is at 10,000 degrees, you know, which is essentially when you do the models of the sun, you assume that temperature of the surface is zero because 10,000 degrees of heat is essentially zero in terms of astrophysics.

So, it's it's a good enough approximation which uh amazed me at the at the beginning when I I I started working with those models. So the the surface of the sun is cold. The corona is at 3 million degrees and up. How did that happen? I mean the corona is a plasma that we see only in the complete eclipse. You know what you see? Of course you don't see the sun but you see the corona which is it's away from the sun.

Uh well for a long time that was that was I mean many astronomers worked on this and died without knowing the answer. Yeah that's what what you have to be prepared to do in science. You you work on something you you you push it a little bit and then something else happens. Finally in your book and this really really kind of uh stopped me in my tracks. uh you you speak about how disclosure would and I'm trying I don't have the exact quote in front of me but basically you were saying that uh how disclosure could bring about the reality of NHI worldwide and that and and it you're opening a door that could never be shut and you know so that leads me to the question in all of your years of researching the phenomenon do you think disclosure is in the best interest of humanity or is it best to leave that door shut? Um, we could the disclosure could have happened at at three times really in history.

It it could have happened in the 50s once we knew that this was not the Russians and this was not the Chinese. uh the uh and it it it would have been fascinating to people in the 50s uh or 60s mid60s because people knew that eventually we were going to go in space in fact it would have been a great argument for NASA you know to say look there seems to be life out there let's go meet them okay u it would not have been a big a big problem to manage the impact on the on the public. Uh that wasn't done because uh probably because people thought there was technology there that we could acquire and do something with which was which was ridiculous because it was just so much so different from what we we can do. Um it it should have happened again uh in the 50s mid mid50s at the time of the Patel Institute had done this beautiful research the report on on on the statistics from project blue book and the air force uh that was again kept secret and there are many little manipulations that I've written about at that time Dr. Heck was there.

I discussed it with Dr. Heinneck. They felt that if they released the information, it would scare people too much and that they should first get the answer and then organize how the answer would be delivered to the people. I think that's a mistake. I think, you know, as a as a father, I have two kids and three grandkids.

I I found out very much when when there is a problem, you should tell the kids. You shouldn't try to hide it. You shouldn't try to, you know, if if if there is a a problem in the house or uh somebody is ill in the family, you should tell the truth. And if if you don't, you're going to create a lot of problems for yourself. And it's the same thing here.

and the fact now we we should have told the truth you know at the time of a uh the the condom commission we didn't um that was very disappointing I mean at at that point I I resigned from the things I was doing in Chicago and my wife and I went back to France uh because I thought if that's American science I don't want any part of it you know the New York Times endorsing the negative conclusions of the condent committee uh and and then people standing up on at the 5:00 news, you know, saying go go go on with your life. There is nothing to UFOs. I mean, those were lies that were organized and planted and so on. And uh and I thought if that's American science, you know, I I don't want to be part of that. Uh I came back eventually because because I I I found a way to get back into science.

Um the if we the problem now is that you have uh it's it's not a question of disclosure. I mean the disclosure is uh would be would be pointless because everybody knows about it. I mean it's not just a few pilots you know in F-18s. It's every farmer you talk to in in in Texas or in Kansas is going to tell you, "Yeah, I mean, we you know, we've seen that. My kids have seen them with got pictures of them with it scares my cattle, you know, I mean, look at the the things with the big old ranch now in you know, and you know, it's it's all over the all over the place.

So people know that it's there. I mean, who's kidding? So the only people who don't know it's there are you know in in Washington. So if um now if we don't come clean with everything we can tell uh we're going to stop a a conspiracy climate in in in the country. That's going to be very difficult you know and people just uh mistrusting the government about everything you know if they don't tell us about this which we already know right and we've heard from the scientists who actually work on it and if they don't come clean with that what do we know what is it we don't know you know what are the potential threats tell us um And that's the main thing that I hear from, you know, when I go visit a farm or a ranch somewhere, they said, you know, why don't they tell us, you know, is this is hurting my cattle? Is it guy told me I I I go into when I do an investigation, you know, I go to the site and I'm they know I'm coming and they give me a cup of coffee. We talk about what they've seen and then I always ask a question.

Do any of your neighbors, you know, have they seen anything like that? And uh and often people will say, "Oh yeah, you know, so and so down the street uh you know, he had uh something happened to his cattle and so on. He's never reported it, but you know, we talk about it at the market. His wife talked to my wife and and so I go there, I knock on the door and I say, you know, your your neighbor says you saw something. I'm a scientist. I'm trying to understand." And those are the best cases because they were never reported to anybody.

Not to the air force, not to the government, not to the police, you know, not to the sheriff. Uh it's just hearsay within the community. I love those because it's it's, you know, straight straightforward. And um I I went like that one evening to her house uh where something had happened to the cattle and I I I go in and there's a gun next to the door and we start talking to the the people and I say, "What's the gun for?" And he says, "Well, the next time this light comes over my ranch, I'm going to shoot the hell out of it." Okay, now this is this is real. Okay, this is not something that somebody made up in in Hollywood, you know, that's real that that Gandies wrote it.

And uh the this is not healthy. I mean, we should tell people and what do we know? What is it we don't know? What are the the potential dangers here? you know what what what should people be prepared for? And he said, you know, now they bring this to my cattle, are they going to do the same thing to my kids tomorrow, right? Take take them up, mutilate them, kill them, you know, they and that that is not healthy. This is not the way government should behave. So that's, you know, that's that's my that's my problem. All all the candidates for president say, you know, there's always a reporter in the room who says, "Are you going to disclose the the books about UFOs and all the records?" And they say, "Sure, yes." Uh, you know, Hillary Clinton said she was going to disclose everything.

Uh, of course, uh, uh, President Trump said that, uh, he hasn't disclosed anything yet. I think what happens is that so far, you know, they may have been vice president, but they were not president of the United States. The moment you're president, they're going to take you to um a place downstairs, close the door, and two guys in, you know, jeans and no tie are going to tell you, you know, the things you need to know to run the country. And u I think that's after that you you're not going to want to disclose a number of things because you those are the things that you may have to face and the things that you may have to work with. When um President Roosevelt died something I researched when I I wrote my book about Trinity uh Mr.

Truman was uh adjusting his tie to go to a a gala evening with his wife. His wife was uh uh you know was dressed for the occasion. A a guy from the White House uh drove to Truman's home in his in his own car and um approached Truman and said, "Mr. President uh President Roosevelt died this afternoon. You need to come with me to the White House.

Truman uh excuses himself from the gala evening, gets into the guy's car, they go to the White House, they go down to the basement and they tell him about the aton. he had not been cleared for uh what happened in at in New Mexico and that he would have to make the decision whether to use Yaton bomb against Japan or not. Now can you imagine something like that? I mean the the guy is a essentially an average businessman from Kansas. very bright, extremely honest, extremely wholesome in his life. Uh he was vice president because he could bring in votes for Roosevelt.

Roosevelt was in poor health and was hiding it that he died suddenly. All of a sudden, you're in the basement of the White House and you're told this secret. the the the budget for the for Trinity was the largest project in the history of man. The largest amount of money. The money was hidden in three different ways through contracts with different companies that had nothing to do with the atom.

And uh one of them was a land development project for the army where they put Oakidge. No, the the reactors were supposed to be it was supposed to be a gravel pit. The army needs gravel to to build roads and you know airports and so on. Of course the the army was the air force at the time. There was no air force.

the army was building the airports. So you you need a lot of gravel and that's there's gravel there. So they they uh got all the farmers out of the area within 100 miles and this was hidden between two hills and they built the bridge. The the the the budget was a budget for getting gravel to the army. Uh the there were two other hidden budgets and and uh the you know the senators were not aware of it.

Congress was not aware of it and the vice president of the United States had not been briefed. very so people need to understand that that there are secrets at that level that legitimately that's why I you know I don't want to go too much about the the the bass project and all that because I'm I'm there are some things I know some things I've participated in I have my own conclusions about UFOs but you know I'm going to work within the structure I respect the structure I I just think that mistakes are being made because it's not one secret you know there are people around saying well you know I my classification is such that I have access to certain things people don't know well you know it's good for you what about the other six things you know because it it's going to involve religion it's going to involve our relationship with certain countries that we need to talk to if we want to solve this because their files are at least as good if not better than ours. I think there are indications that the Russians have progressed in terms of understanding the problem have progressed much further than we have at the government level. Okay, those are indications from reading their literature, not not their their political stuff. Uh reading the summat.

So um those are powerful important dangerous things and they are getting more and more dangerous the more we keep them locked up. So, I became I'm, you know, I'm kind of new to the whole UFO topic, but I actually became interested in it when I saw Close Encounters of the Third Kind. I think I was probably eight or nine years old. And I would love to know how you got involved with the movie and what your thoughts are on being portrayed in the movie by actor French Trua. probably butchering the the French there, but um you know, Steven Spielberg was uh was very young at the time.

So was I. Um we um I I met him through um a Hollywood journalist, woman who had followed the development of the movie in in Hollywood and and she invited both of us for lunch. So it was a very informal thing and it was it was actually a lot of fun. And [Music] um Spielberg said that uh you know initially that that character was based I think on cloer in in France uh who had been very close to Dr. high neck and and so on.

And uh then as as the script the script wasn't finished there were big holes in in the script which were you know a problem for Spielberg and he said he just came from JPL and he said they're all walking around with lots of gadgets and and it was all very confusing and he didn't get a clear idea for the movie from being at the Jet Propulsion Lab. So he was still looking for for things and the the character evolved and became someone who really was in the United States working with the team and and that's when when he said the new character was based on me. So it's it's probably a mixture of Clare who is still a f good friend of mine and and myself. So we we had an enjoyable couple of lunches actually and um he said that one of the the and I gave him some some of the actual incidents that I had researched and there is one where the witness saw a UFO at a crossroad and there was a panel a road panel there that started vibrating when the object was was above and that's one of the scenes that made it into into the movie showing the physical effect of the force from from whatever is coming. And then one of the the big hole in the movie he told us at lunch was that how to discover the the place where it's actually uh going to happen because they want to meet of course to to meet the craft and uh I said well you know maybe a simple thing would be to have people with theodolites you know little little telescopes that would point to the place where the signal comes from and then you triangulate and and he said, "Yeah, that would work, but there are two problems with your idea.

Number one, it's too long to explain and number two, it's not funny." So then then I thought about something that photograph that was on the desk of Dr. Heck at at Northwestern University. And um that photograph showed a big globe, you know, 3 m diameter and three people, including one who was highneck climbing on top of the globe, uh on a ladder with a piece of string and and the others were trying to fit the the string across the the globe. And I asked Allan and I told that story to Spielberg and I I had asked um Dr. Heck, you know what's what happened there? And he said, he laughed and he said, you know, the the night of Sputnik one, uh, October 1957, nobody expected this to happen.

The New York Times calls the director of Harvard Observatory at 3:00 in the morning, wakes him up and and says, "Can you can we have a a comment about the Russian satellite?" He says, "What Russian satellite there? There isn't a Russian satellite." He said, "Well, yes, there is." And uh they gave him the whole story. So, he gets dressed. He calls Hinek. he calls another astronomer and they meet uh in a lobby of the of at Harvard where there is this big globe and they uh try to fit a string. They don't have a computer program that can compute the satellite orbit.

They think they have another couple of years to do that and of course it's going to be an American satellite. Well, it isn't an American satellite. It's a Russian satellite and they have no way of computing the orbit. So, uh that that photograph is very funny. And Spielberg says uh you know that's it.

They they say that the the general who is in charge of the whole expedition says uh the the the uh the translator for the the French guy uh says you know I I I used to be a geographer and these numbers that they are sending us that looks like coordinates longitude and latitude and the general says well you know where is it and nobody has a map and it seems to be in Wyoming and they break into the museum next door. Okay, happens to be a museum next door and they steal the big globe and they bring the globe overhead, you know, all the way and they find uh, you know, the uh the place in Wyoming with the big rock tower and that's where the the thing is going to be. So that scene uh I never I was never paid as a consultant for that but that scene came from from our meeting and that was that was great. That was just a lot of fun. I know that there I know that Steven Spielberg is working on another UFO movie that I'm not sure when it it comes out.

So So I have to ask are you involved with that project at all? I I am not. I am not. I think we're um maybe Dr. Nolan is, you know, that's the next the next generation uh is going to be uh going to be put to work. Well, Jacqu, thank you very much for joining us.

It was a pleasure having you on and uh look forward to meeting you in person. Thank you. No, it's a great pleasure. Thank you so much. All right, Jacques Valet, ladies and gentlemen.

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