UFO research: Scientists, spies and push for disclosure | UFO Mysteries

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When a mysterious object dubbed the tic-tac UFO befuddled US Navy [music] aviators and sensors off the coast of San Diego in 2004, the incident was dropped, not investigated. The first in-depth probe happened 5 years later under the opaces of a then secretive program called OAP, the advanced aerospace weapons systems application program. News Now live at [music] 6 live local now. One of the US government's premier UFO investigators has stepped out of the shadows to openly discuss his work for the UAP task force, an organization created by Congress to evaluate unidentified aerial phenomena. >> Now, this investigator is not unknown.

In fact, he's been hiding in plain sight. And he spoke exclusively about his investigations with the IT team's George Nap. >> Set up [music] over close to the doorway. >> Television viewers know astrophysicist Dr. Travis Taylor as an intrepid investigator of UFOs and the paranormal at Skinwalker Ranch and on other History Channel programs.

Only a handful of people in the world knew that Taylor was leading a double life, secretly working as the chief scientist for the Pentagon's UAP task force. >> But I would say uh other than the people who already knew on the task force, uh you're the first person to to figure it out, George. As a scientific prodigy, Taylor earned advanced degrees at a young age and has spent his entire adult life working on classified projects. First for the US Army, then for defense contractors. He wrote a book about how the US government should prepare for alien contact, which caught the attention of Jay Stratton, a high-ranking intelligence official who's been involved with each of the Pentagon's secretive UFO investigations, including OAP based in Las Vegas, ATIP, its successor, and later took charge of a third effort, the UAP task force.

Even before that team was formally created by Congress, >> Jay Stratton, the director of the UAP task force, asked me if I would be interested in being the chief scientist. And and I was like, "Yeah, absolutely. Of course, I would." >> One of the primary jobs of the task force was to write a report to Congress summarizing the known evidence about UFOs. The team had already created a classified briefing consisting of the most intriguing military encounters starting with the 2004 tic tac incident. The task force whittleled down a huge database into 144 of the very best cases.

Dr. Taylor helped write the final report. We picked sources that were we knew had a chain of custody of the date. And out of those 144, 143 of them, we still couldn't figure out what they were, where they came from, and and what their intent was. >> Civilian debunkers have tried to explain away the tic-tac and gimbal UFOs as birds or reflected light or faroff jet engines, as if military investigators were oblivious to such possibilities.

When the UAP task force determined objects to be genuine unknowns, it wasn't merely relying on video clips for evidence. >> Here's the thing. a skeptic and a debunker, they taint their results by starting from the beginning by knowing that the result is going to be this. So they ch they taint the analysis to lead them in the direction to do that. And the data that we had in many cases there was more of it than what the general public has and what was released.

And so when we say that we had a thing that was from multiple sensors and it told us multiple things and we also had eyewitness accounts uh audio information and so on. one object. >> Taylor and the task force spent [music] three years analyzing the 144 incidents, including dozens of bizarre objects that buzzed multiple Navy ships in 2019. Some of them were spheres that swarmed and kept pace with the warships. Others appeared to be greenish pyramids.

>> That time 0424. Task Force members were stunned to hear a Navy official tell a congressional hearing last month that all of these were quote drones, as if the mystery had been solved. Someone had to disregard the work of the task force to make that claim. >> We had a lot of censor data on some of them that uh that we couldn't determine what they are. I mean, if it's our near peers doing it, that's scary.

Uh but at the same time, we also never found any evidence that it was our near peers doing it. The drone conclusion was reached after the UAP task force was done and before the new UFO program AISOG even started. So who did it? George Knap, 8 News. Now >> Dr. Taylor went into much greater detail about why the drone scenario just falls short of explaining the 2019 UFO encounters and also why so many UFO videos appear to be fuzzy.

>> Can you talk about your work at as chief scientist for the task force? What did you do? Did you look at at material that came in videos to analyze things of that sort? >> Yeah, so uh there were a lot of different uh data sets that came in that uh we looked at tried to figure out what they were. There were some that turned out to be weather balloons for example. Uh in fact there were several uh but there were many that there is not enough data and sensor data and we had a lot of sensor data on some of them that uh that we couldn't determine what they are. I mean if it's our near peers doing it that's scary. Uh but at the same time we also never found any evidence that it was our near peers doing it.

Right. >> You were instrumental in writing the report that went to Cong that was demanded by Congress that was made public the 144 cases. Right. >> I was one of the people who wrote uh words that are in that uh thing. It was a team and we worked diligently on it for a long time and uh you know we we started out with everything we could think of and in the kitchen sink and put in it and then uh we realized it's going to a public audience and to Congress and this thing.

So we had to write it in a way that they would understand and get the point and the point the the nine pages that came out there's the a golden nugget in those nine pages if people would just pay attention. There were 144 cases we studied in a period of about three years. And in that time time frame of just studying 144 cases, these were only cases that were from credible military sources, right? And not from just move on or you know cuz they may happen all over the world, but we picked sources that were we knew had a chain of custody of the date. And out of those 144, 143 of them, we still couldn't figure out what they were, where they came from, and and what their intent was. >> So, by the time it gets to 144, you've already weeded things out that are easily explainable.

Those are legitimate mysteries that are left over. You of course see social media uh debunkers, armchair experts who take some of the videos that were studied by the task force that are now that we help put out. They explain them away in a variety of different ways. It it makes the military look like idiots. They have to be idiots for to not understand what these guys think they know.

>> Yeah. And that's that's okay. You know, it's part of the peerreview process in in science engineering. Uh and but here's the thing, a a skeptic and a debunker, they taint their results by starting from the beginning by knowing that the result is going to be this. So they ch they taint the analysis to lead them in the direction to do that.

Uh I'm not here to to uh believe or disbelieve. I'm here to find out what's going on and do analysis on the data we have. And the data that we had in many cases there was more of it than what the general public has and what was released. And so when we say that we had a thing that was from multiple sensors and it told us multiple things and we also had eyewitness accounts, uh, audio information and so on, then you put all that together, it's a much bigger picture than just saying, "Oh, well, we're not going to listen or look at any of that. We're only going to look at the what's on this few seconds of video, and we can tell you for sure from this few seconds of video what it is." I don't think there's a person on the planet that can really do that and do it honestly.

You're an optical physicist among your many degrees, right? And so you could look at an image and tell if it's a flare or a bird or something like that. >> Well, I would like to hope so. [laughter] Uh I can certainly look at it with the various analysis tools and tell you that if if it is something as mundane as that, that's usually easy to determine. Uh there are some things like uh camera effects that that you may see. Camera artifacts uh will sometimes confuse someone and make them think they've captured something.

And and sometimes people will use the a camera artifact as oh that's just a flare in the camera or oh that's just a a bokeh effect or oh that's you know this or that and and without really doing the analysis you can't just say oh it's birds don't worry about looking at it. They also people who are describing it as bokeh don't have other data sources that you have. >> That's correct. And that's one of the things that uh people have to accept that there is sometimes more data and you say well then you show it to us. Well uh in some cases we're not we never had the intent to classify things uh to keep people from knowing it.

Things are classified because of the sensor or the platform that it was taken from. uh we don't want to give away how we do things right to our near peers. You know, you certainly if we have a magic widget that tell that we can say look into the the Kremlin and and or something, we certainly wouldn't want them to know we had that magic widget, right? I'm not saying we do. I'm just giving that as a as a hypothetical example. So we certainly if we've got platforms that captured other data uh and it's data from a sensor that nobody knows exists, we're not going to release that data cuz then you'd know the sensor exists.

>> What does our government know about the UFO mystery? One longtime intelligence official has seen more of the Pentagon files than anyone. >> He is the only military man to work on three major UFO investigations, including one based here in Las Vegas. The official is Jay Stratton and he has never spoken in public or even granted an interview. That is until he sat down with our very own George Knap of our 8 News Now investigators >> when a mysterious object dubbed the tic-tac UFO befuddled US Navy aviators and sensors off the coast of San Diego in 2004. The incident was dropped not investigated.

The first in-depth probe happened five years later under the opaces of a then secretive program called OAP. The advanced aerospace weapons systems application program created by the defense intelligence agency with black budget funding spearheaded by Nevada Senator Harry Reid. Tic Tac was the first UFO incident tackled by OAP and its contractor Las Vegas aerospace pioneer Robert Bigalow. The report was released by us in 2018. Jay Stratton is the man who wrote it.

>> Every time I've done anything related to UAP or UFO has been my job. Um, and and what I mean by that, I didn't really have a passion growing up. I didn't have all the books, so I didn't watch all the TV shows. Um, I stepped into a job at the Defense Intelligence Agency where uh some things came across the desk. >> From 2008 until 2021, pretty much everything UFO related came across Jay Stratton's desk.

He made the decision to ditch the term UFO and use UAP instead, unidentified aerial phenomena. Stratton worked at the highest levels of naval intelligence, then was loaned to the DIA, where he excelled at reverse engineering. He and his colleague, rocket scientist Dr. James Lacatsky, kept seeing reports of unknown craft, but learned there was no central location where such mysteries were being analyzed. you know, all the stories you hear, right? There's probably the office that that deals with this.

And as we tried to find that office, we found nothing. >> So, they created one. Stratton's colleague, Dr. Latsky, had been reading about a UFO hotspot nicknamed Skinwalker Ranch. After a visit to the Utah property, Latsky pitched the creation of a formal investigation.

Harry Reid agreed to fund it. Robert Bigalow landed the contract. Stratton consulted with the OSAP program and then with its successor ATIP when the head of ATIP, Lou Alzando, resigned and revealed its existence to the New York Times in 2017. Stratton was asked by his boss if he jumped back in and cobbled together a new program. He did, and that effort was eventually formalized by Congress with a new name, the UAP Task Force.

One of Stratton's projects was the creation of a comprehensive but classified briefing that included UAP videos and photos collected by the military. Most of those images are still unreleased, but a few objects encountered off the east coast and even stranger objects buzzing Navy ships on the west coast were leaked then publicized. Stratton scoffs at the debunkers who've tried to explain them away as flares or drones or birds. >> Splashed. So, there's a lot of cleanup to do when when you when you have a lot of these people saying it's birds or whatever they're saying.

Um, it's frustrating because you know the rest of the story and you can't tell the rest of the story. >> In 2021, Stratton left the task force, but his work formed the basis of a stunning report to Congress. Stratton's chief scientist was Dr. Travis Taylor, now well known for his television appearances. Of 144 incidents investigated by the task force, 143 were considered unidentified.

Stratton and Taylor now work for Radiance Technologies, a defense contractor with offices in 17 states, including Nevada. When Stratton and Taylor showed up in the audience of an Alabama UAP conference last summer, UFO circles were a buzz with questions about what their employer might be up to. Filmmaker Jeremy Corbel brought his cameras to record our interviews. Stratton admitted there are still more questions than answers. >> Probably remember the infamous quote from Congress that let's hope it's aliens.

>> George Knap, 8 News Now. Now, >> more than a decade ago, the largest UFO investigation ever funded by the government was based here in southern Nevada. That program continued for a mere 27 months. And when it ended, there was an even more ambitious plan in the works, something cenamed Kona Blue. >> Documents about the Kona Blue were classified as top secret, but have finally been released by the Pentagon.

8 News Now chief investigator George Knap here live in studio with more on this story. >> Well, as you both know, the Department of Defense isn't exactly known for its transparency and honesty when it comes to UFO investigations. So, why come clean about Kona Blue? To understand that, we have to explain what led up to Kona Blue and why Las Vegas would have been right there in the thick of it. Be forewarned, you will be exposed to dueling acronyms. Why isn't it made obvious in any of the documentation that's been made public so far? >> Uh, it was completely UFO related.

>> Dr. Jim Latsky spent most of his career as an intelligence analyst and missile expert for the DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency. In 2007, he became interested in reports of UFO activity at certain hotspots, including a Utah property known today as Skinwalker Ranch. Latsky designed OAP, the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Application Program. He met with Nevada Senator Harry Reid, who helped secure $22 million in black budget funds.

The contract was awarded to a subsidiary of Bigalow Aerospace. OAP became the largest acknowledged UFO investigation in US history with 50 full-time employees, most of them based in southern Nevada. OAP created the world's largest UFO data warehouse and produced more than a hundred technical papers, though not one page from those reports has been made public by DIA. But Latsky and his Las Vegas colleague Dr. Colum Kellaher co-authored two books about OAP, reporting as much as Pentagon sensors would allow.

In one book, Latsky revealed that back in 2011, he had informed a US senator and a high-ranking official that quote, "The US was in possession of a craft of unknown origin. The craft had no intakes, exhaust, wings, or control surfaces, no engine, fuel tanks, or fuel." In other words, the US had a flying saucer. Since then, Latsky has declined to say more than what the Pentagon authorized. There was more to it, considerably more to that discussion about what this situation was. We can't go into that, but the public is now able to read much more between the lines because of the surprise release of a document declassified in February by the Department of Homeland Security.

It describes a proposed UFO program cenamed Kona Blue. Not mentioned is that Kona blue was drawn up by the Katsky Kellaher and some OAP colleagues as a successor to OAP and was intended to not only study but to exploit UFO technology. The papers do not mention UFOs but there are plenty of clues. The purpose of Kona Blue was to quote identify potentially disruptive technologies by analyzing material of unique origin and engineering. Success would depend on gaining access to said materials.

Kona Blue would establish a system to collect sightings of such technology, including at locations where there are frequent reports. There are references to advanced technology that's already been recovered. One section notes this recovered technology exists only within special access programs. Kona Blue would have created a medical division to study physical and psychological effects on humans from encounters with advanced aerial vehicles. And there's this chilling note that Kona Blue experts would quote handle and examine unusual and unique biological specimens.

What might those be? Like OAP, Kona Blue would have been based in Las Vegas. The document notes that buildings already cleared to handle top secret material were standing by. But in 2009, when Nevada Senator Harry Reid wrote to the Department of Defense to ask for a special classification for the DIA program, alarm bells were set off in Washington. Opposition mounted and the program's budget was pilered. That's why in 2011, Latsky, Keller, and others tried to find another home for what they called Kona Blue.

The document showed the Department of Homeland Security was briefed about what OAP had learned. Deputy Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Tara Otul was impressed enough to sign off on Kona Blue. But as with OAP, when top officials began knocking on doors to ask for access to special materials stashed in secret cubby holes, opposition to Kona Blue quickly mobilized and the proposed program was stopped dead. To date, Dr.

Latsky carefully measures his words when asked about the special materials they tried to access. There's material and there's material. Are you talking about material to be investigated? Uh, in other words, pieces falling off flying saucers, or are you talking about full-blown craft? You know, there's the big difference. >> Oh, yeah. Kona was declassified by Arrow, which is the current UFO program, as a way to discredit evidence and testimony provided by witnesses and whistleblowers.

The former head of Arrow, Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick says the people who came forward to tell about crash saucers were all referring to Kona Blue. Of course, that is preposterous. Kona Blue never existed and only a handful of people even knew it was proposed. So, what witness says they saw crash saucers as part of Kona Blue? Arrow says there are no crash saucer programs, but they will not release the testimony they received.

Also, as a personal note, Dr. Latsky and Dr. Keller wrote those two books we mentioned in that story, but I was also a contributor. They sent me out for coffee, things like that. >> [laughter] >> So, George, if any reporter knows about this this topic, it's you.

You also have to maintain your sources. Is this one of those things you knew about but maybe couldn't say anything? >> Well, yes and no. I mean, I was aware of this proposed program. We included a detailed description of it in one of those events, Skinwalkers at the Pentagon, that came out in 2019, but the code name was classified, so I didn't know about that because I do not have a security clearance. So, you know, some things they keep back even from me.

>> Thanks so much. >> Sure. Members of Congress are demanding answers about deep, dark secrets hidden inside the vast national security apparatus secretly related to UFOs. New witnesses are being called to a public hearing that's set for next month. >> One of the largest UFO programs ever funded by the government was based right here in Las Vegas.

And nearly everything produced by that program is still hidden away. >> 8 News Now chief investigator George Knapp spoke with one of its central figures, scientist and author Dr. Jacques Valet. And just saying, well, just, you know, disclose, disclose, disclose, doesn't answer any of that. Okay.

>> Jacqu Valet has been a central figure in UFO research and debate for more than six decades. He's often been at odds with UFO orthodoxy, was among the first to argue that the unknown craft seen for centuries in our skies and oceans may not be from other planets, but from other realities. He's heard the demands for an end to official secrecy many times and at the same time has participated in secretive efforts himself, including a UFO study launched by the Defense Intelligence Agency in 2008 and hidden inside a Las Vegas aerospace company. One focus of the DIA's OAP effort was and is genuinely disturbing, the real life health consequences for humans who come into contact with UFOs. Hundreds of serious injuries have been documented.

OAP investigators traveled to Brazil to obtain government files related to hundreds of Brazilians treated for injuries after being targeted by UFOs. Dr. Valet won't discuss specific OSAP files except for cases he provided to the database. Injuries which he says were not accidental. I can tell you that in my files which some of which I contributed to the database, there are uh at least half a dozen well doumented cases where the the the uh uh the injuries that resulted in death were were deliberate >> incidents in which UFOs deliberately ly cause physical harm to humans are rare according to personnel who have seen the full OAP files, but they do occur.

Dr. Colum Keller, one of OAP's managers, has said bluntly that UFOs are bad for human health. Could that be a reason to keep secrets? If there is some kind of nonhuman intelligence here, the secrecy starts with them. But governments, in particular the US government, have created multiple other levels of secrecy. you know, the atomic secrecy primarily, which most people in the Pentagon are not cleared for, and then the the military secrecy and the strategic secrecy, and then the diplomatic secrecy.

>> In Dr. Valet's most recent book, Forbidden Science: Scattered Castles. He shares private exchanges with colleagues from the OSAP program, including Las Vegas billionaire Robert Bigalow and a close-knit group of scientists nicknamed the Lone Stars. The scientists, some of them former CIA contractors, accept that the US government has recovered crashed vehicles of unknown origin that defense contractors have worked for decades to reverse engineer that technology at secretive facilities in the desert and elsewhere. They say adversary nations have done likewise.

The race to duplicate that technology means national security is at stake. Balet favors transparency but worries that an official declaration could prove chaotic. >> So if we want to disclose even disclose something as simple as saying yes we acknowledge a phenomenon and it seems to be from space. Um we would have to once you do that you have to answer a hundred other questions. This is not the end.

This is not the end of the story. >> While Dr. Valet is encouraged by the renewed interest in UFOs within Congress, mainstream media, and academia, he thinks someone needs to craft a wellplanned strategy for how to unleash what would likely be the biggest news story in history. >> I think we should disclose that we should disclose with a structure and the structure hasn't been invented yet. >> George Knap, 8 News Now.

The DIA investigation based here in Las Vegas was supposed to last 5 years. Funding was cut off though after 27 months, but it did produce an enormous body of work, not one page of which has been made public 14 years after that program ended. And you can watch George Knap and all of our 8 News Now investigators reporting anytime on our 8 News Now Vegas TV app. It's available on Apple TV, Amazon Fire TV, or Roku. Well, the largest UFO investigation ever funded by the US government was carried out in total secrecy and it happened right here in Las Vegas.

>> And while most of the reports produced by the program are still classified, the scientists who managed the program is spilling some of what he knows. >> Dr. James Latsky worked for the DIA or Defense Intelligence Agency and says the goal of the program was to figure out UFO technology and to one day build our own. He spoke exclusively with 8 News Now chief investigator George Knap. George now joining us live in studio.

>> Yeah, we're a big lo big big racing town now, right? Formula 1, NASCAR, etc. But Las Las Vegas is known now as a racing town. But the most important race perhaps on the planet was headquartered right here. It was a race to see which nation would be the first to crack the code and replicate the propulsion system of these mysterious machines seen for decades in our skies and oceans. The race is real and it's still underway.

>> We are in a race for the tech. >> Yes. Yes. Absolutely. >> For more than 80 years, the US government has told the public not to fret about UFO intrusions because nearly all of them are explainable.

Behind the scenes, though, intelligence agencies and the Pentagon acknowledge there is a deadly serious contest to figure out UFO technology before Russia or China do. Nevada Senator Harry Reid told us before his death that the race is real and that we'd better win it, which is why he was the primary sponsor of a $22 million secret investigation. >> And it's not our belief or conjecture or the opinion of the authors. It's facts from from the program. These are from official sources from what the public has paid for.

>> Dr. James Latsky spent most of his career with the DIA analyzing the technology of America's adversaries, weapons that could potentially wipe out the world. He was and is a keeper of secrets and regarded his oath and security clearance as gospel. But these days, he is cautiously and meticulously sharing what he can about OAP, the largest acknowledged UFO investigation ever funded by the US government. Latsky designed and managed OAP, inspired by a book he read about a UFO hotspot in a remote corner of Utah, a place now known as Skinwalker Ranch.

Credible witnesses had reported seeing mysterious high techch objects emerge from holes in the sky. Latsky believed this was a potential threat and also an opportunity. You know, we wanted to learn what what can be weaponized here and that basically that was our job at DIA. >> Laty visited the ranch escorted by its owner, Las Vegas tycoon Robert Bigalow, had his own bizarre experience there, then convinced DIA leadership that an investigation was warranted. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and two of his Senate colleagues agreed and OAP was born.

The program was housed within a subsidiary of Bigalow Aerospace, had a team of 50 full-time investigators, and conducted an unprecedented investigation in near total secrecy. Lacatsky and his team produced an astounding amount of material, including 115 thick documents and the world's largest UFO data warehouse. 14 years after OAP ended, the DIA has yet to release any of the original material. Latsky is doing it himself. His latest book, New Insights: Inside the US Government's UFO Program, makes the case that UFOs and paranormal phenomena related to UFOs are generated by someone or something that is not us.

>> Can we say they're nonhuman? >> Uh, I don't think you can. Oh, we can be pretty well sure we're not dealing with humans. The material in the book is from government files compiled by government personnel in a government-f funed program. It may not count as official disclosure, but it's in the same ballpark. New insights includes remarkable UFO incidents, cases in which airline pilots were followed by huge unknown craft which changed shapes while in the air.

Eyewitnesses who experienced inexplicable physiological changes after their close encounters. others who suffered major medical consequences, outbreaks of bizarre paranormal phenomena, and entities in the homes of dozens of people who had earlier seen orbs, triangles, or other weird craft. Newly unveiled events from in and around the Utah ranch are the stuff of nightmares, including creature sightings, macob animal mutilations, and even an incident from the oddities known as the Men in Black. Latsky flat out admits the government has in its possession at least one recovered craft of unknown origin. A flying machine with no wings, no engine, no fuel, no fuel tanks.

How do you know it's a craft if it has no fuel, no fuel tank? You didn't actually see it fly or I mean it are you convinced it is some sort of a craft, a machine? >> Yes. And by the way, Senator Reid asked the same question. >> Going against the wind. The wind's 120 knots west. >> Like the late Senator Latsky has no doubt our adversaries have their own programs to reverse engineer UFO tech.

The OAP program completed almost everything it was designed to do in its 27-month existence. After that, the funding was suddenly paused. Fingers pointed at multiple possible culprits. But Latsky now reveals the person responsible was Harry Reid himself. The senator confided to Latsky there was a spy in his Washington office who is leaking information to help the candidacy of Reed's 2010 opponent Sharon Angel.

Reed was widely expected to lose that race. So he's worried that the story gets out it affects his race and he'd no longer be a US senator and it would have. >> Reed surprisingly won that race in a cakewalk but afterward was no longer the majority leader of the Senate. He was minority leader. Latsky says Reed kept his word and secured funding for OAP to continue in some form.

We'll explore that part of the story in a future report. And as a matter of disclosure, I was the journalist who was allowed to know about OAP while it was underway and later was a co-author of two earlier books by Dr. Latsky and his colleague Dr. Colum Keller. I had no hand in this current book, New Insights.

Pretty good stuff though. >> Listen, the next time I have a secret to keep, I'm telling George [laughter] because he's not going to tell anybody. By the way, when we hear pretty much sure they're not human, both of our jaws dropped, right, >> George, thank you for that. If you missed any of this report from George Knap, you can watch it back in full on the 8 News Now uh Vegas TV streaming channel or by downloading it straight to your smart TV or on 8we.com. >> For 27 months, Las Vegas was UFO Central.

A secret program known as OAP was created back in 2008 with support from Nevada Senator Harry Reid and actually became the largest UFO investigation ever undertaken by the US government. At least as far as we know. >> But the investigators for the program, all of whom had top security clearances, encountered things that were far stranger than UFOs, phenomena that could be accurately described as paranormal. 8 News Now chief investigator George Knapp, the only journalist allowed to know about OAP, spoke to the government scientist who was the program's director. George? >> Yeah, things get a little weird here.

Back in that era, 2008 to 2011, I had heard the name Dr. Jim Latsky a few times, mostly in Hust Whispers. I finally met him face to face on St. Patrick's Day 2018 at a meeting in DC arranged by Senator Reid. That's when I received a full download about OAP that stunned me.

What they found in this sprawling UFO investigation is that these unknown craft, whatever they are, seem to generate spooky phenomena seeming that seemingly shouldn't exist. >> And we heavily went into Skinwalker Ranchity of Robert Bigalows. He offered a facility where we could see UFOs and the [clears throat] paranormal at once in one location. How did this ranch in northeastern Utah, previously owned by Las Vegas aerospace tycoon Robert Bigalow, become a key part of the government's classified UFO investigation? It started at DIA, the Defense Intelligence Agency, where rocket scientist and intelligence analyst Dr. James Latsky and a colleague Jay Stratton became both puzzled and alarmed by reports about UFO intrusions at many of our nation's most sensitive national defense facilities.

Residents of the Uenta Basin in northeastern Utah had been reporting frequent UFO incidents for decades, probably longer. And the Bigalow [clears throat] Ranch was deemed an epicenter of weird activity. Not just UFOs, but also unknown creatures, things that presumably exist only in myths or movies. >> Okay. Bigalow's organization, NIDS, moved on to the ranch, and its team of scientists and investigators began collecting testimony from residents, then started seeing the creatures and phenomena for themselves.

Latsky, Stratton, and the bosses at DIA were intrigued, not repelled, by the wild stories. They wanted to know if UFOs and the seemingly related paranormal incidents might be considered a threat. because I could see from my organization the threat potential and we weren't covering many of the things you were observing uh you know strange creatures. I mean think of inducing these what might be called illusions by some people into an enemy force. You know we wanted to learn what what can be weaponized here.

Latsky and Stratton put together a program which DIA approved. The acronym was OAP. Senator Harry Reid helped secure the funding and Bigalow Aerospace was the contractor. 50 full-time investigators were hired, obtained top secret security clearances, and went to work. The main focus was UFOs and UFO technology, but one smaller focus was measurable health effects on people who encountered a UFO and were physically harmed or developed rare diseases, including psychological effects.

That allowed OAP to cast a wide net and to report seemingly outlandish stories about creatures, poltergeist type activity, and other weirdness. Dr. Latsky says that OAP created a massive database of UFO accounts, but the witnesses were typically reluctant to admit that they had also had paranormal experiences after encountering UFOs. >> We realize that people who openly say and are confident enough to say, "I observed a UFO up close, maybe on the ground," that they always seem to have a paranormal connection in some way. if you gently push them.

>> Perhaps the strangest experience reported by nearly everyone in OAP who visited the Bigalow Ranch is what is now known as the Hitchhiker effect. At least five highly experienced intelligence officers who went to the ranch to check things out came into contact with paranormal phenomena and then took it home with them. They and their families would see balls of light inside their homes, shadowy figures, even creatures that were physical, not merely a mental image. After one investigator returned from the ranch to his east coast home, his entire family was bedeled by orbs and what they described as a wolf that walked on two legs. >> The one here in the Washington area.

Uh and that's why you have to say paranormal. I mean, what did it get in a train or plane and come to to come to Washington? Uh it left deep scratch marks on the tree it was uh resting against. Uh there was physical evidence >> after the existence of OAP was first reported by us in 2018 and the full scale of the strange phenomena it had examined was made public by Dr. Latsky in his books including the newest one new insights. Skeptics claimed the DIA had killed OAP at the end of 2010 because the reports it received were simply too weird.

>> Did they ever have the opinion that oh gosh this is getting kind of weird? >> No, they never did. They basically want it kept quiet. That's all. They didn't want to see it in the Washington Post. >> Lathsky and others familiar with OAP tried to find a new home, a spin-off version, something called Kona Blue.

Harry Reid helped lead that charge, and the Department of Homeland Security initially said yes. Then higher-ups killed it. Lowsky's new book hints that some slice of Kona Blue did move forward, but he declines to spill further details about that for now. Well, we can tell you that Area 51, UFOs, military technology, unsolved mysteries, much more from 50 years of exclusive news reports and interviews is coming your way. >> That's right.

Mystery Wire is back, hosted by chief investigator George Knapp, as well as Ron Futrell. In the first episode, George explains how it all started more than three decades ago. >> I called John Leer. Hey, about your scientist guy works at Area 51. Might he talk to us? having no idea what had been going on in Lazar's life in the interim since I heard about him and they arranged it and suddenly this story comes spilling out.

I didn't know exactly what he was going to say. Paula Francis had no idea. The news director didn't. >> Well, you can take a journey with George and Ron through years of mysteries right here in Las Vegas. You can watch new episodes of Mystery Wire tonight at 7 only on our streaming channel.

It's available on most smart TVs.