Ancient Aliens s13e06 Episode Script
Area 52
1 NARRATOR: It is America's most infamous military installation.
DAVID CHILDRESS: For decades, witnesses in that area are seeing unusual craft hovering over the base.
NARRATOR: The place where top secret experiments, involving alien technology, are rumored to be taking place.
There is extraterrestrial technology at Area 51.
NARRATOR: But is Area 51 still viable, now that the top secret is out? MIKE BARA: This underground expansion has stretched all the way through Nevada into Utah.
NARRATOR: Or do other, even more covert places exist, where mankind's extraterrestrial future is being prepared? Where are Areas 52, 53, and 54? NARRATOR: Langley, Virginia.
August 15, 2013.
After decades of secrecy, denials and cover-ups, the CIA declassifies documents which acknowledge the existence of a top secret military research facility known as Area 51.
This was an historic announcement.
Finally, these years of rumors that the UFO community and the conspiracy theory community had been claiming to be true had been validated.
BARA: The federal government was forced to acknowledge the existence of the Area 51 base because of a Freedom of Information Act request.
It took them over a decade to actually respond, but in the end, they eventually had to admit what everybody already knew, which was that Area 51 did exist.
NARRATOR: Since 1955, this top secret base, located in the remote desert of southern Nevada, has been considered the epicenter of the military's most classified projects, from the U-2 spy plane to the F-117 stealth fighter.
But many believe that in the darkest corners of Area 51 lurks an even bigger secret One that hides the ultimate evidence of extraterrestrial contact.
POPE: While the admission that Area 51 existed was important, it didn't go far enough for many people who were hoping that the government was going to confirm all the rumors about crashed UFOs and recovered alien technology were true.
But the government said nothing about that.
BARA: They only gave us the exact minimal amount of information that was requested.
They did not give us any more information.
And they certainly appear to still be covering up what exactly goes on at Area 51.
DOLAN: Over the years, there have been a number of claims by people who have been associated with Area 51 who have spoken to journalists or whistle-blowers in which they have stated, quite explicitly, that there is extraterrestrial technology at Area 51.
The theory was that they had hired propulsion experts, engineers, physicists, to reverse engineer alien propulsion technology, which was so far in advance of ours, and they were doing that at Area 51.
BARA: We also have rumors that there are alien spacecraft on the base that have actually been tested and flown out of Area 51.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that scientists at Area 51 have been able to not merely study, but successfully reverse engineer an extraterrestrial craft? DOLAN: For 30 years, people have gone to the perimeter with binoculars, telescopes.
They've seen bright objects moving in angular motions, or zigzag motions, and in ways that seem to be well beyond anything that we have ever seen, and propulsion technology that's not readily identifiable.
NARRATOR: But if Area 51 is the place where the U.
S.
government is conducting its most top secret military research, and possibly hiding decades of evidence concerning alien contact, just how secret is it now? If everyone knows that it exists and what kind of work is done there, could Area 51 have outlived its purpose as a strategic military asset? In search of the answers, ancient astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos has traveled to Henderson, Nevada.
- Hello.
Great to meet you.
- Hello.
NARRATOR: He has arranged to meet with TD Barnes, a former electrical engineer who worked on classified military projects at Area 51 for more than four decades.
- Only in 2009.
- Yeah, 2009.
And when did you start your work there? TSOUKALOS: So almost 50 years you kept it a secret from your wife.
And what did you work on? Okay.
Let's hypothetically say that a UFO crashes and you get ahold of it.
Would we be able to reverse engineer that technology? Wow.
I mean, for all intents and purposes, that was a secret space program.
Do you think that this secret space program stills exists today? Okay.
Now, while you were working there, did you ever see anything weird up in the sky? Wow.
In your estimation, when you read these stories about some companies trying to develop a warp drive, or even an antimatter propulsion system, is this something actually achievable? Ah, that's tremendous.
NARRATOR: But if, as TD Barnes suggests, the military has successfully reverse engineered anti-gravity and flying saucer technologies at Area 51, what are they working on now? And if its purpose is still to operate as the government's most highly classified, top secret laboratory, why would they admit to the existence of Area 51? Especially after decades of silence? One possibility about the public announcement that Area 51 exists, is that the real action has moved elsewhere.
In other words, the CIA, the government, only felt able to come clean about this because the real secrets have been moved somewhere else.
So in a real sense, perhaps, the question isn't so much what's going on at Area 51, but what's going on at Area 52, 53, and 54? NARRATOR: Area 52? 53? And 54? Might there really be other, even more secret locations, where the government is continuing to study and replicate extraterrestrial technology? Having one big place where everybody is doing the research is not a good idea because it would be hard to hide from the general public.
So the idea that there might be any single, individual Area 51 where they're reverse engineering alien spacecraft, now, that seems a little bit an outdated concept.
If I were going to do it, I would spread the technology pieces out across the country.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the reason government officials revealed the existence of Area 51 is because they want to use it as a decoy? One that takes the focus away from their other, perhaps even bigger, operations at numerous sites all across the United States? So the fact that they would finally admit that Area 51 exists is actually, to my mind, a smoke screen.
What's really going on is that you've got all these massive underground facilities.
You can take all the really good stuff you don't want anybody to see and simply move it somewhere else in the blink of an eye.
NARRATOR: While the public remains focused on what is or isn't happening at Area 51, could the government be hiding its research into extraterrestrial technology at other strategic sites all across the country? Perhaps the answer can be found by investigating reports of an extensive tunneling operation currently underway in the Nevada desert.
CHILDRESS: Witnesses are looking out, and even March 17, 2018.
Just outside the perimeter of Area 51, Giorgio Tsoukalos meets with researcher Wolf McCarron and mining expert Christian Gronau.
They are here to investigate rumors of an alleged tunnel network that lies beneath Area 51.
- This is amazing.
- Isn't it? NARRATOR: Wolf and Christian believe this location the Tempiute Mine is one of several old Nevada mines that have been used to expand operations at Area 51, deep underground.
I'm a miner, about 100 miles north of Area 51 here, and I've been mining there since 1992.
I also own a mine in Goldfield.
So I'm just an avid miner, you know I search these out.
So what can you tell us about Area 51? Well, Area 51, what you see, like, on Google Imagery, that was the '50s, '60s and '70s.
Since then, they've gone down.
Everything they do is underground.
And what evidence have you come across as a miner that would corroborate your idea? People are questioning, well, if they're going down, where is all the dirt going? Well, it's going to these nearby mines, and they're putting it in huge mountains, and they're heap leaching it.
And by the time they're done heap leaching a huge mountain, it goes down to nothing.
Now, to the uninitiated, what does heap leaching mean? It is they pile the ore up into a large mountain, hundreds of feet high, and they run hoses all the way through it, like every two feet, and they leach in mercury and cyanide.
And what that does, it'll take boulders this large and actually just bring them down to nothing.
Really? Yeah.
NARRATOR: Is the government using heap leaching inside the Tempiute Mine in order to hide the massive amounts of dirt being removed in the course of their digging operations? But if so, how is the government able to conduct such an enormous operation without arousing the suspicion of the local miners? These mines around here have gold, silver, lead.
So any mine would be more than happy to accept the ore.
And it's kinda like hush-up money.
I've witnessed this hush up and dealt with this a lot.
Hush up of what? Hush up of the base and the tunnels of Area 51.
Okay.
It's sort of self-explanatory that the reason why people would go underground is if there are experiments going on that there's no interference, or less interference.
Exactly.
Yeah.
NARRATOR: Has the U.
S.
military been expanding its operations at Area 51 not outward, but downward, in order to keep its top secret work even more secret than before? It is my own belief, based on a lot of good research, that there is most likely a large I would even say vast web of interconnected, underground bases and tunnels that exist.
They originally started doing it, by the way, just to protect against an atomic strike that could've happened from the Soviet Union.
And you need secure underground facilities.
Well, they took that and just ran with it.
NARRATOR: There are those that believe that the underground operations being conducted at Area 51 are only the tip of an enormous iceberg.
Is it just one of many secret government facilities, each connected to each other by a vast network of underground high-speed trains? An underground train system is said to be centered around Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs.
This is a mountain that has been hollowed out by the U.
S.
military.
It's the NORAD central command.
And they go from Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado Springs, to Dulce, New Mexico, which is said to have an extraterrestrial underground base.
Then it goes to Los Alamos, in New Mexico, then to Albuquerque, and to Roswell, and to Area 51, in Nevada.
All of these military bases are essentially connected by a secret underground subway system.
BILL BIRNES: The folks who are looking at Area 51, they're not looking at Dulce.
Dulce, New Mexico, is on Jicarilla Apache Reservation.
It's actually a separate entity.
It's part of the Apache Nation.
In other words, you can't just go there.
CHILDRESS: There is a peak just north of the town of Dulce called Archuleta Peak.
And residents of Dulce claim to have seen UFOs coming in and out of that mountain.
The U.
S.
government is saying that there's nothing there they have no military base there, there's not some underground train network.
And yet, people who live there say there is something going on here.
So, just like Area 51, where the government was saying, hey, there's nothing going on here, but researchers for decades knew and investigated things that were going on there.
And so perhaps at Dulce, one day, they will admit yes, something was going on there.
NARRATOR: Is there really a vast network of top secret government laboratories, each conducting experiments using extraterrestrial technology? NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is a profound yes.
And they offer, as additional proof, not one located at a facility in the American southwest but one much farther to the east.
A military base they claim has been working directly with extraterrestrials for decades and operating very close to the location where mankind made its first successful effort to reach the sky.
BIRNES: We actually have an eyewitness NARRATOR: Dayton, Ohio.
Here, on the very same plains where Wilbur and Orville Wright lifted mankind into the era of flight, sits Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, one of the largest and highest-funded bases in the nation's military.
It is up there as one of the single most important military, technology, back-engineering study in biological entities of any place we have.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, Wright-Patterson or Wright-Patt, as it is more commonly called has been a hub of extraterrestrial investigation and experimentation for decades.
Some even consider it of greater strategic importance than Area 51.
DOLAN: So, the rumors and stories of aliens at Wright-Patt have been very widespread for a very long period of time.
And there have also been claims that unknown aerial vehicles or UFOs are being stored deep underground.
NARRATOR: On June 14, 1947, an unidentified object reportedly crashed on a farm outside the town of Roswell, New Mexico.
According to eyewitnesses, the object resembled some sort of flying disc, and the bodies recovered from the wreckage looked like nothing from this planet.
Within days, the so-called Roswell incident captured the imaginations of millions of people around the world.
But just as the event jump-started America's interest in UFOs, it also ushered in the era of the government cover-up.
DOLAN: The Roswell Base issued a press release, and then several hours later, it's all denied.
"Sorry, people, just a weather balloon.
"Our top intelligence officers didn't know what they were looking at.
" And we actually have evidence of an FBI memo that made such a statement, that what was recovered was being brought to Wright Field for analysis.
Well, you're not going to bring balloon parts to Wright Field for analysis.
That's not going to happen.
CHILDRESS: You've got to remember that in 1947 when the Roswell crash happened, there was no Area 51 in Nevada.
And in fact, the important Air Force headquarters to study these crashed artifacts and possibly alien bodies was Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
BARA: Now, the reason that this wreckage would have been sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is because at that time, it was the center of the Air Force's Foreign Technology Division, meaning the division that actually studied foreign aircraft, foreign technologies of all kinds, and certainly alien tech, wrecked alien spacecrafts and report of alien spacecraft sightings would be sent there to be studied by the Foreign Technology Division.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is still housing the remains of the object recovered from the New Mexico desert more than 70 years ago? And if so, could there be evidence that their efforts to recreate the so-called flying disc have been successful? CHILDRESS: Even now, in the last few years, there have been important UFO sightings around Dayton.
And witnesses in that area are looking out over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and, even in broad daylight, seeing unusual craft hovering over the base.
This is a very distinct possibility that's supported by the fact that no jets are released when these UFOs appear.
It's almost as if they know what they are.
Maybe it's because it's one of our own reverse engineered craft.
NARRATOR: But even if the UFOs recently sighted in the skies above Wright-Patterson are man-made, couldn't that be considered proof that the UFO that crash-landed near Roswell was, in fact, reverse engineered? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and to support their claim, they point to two other top secret UFO investigations that took place at Wright-Patterson: Project Sign and Project Blue Book.
BARA: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was the center, the hub, for Project Sign and Project Blue Book.
Now, both of these projects were involved with one essential task, which was the study and categorization of reports of unidentified flying objects.
POPE: Project Sign was set up after the flying saucer wave of sightings across the United States in 1947, and shortly after the Roswell crash.
Sign researched and investigated the phenomenon, taking reports, not just from the public, but from the military, from pilots who were seeing things, from radar operators who were tracking these objects.
This was the U.
S.
government's formal UFO program.
SZYMANSKI: The Air Force had 22 years of UFO investigation that was housed in the Foreign Technology Division, and Blue Book is the most famous and ran for the longest period of time.
They go out and they look for foreign technology, including crashed wreckage.
And then, they have access to all of the technical expertise on the base.
NARRATOR: In 1969, after compiling and studying more than 12,000 UFO sightings, Project Blue Book was terminated.
Most of the sightings were categorized as high-altitude spy planes or natural aerial phenomena, although approximately 700 unidentified cases still remain.
But while the U.
S.
Air Force insists to this day that credible evidence of extraterrestrial visitation never existed, many former employees of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, such as Ray Szymanski, have come forward with a very different story.
I started working at Wright- Patterson in January of 1973, and I had 38 years and nine months of service when I retired.
I spent nearly my entire career at Air Force Research Labs, and I did advanced research and development.
On the first day of working there, I had a mentor.
His name was Corvette Al.
He was the equivalent of a flag officer, a general or an admiral, and he said, "Let's go through the hangar," and as we stepped into that hangar, he turned to me and said, "Have you heard about our aliens?" I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, we have aliens here on the base.
" I said, "Really?" And then, he said, "Well, yeah, there was a crash out west", and they brought the aliens and their machine.
" He used the word "machine.
" Brought here to Wright-Patterson for evaluation and possible exploitation.
Hangar 18 was this mysterious hangar at Wright Field where we actually have an eyewitness who was taken to Hangar 18, Lieutenant Colonel Marion Magruder.
He was a fighter pilot in the United States Marine Corps who saw the alien technology, but worse, he saw the live alien.
It looked human, its head was larger than humans', its arms were much longer, and it moved like this in a wavy motion.
The humanoid communicated with Magruder telepathically, and the Army and the Air Force, as well as the higher branches of the Pentagon, were absolutely fascinated by the fact that here were creatures who could communicate without using words.
Thus began a series of experiments into psychokinesis, psychic projection, thought projection.
NARRATOR: If the Magruder account is true, and the U.
S.
military was once using live aliens for scientific study, where did those experiments take place? Was it at Wright-Patterson? Area 51? Or were they conducted at yet another facility? And, if so, where? And are they still taking place today? Here, at the eastern tip of the island, is all that remains of the Montauk Air Force Station.
Originally established as a naval base in 1917 due to its strategic defensive location, the Montauk installation protected the East Coast from submarines and bombers for several decades, before it was decommissioned in 1981.
But according to statements from multiple whistle-blowers, a secret laboratory hidden deep beneath the base may still be operating.
(wind gusting) CHRISTOPHER GARETANO: I think it's the perfect cover.
You have kind of a lax topside operation, an Air Force Station that really nothing is going on at, but underneath the ground, you have this extremely elaborate experiment going on, many levels of an underground base.
Each of these men that told the tale, they don't say they entered the base through, you know, a topside location.
They would all enter Brookhaven National Laboratories and travel on a train underneath the ground to Montauk.
So people that are working above ground don't even know what's going on underneath the ground.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, Montauk, like Area 51 and Wright-Patterson, remains notorious as one of the places the U.
S.
military would carry out numerous experiments, often with the aid of otherworldly technology.
There are some who believe these experiments even involved human subjects as part of a highly controversial research program known as the Montauk Project.
Some of the stories about what was going on in the Montauk Project actually tie in with something that we absolutely know to be real, because we have declassified documents on it, and that's MKUltra.
Now, MKUltra was a program run by the CIA and the U.
S.
Army, and it literally tried to harness the technique of mind control.
But there are rumors that there were other, more exotic techniques that people were using at Montauk: remote influencing, for example, which is the idea that you can effectively use the power of your mind to influence somebody else's behavior.
Clearly, there would be huge military value in such techniques, and that, of course, is exactly why they were doing them.
BARA: This was stuff that was so beyond the normal thought processes of the military mind.
It wasn't making better guns, better ammo, more efficient airplanes.
This was way beyond that.
This was a program that used all sorts of different techniques to try to control human thought.
NARRATOR: Mind control? Remote thought manipulation? If the U.
S.
military really did believe that such incredible power was achievable, did it get the idea from extraterrestrials? Perhaps even from the technology reportedly recovered after the crash at Roswell? HOWE: The big question about Montauk has always been, were they operating with the technologies that they had because they were given to our government by non-humans, legitimately, as some kind of collaboration or trade, for us to experiment with? DOLAN: One thing that's at Montauk is the so-called Montauk Chair.
It had some kind of wires, or there's some kind of extraterrestrial technology associated with this chair and that, combined with the individual's innate psychic capabilities, would allow you to engage in transforming reality in one way or another.
GARETANO: The subject would sit in the chair, and this chair was meant to manifest thought into physical reality.
And included in that are telekinesis, remote viewing.
One of the experiments that they used at first was to manifest, let's say, a glass or a ball, something simple, an inanimate object.
Whatever the subject was thinking would manifest into physical reality.
Eventually, this evolved into heightened psychic abilities.
They claimed they could teleport from one place to another.
NARRATOR: According to many researchers and ancient astronaut theorists, accounts of the so-called "Montauk Chair" and its connection to mind control are strangely similar to accounts of a chair that dates back to the days of the pharaohs: the throne of Ptah.
Ptah was one of the most intriguing gods of Ancient Egypt.
He was the god before all the other gods.
He created Earth.
He created humanity.
Unlike the other gods, Ptah would create the world with his thought.
He would think it, feel it and hence, it was created.
HENRY: Ptah is portrayed sitting on a throne.
And this throne is thought to be the center point from which his thought is able to manifest creation.
What's fascinating about these scenes is that this throne is feathered.
It's feathered because it flies.
It's known as his ascension throne.
When we compare the descriptions of the Montauk Chair with the ascension throne of Ptah, it raises the question: Was the U.
S.
military involved in reverse engineering an extraterrestrial technology that was used thousands of years ago in Ancient Egypt? NARRATOR: Could the legends about an Egyptian god and his flying throne and the report of a thought-control chair at the Montauk military base really be connected? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest that not only has the U.
S.
government been working to acquire and perfect alien technology for decades, but that the operations at Montauk are still going on.
Several people have claimed that they were part of these Montauk experiments.
They do recall sitting in a special chair.
And people say that today there is still activity in the underground sections of the Montauk base.
NARRATOR: Is the seemingly abandoned military base on Eastern Long Island still, secretly, in operation? And if so, is Montauk part of a vast network of government laboratories and factories where extraterrestrial technology is being harvested? Ancient astronaut theorists insist such an incredible notion is true, and they point to yet another highly guarded installation as proof that alien technology is not only being tested, but that it's already being used.
POPE: SomeboNARRATOR: be working on extrWashington, D.
C.
hnology December 16, 2017.
After a decade of speculation within the UFO community, officials at the Pentagon confirm the existence of a highly secretive UFO research project known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP.
The project was funded by Congress in 2007 with the help of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
What's different about the AATIP program is the fact that it involved a private company, Bigelow Aerospace.
This has never been done before.
The government previously has always kept all of its UFO extraterrestrial information, all of its reports, completely separately.
So that makes it very, very unique and very different from Projects Sign and Blue Book.
The Pentagon ran this program officially from 2007 to 2012, although there's a lot of reason to believe that the program not only has continued, but that multiple programs of this sort have continued.
NARRATOR: But why would the U.
S.
government allow such sensitive research to take place outside of its secure military facilities? According to ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is all too obvious.
BIRNES: Over the years, the government realized, if you can take projects that were developing and move them from inside the Pentagon itself, and move them into industry, guess what you get to avoid? Freedom of information.
TAYLOR: Inside the government, the military, Department of Defense, the scientists and engineers there are possibly susceptible to the Freedom of Information Act.
People can fill out a Freedom of Information Act form and request information on any government program.
Well, private companies are not susceptible.
They don't have to adhere to the Freedom of Information Act.
So the big aerospace defense companies, for example, can do their own research in their own private facilities, and they never have to tell you anything about that if they don't want to.
And when you look at the exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act, exemption number four covers trade secrets, information which belongs to the private sector.
So when the government put out some of their UFO programs to Bigelow Aerospace, what they were doing, cleverly, was making scrutiny much more difficult.
DOLAN: And we know from Luis Elizondo, the program manager of the AATIP program, that they received a number of shocking UFO cases that came their way in connection with the U.
S.
military.
The word he used was "beyond next generation technology.
" NARRATOR: According to sources within the AATIP program, the government secretly collects materials often referred to as "metamaterials" from extraterrestrial crash sites and then turns them over to be reverse engineered by approved contractors, like those at Bigelow Aerospace.
BIRNES: Metamaterials are materials that have been combined in such a way that the isotopic ratios of the materials are not found on Planet Earth.
I worked with, uh, some of these artifacts.
I put them through various tests.
There was nothing unusual about the materials they were made of, but they were layered in such a way that it took some doing to make them in their configuration.
And also, the interesting piece of it was when you put them under extremely high electric fields, they tend to show properties of propulsion, meaning they would move in directions, sometimes toward the field, sometimes away from the field, that wasn't typical of standard electrostatic things that I had seen before.
What metamaterials will do is they will alter electromagnetic frequencies, or the visual spectrum.
They can bend light if they're engineered in such a way.
They can change acoustic properties.
And the imagination is the limit.
So they can really do almost anything.
NARRATOR: Is the government's increasing use of outside agencies and contractors designed to throw UFO investigators and ancient astronaut theorists off? And if so, does that mean that infamous top secret sites, like Area 51 and its alleged underground network of covert laboratories and military installations, will soon be obsolete? Ancient astronaut theorists say no, and they insist that, if anything, there are now more government sites engaged in extraterrestrial research than ever, and that this research is no longer being confined to areas within the United States, or even on Planet Earth.
The U.
S.
Air Force announces that SpaceX, an aerospace company run by billionaire CEO Elon Musk, is now eligible to participate in the launch of military satellites.
The announcement leads many to speculate whether SpaceX may be contracted in the future for additional, and perhaps even more covert, military space projects.
BARA: In 2015, SpaceX which is a private corporation, of course Was actually certified by the U.
S.
government for national security launches into space.
And what that means is, you've now got another private corporation which is authorized to actually put secret payloads into orbit.
What that means is that their entire operation now kind of flows under the dark umbrella of national security.
TAYLOR: It's possible that the private ventures, like SpaceX, like Bigelow Aerospace and the various others, will come up with a way to make it economically viable to colonize Mars.
NARRATOR: For decades ever since the first Earth satellites and rovers began sending back data about the so-called "Red Planet" Mars has been the focus of intense scrutiny by ancient astronaut theorists.
They cite images of structures carvings and other strange anomalies as evidence that Mars was and might still be a hub of extraterrestrial activity.
Is it possible that the U.
S.
government, along with other nations, has proof that such an audacious notion is true? And could this be the reason why the human-based Mars missions are being conducted not by publicly funded governments, but by a number of privately funded corporations with their own seemingly disparate agendas? I am extremely familiar with this technique, and it's one of the ways that you protect classified information and big secrets.
You can have a highly classified project, but effectively, it's broken into small parts.
Everyone's working on a piece of it.
No one necessarily knows what the person next door to them is doing, and very few people have the big picture.
It's a world that I've operated in myself in my 21 years at the Ministry of Defense.
POPE: It's even possible that somebody could be working on extraterrestrial technology and not know it.
HENRY: We are on the cusp of a brand-new reality of super-advanced technology, that will see us colonizing the Moon, Mars, traveling into deep space.
This is a chapter that's opening in human affairs that began as long ago as 1947 with the Roswell crash, after which the U.
S.
military began preparing us for a life in which we will be living with extraterrestrials, both on Earth and in space.
NARRATOR: Are the U.
S.
government's efforts to examine and utilize extraterrestrials and their technology really on the threshold of a bold new era? One where places like Area 51, Wright-Patterson, Montauk, and even Mars will all become part of a larger and more powerful network? One that will facilitate mankind's anticipated journey to the stars? Ancient astronaut theorists believe there are forces in the government that insist we are not yet ready to have the answers, and that the truth must remain hidden away, behind electric fences and security cameras, at places both known and unknown, and equally protected by the notion that what we can see with our own eyes could not possibly be true.
DAVID CHILDRESS: For decades, witnesses in that area are seeing unusual craft hovering over the base.
NARRATOR: The place where top secret experiments, involving alien technology, are rumored to be taking place.
There is extraterrestrial technology at Area 51.
NARRATOR: But is Area 51 still viable, now that the top secret is out? MIKE BARA: This underground expansion has stretched all the way through Nevada into Utah.
NARRATOR: Or do other, even more covert places exist, where mankind's extraterrestrial future is being prepared? Where are Areas 52, 53, and 54? NARRATOR: Langley, Virginia.
August 15, 2013.
After decades of secrecy, denials and cover-ups, the CIA declassifies documents which acknowledge the existence of a top secret military research facility known as Area 51.
This was an historic announcement.
Finally, these years of rumors that the UFO community and the conspiracy theory community had been claiming to be true had been validated.
BARA: The federal government was forced to acknowledge the existence of the Area 51 base because of a Freedom of Information Act request.
It took them over a decade to actually respond, but in the end, they eventually had to admit what everybody already knew, which was that Area 51 did exist.
NARRATOR: Since 1955, this top secret base, located in the remote desert of southern Nevada, has been considered the epicenter of the military's most classified projects, from the U-2 spy plane to the F-117 stealth fighter.
But many believe that in the darkest corners of Area 51 lurks an even bigger secret One that hides the ultimate evidence of extraterrestrial contact.
POPE: While the admission that Area 51 existed was important, it didn't go far enough for many people who were hoping that the government was going to confirm all the rumors about crashed UFOs and recovered alien technology were true.
But the government said nothing about that.
BARA: They only gave us the exact minimal amount of information that was requested.
They did not give us any more information.
And they certainly appear to still be covering up what exactly goes on at Area 51.
DOLAN: Over the years, there have been a number of claims by people who have been associated with Area 51 who have spoken to journalists or whistle-blowers in which they have stated, quite explicitly, that there is extraterrestrial technology at Area 51.
The theory was that they had hired propulsion experts, engineers, physicists, to reverse engineer alien propulsion technology, which was so far in advance of ours, and they were doing that at Area 51.
BARA: We also have rumors that there are alien spacecraft on the base that have actually been tested and flown out of Area 51.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that scientists at Area 51 have been able to not merely study, but successfully reverse engineer an extraterrestrial craft? DOLAN: For 30 years, people have gone to the perimeter with binoculars, telescopes.
They've seen bright objects moving in angular motions, or zigzag motions, and in ways that seem to be well beyond anything that we have ever seen, and propulsion technology that's not readily identifiable.
NARRATOR: But if Area 51 is the place where the U.
S.
government is conducting its most top secret military research, and possibly hiding decades of evidence concerning alien contact, just how secret is it now? If everyone knows that it exists and what kind of work is done there, could Area 51 have outlived its purpose as a strategic military asset? In search of the answers, ancient astronaut theorist Giorgio Tsoukalos has traveled to Henderson, Nevada.
- Hello.
Great to meet you.
- Hello.
NARRATOR: He has arranged to meet with TD Barnes, a former electrical engineer who worked on classified military projects at Area 51 for more than four decades.
- Only in 2009.
- Yeah, 2009.
And when did you start your work there? TSOUKALOS: So almost 50 years you kept it a secret from your wife.
And what did you work on? Okay.
Let's hypothetically say that a UFO crashes and you get ahold of it.
Would we be able to reverse engineer that technology? Wow.
I mean, for all intents and purposes, that was a secret space program.
Do you think that this secret space program stills exists today? Okay.
Now, while you were working there, did you ever see anything weird up in the sky? Wow.
In your estimation, when you read these stories about some companies trying to develop a warp drive, or even an antimatter propulsion system, is this something actually achievable? Ah, that's tremendous.
NARRATOR: But if, as TD Barnes suggests, the military has successfully reverse engineered anti-gravity and flying saucer technologies at Area 51, what are they working on now? And if its purpose is still to operate as the government's most highly classified, top secret laboratory, why would they admit to the existence of Area 51? Especially after decades of silence? One possibility about the public announcement that Area 51 exists, is that the real action has moved elsewhere.
In other words, the CIA, the government, only felt able to come clean about this because the real secrets have been moved somewhere else.
So in a real sense, perhaps, the question isn't so much what's going on at Area 51, but what's going on at Area 52, 53, and 54? NARRATOR: Area 52? 53? And 54? Might there really be other, even more secret locations, where the government is continuing to study and replicate extraterrestrial technology? Having one big place where everybody is doing the research is not a good idea because it would be hard to hide from the general public.
So the idea that there might be any single, individual Area 51 where they're reverse engineering alien spacecraft, now, that seems a little bit an outdated concept.
If I were going to do it, I would spread the technology pieces out across the country.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that the reason government officials revealed the existence of Area 51 is because they want to use it as a decoy? One that takes the focus away from their other, perhaps even bigger, operations at numerous sites all across the United States? So the fact that they would finally admit that Area 51 exists is actually, to my mind, a smoke screen.
What's really going on is that you've got all these massive underground facilities.
You can take all the really good stuff you don't want anybody to see and simply move it somewhere else in the blink of an eye.
NARRATOR: While the public remains focused on what is or isn't happening at Area 51, could the government be hiding its research into extraterrestrial technology at other strategic sites all across the country? Perhaps the answer can be found by investigating reports of an extensive tunneling operation currently underway in the Nevada desert.
CHILDRESS: Witnesses are looking out, and even March 17, 2018.
Just outside the perimeter of Area 51, Giorgio Tsoukalos meets with researcher Wolf McCarron and mining expert Christian Gronau.
They are here to investigate rumors of an alleged tunnel network that lies beneath Area 51.
- This is amazing.
- Isn't it? NARRATOR: Wolf and Christian believe this location the Tempiute Mine is one of several old Nevada mines that have been used to expand operations at Area 51, deep underground.
I'm a miner, about 100 miles north of Area 51 here, and I've been mining there since 1992.
I also own a mine in Goldfield.
So I'm just an avid miner, you know I search these out.
So what can you tell us about Area 51? Well, Area 51, what you see, like, on Google Imagery, that was the '50s, '60s and '70s.
Since then, they've gone down.
Everything they do is underground.
And what evidence have you come across as a miner that would corroborate your idea? People are questioning, well, if they're going down, where is all the dirt going? Well, it's going to these nearby mines, and they're putting it in huge mountains, and they're heap leaching it.
And by the time they're done heap leaching a huge mountain, it goes down to nothing.
Now, to the uninitiated, what does heap leaching mean? It is they pile the ore up into a large mountain, hundreds of feet high, and they run hoses all the way through it, like every two feet, and they leach in mercury and cyanide.
And what that does, it'll take boulders this large and actually just bring them down to nothing.
Really? Yeah.
NARRATOR: Is the government using heap leaching inside the Tempiute Mine in order to hide the massive amounts of dirt being removed in the course of their digging operations? But if so, how is the government able to conduct such an enormous operation without arousing the suspicion of the local miners? These mines around here have gold, silver, lead.
So any mine would be more than happy to accept the ore.
And it's kinda like hush-up money.
I've witnessed this hush up and dealt with this a lot.
Hush up of what? Hush up of the base and the tunnels of Area 51.
Okay.
It's sort of self-explanatory that the reason why people would go underground is if there are experiments going on that there's no interference, or less interference.
Exactly.
Yeah.
NARRATOR: Has the U.
S.
military been expanding its operations at Area 51 not outward, but downward, in order to keep its top secret work even more secret than before? It is my own belief, based on a lot of good research, that there is most likely a large I would even say vast web of interconnected, underground bases and tunnels that exist.
They originally started doing it, by the way, just to protect against an atomic strike that could've happened from the Soviet Union.
And you need secure underground facilities.
Well, they took that and just ran with it.
NARRATOR: There are those that believe that the underground operations being conducted at Area 51 are only the tip of an enormous iceberg.
Is it just one of many secret government facilities, each connected to each other by a vast network of underground high-speed trains? An underground train system is said to be centered around Cheyenne Mountain in Colorado Springs.
This is a mountain that has been hollowed out by the U.
S.
military.
It's the NORAD central command.
And they go from Cheyenne Mountain, in Colorado Springs, to Dulce, New Mexico, which is said to have an extraterrestrial underground base.
Then it goes to Los Alamos, in New Mexico, then to Albuquerque, and to Roswell, and to Area 51, in Nevada.
All of these military bases are essentially connected by a secret underground subway system.
BILL BIRNES: The folks who are looking at Area 51, they're not looking at Dulce.
Dulce, New Mexico, is on Jicarilla Apache Reservation.
It's actually a separate entity.
It's part of the Apache Nation.
In other words, you can't just go there.
CHILDRESS: There is a peak just north of the town of Dulce called Archuleta Peak.
And residents of Dulce claim to have seen UFOs coming in and out of that mountain.
The U.
S.
government is saying that there's nothing there they have no military base there, there's not some underground train network.
And yet, people who live there say there is something going on here.
So, just like Area 51, where the government was saying, hey, there's nothing going on here, but researchers for decades knew and investigated things that were going on there.
And so perhaps at Dulce, one day, they will admit yes, something was going on there.
NARRATOR: Is there really a vast network of top secret government laboratories, each conducting experiments using extraterrestrial technology? NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is a profound yes.
And they offer, as additional proof, not one located at a facility in the American southwest but one much farther to the east.
A military base they claim has been working directly with extraterrestrials for decades and operating very close to the location where mankind made its first successful effort to reach the sky.
BIRNES: We actually have an eyewitness NARRATOR: Dayton, Ohio.
Here, on the very same plains where Wilbur and Orville Wright lifted mankind into the era of flight, sits Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, one of the largest and highest-funded bases in the nation's military.
It is up there as one of the single most important military, technology, back-engineering study in biological entities of any place we have.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, Wright-Patterson or Wright-Patt, as it is more commonly called has been a hub of extraterrestrial investigation and experimentation for decades.
Some even consider it of greater strategic importance than Area 51.
DOLAN: So, the rumors and stories of aliens at Wright-Patt have been very widespread for a very long period of time.
And there have also been claims that unknown aerial vehicles or UFOs are being stored deep underground.
NARRATOR: On June 14, 1947, an unidentified object reportedly crashed on a farm outside the town of Roswell, New Mexico.
According to eyewitnesses, the object resembled some sort of flying disc, and the bodies recovered from the wreckage looked like nothing from this planet.
Within days, the so-called Roswell incident captured the imaginations of millions of people around the world.
But just as the event jump-started America's interest in UFOs, it also ushered in the era of the government cover-up.
DOLAN: The Roswell Base issued a press release, and then several hours later, it's all denied.
"Sorry, people, just a weather balloon.
"Our top intelligence officers didn't know what they were looking at.
" And we actually have evidence of an FBI memo that made such a statement, that what was recovered was being brought to Wright Field for analysis.
Well, you're not going to bring balloon parts to Wright Field for analysis.
That's not going to happen.
CHILDRESS: You've got to remember that in 1947 when the Roswell crash happened, there was no Area 51 in Nevada.
And in fact, the important Air Force headquarters to study these crashed artifacts and possibly alien bodies was Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio.
BARA: Now, the reason that this wreckage would have been sent to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is because at that time, it was the center of the Air Force's Foreign Technology Division, meaning the division that actually studied foreign aircraft, foreign technologies of all kinds, and certainly alien tech, wrecked alien spacecrafts and report of alien spacecraft sightings would be sent there to be studied by the Foreign Technology Division.
NARRATOR: Is it possible that Wright-Patterson Air Force Base is still housing the remains of the object recovered from the New Mexico desert more than 70 years ago? And if so, could there be evidence that their efforts to recreate the so-called flying disc have been successful? CHILDRESS: Even now, in the last few years, there have been important UFO sightings around Dayton.
And witnesses in that area are looking out over Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and, even in broad daylight, seeing unusual craft hovering over the base.
This is a very distinct possibility that's supported by the fact that no jets are released when these UFOs appear.
It's almost as if they know what they are.
Maybe it's because it's one of our own reverse engineered craft.
NARRATOR: But even if the UFOs recently sighted in the skies above Wright-Patterson are man-made, couldn't that be considered proof that the UFO that crash-landed near Roswell was, in fact, reverse engineered? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and to support their claim, they point to two other top secret UFO investigations that took place at Wright-Patterson: Project Sign and Project Blue Book.
BARA: Wright-Patterson Air Force Base was the center, the hub, for Project Sign and Project Blue Book.
Now, both of these projects were involved with one essential task, which was the study and categorization of reports of unidentified flying objects.
POPE: Project Sign was set up after the flying saucer wave of sightings across the United States in 1947, and shortly after the Roswell crash.
Sign researched and investigated the phenomenon, taking reports, not just from the public, but from the military, from pilots who were seeing things, from radar operators who were tracking these objects.
This was the U.
S.
government's formal UFO program.
SZYMANSKI: The Air Force had 22 years of UFO investigation that was housed in the Foreign Technology Division, and Blue Book is the most famous and ran for the longest period of time.
They go out and they look for foreign technology, including crashed wreckage.
And then, they have access to all of the technical expertise on the base.
NARRATOR: In 1969, after compiling and studying more than 12,000 UFO sightings, Project Blue Book was terminated.
Most of the sightings were categorized as high-altitude spy planes or natural aerial phenomena, although approximately 700 unidentified cases still remain.
But while the U.
S.
Air Force insists to this day that credible evidence of extraterrestrial visitation never existed, many former employees of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, such as Ray Szymanski, have come forward with a very different story.
I started working at Wright- Patterson in January of 1973, and I had 38 years and nine months of service when I retired.
I spent nearly my entire career at Air Force Research Labs, and I did advanced research and development.
On the first day of working there, I had a mentor.
His name was Corvette Al.
He was the equivalent of a flag officer, a general or an admiral, and he said, "Let's go through the hangar," and as we stepped into that hangar, he turned to me and said, "Have you heard about our aliens?" I said, "What?" He said, "Yeah, we have aliens here on the base.
" I said, "Really?" And then, he said, "Well, yeah, there was a crash out west", and they brought the aliens and their machine.
" He used the word "machine.
" Brought here to Wright-Patterson for evaluation and possible exploitation.
Hangar 18 was this mysterious hangar at Wright Field where we actually have an eyewitness who was taken to Hangar 18, Lieutenant Colonel Marion Magruder.
He was a fighter pilot in the United States Marine Corps who saw the alien technology, but worse, he saw the live alien.
It looked human, its head was larger than humans', its arms were much longer, and it moved like this in a wavy motion.
The humanoid communicated with Magruder telepathically, and the Army and the Air Force, as well as the higher branches of the Pentagon, were absolutely fascinated by the fact that here were creatures who could communicate without using words.
Thus began a series of experiments into psychokinesis, psychic projection, thought projection.
NARRATOR: If the Magruder account is true, and the U.
S.
military was once using live aliens for scientific study, where did those experiments take place? Was it at Wright-Patterson? Area 51? Or were they conducted at yet another facility? And, if so, where? And are they still taking place today? Here, at the eastern tip of the island, is all that remains of the Montauk Air Force Station.
Originally established as a naval base in 1917 due to its strategic defensive location, the Montauk installation protected the East Coast from submarines and bombers for several decades, before it was decommissioned in 1981.
But according to statements from multiple whistle-blowers, a secret laboratory hidden deep beneath the base may still be operating.
(wind gusting) CHRISTOPHER GARETANO: I think it's the perfect cover.
You have kind of a lax topside operation, an Air Force Station that really nothing is going on at, but underneath the ground, you have this extremely elaborate experiment going on, many levels of an underground base.
Each of these men that told the tale, they don't say they entered the base through, you know, a topside location.
They would all enter Brookhaven National Laboratories and travel on a train underneath the ground to Montauk.
So people that are working above ground don't even know what's going on underneath the ground.
NARRATOR: For ancient astronaut theorists, Montauk, like Area 51 and Wright-Patterson, remains notorious as one of the places the U.
S.
military would carry out numerous experiments, often with the aid of otherworldly technology.
There are some who believe these experiments even involved human subjects as part of a highly controversial research program known as the Montauk Project.
Some of the stories about what was going on in the Montauk Project actually tie in with something that we absolutely know to be real, because we have declassified documents on it, and that's MKUltra.
Now, MKUltra was a program run by the CIA and the U.
S.
Army, and it literally tried to harness the technique of mind control.
But there are rumors that there were other, more exotic techniques that people were using at Montauk: remote influencing, for example, which is the idea that you can effectively use the power of your mind to influence somebody else's behavior.
Clearly, there would be huge military value in such techniques, and that, of course, is exactly why they were doing them.
BARA: This was stuff that was so beyond the normal thought processes of the military mind.
It wasn't making better guns, better ammo, more efficient airplanes.
This was way beyond that.
This was a program that used all sorts of different techniques to try to control human thought.
NARRATOR: Mind control? Remote thought manipulation? If the U.
S.
military really did believe that such incredible power was achievable, did it get the idea from extraterrestrials? Perhaps even from the technology reportedly recovered after the crash at Roswell? HOWE: The big question about Montauk has always been, were they operating with the technologies that they had because they were given to our government by non-humans, legitimately, as some kind of collaboration or trade, for us to experiment with? DOLAN: One thing that's at Montauk is the so-called Montauk Chair.
It had some kind of wires, or there's some kind of extraterrestrial technology associated with this chair and that, combined with the individual's innate psychic capabilities, would allow you to engage in transforming reality in one way or another.
GARETANO: The subject would sit in the chair, and this chair was meant to manifest thought into physical reality.
And included in that are telekinesis, remote viewing.
One of the experiments that they used at first was to manifest, let's say, a glass or a ball, something simple, an inanimate object.
Whatever the subject was thinking would manifest into physical reality.
Eventually, this evolved into heightened psychic abilities.
They claimed they could teleport from one place to another.
NARRATOR: According to many researchers and ancient astronaut theorists, accounts of the so-called "Montauk Chair" and its connection to mind control are strangely similar to accounts of a chair that dates back to the days of the pharaohs: the throne of Ptah.
Ptah was one of the most intriguing gods of Ancient Egypt.
He was the god before all the other gods.
He created Earth.
He created humanity.
Unlike the other gods, Ptah would create the world with his thought.
He would think it, feel it and hence, it was created.
HENRY: Ptah is portrayed sitting on a throne.
And this throne is thought to be the center point from which his thought is able to manifest creation.
What's fascinating about these scenes is that this throne is feathered.
It's feathered because it flies.
It's known as his ascension throne.
When we compare the descriptions of the Montauk Chair with the ascension throne of Ptah, it raises the question: Was the U.
S.
military involved in reverse engineering an extraterrestrial technology that was used thousands of years ago in Ancient Egypt? NARRATOR: Could the legends about an Egyptian god and his flying throne and the report of a thought-control chair at the Montauk military base really be connected? Ancient astronaut theorists say yes, and suggest that not only has the U.
S.
government been working to acquire and perfect alien technology for decades, but that the operations at Montauk are still going on.
Several people have claimed that they were part of these Montauk experiments.
They do recall sitting in a special chair.
And people say that today there is still activity in the underground sections of the Montauk base.
NARRATOR: Is the seemingly abandoned military base on Eastern Long Island still, secretly, in operation? And if so, is Montauk part of a vast network of government laboratories and factories where extraterrestrial technology is being harvested? Ancient astronaut theorists insist such an incredible notion is true, and they point to yet another highly guarded installation as proof that alien technology is not only being tested, but that it's already being used.
POPE: SomeboNARRATOR: be working on extrWashington, D.
C.
hnology December 16, 2017.
After a decade of speculation within the UFO community, officials at the Pentagon confirm the existence of a highly secretive UFO research project known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, or AATIP.
The project was funded by Congress in 2007 with the help of Senator Harry Reid of Nevada.
What's different about the AATIP program is the fact that it involved a private company, Bigelow Aerospace.
This has never been done before.
The government previously has always kept all of its UFO extraterrestrial information, all of its reports, completely separately.
So that makes it very, very unique and very different from Projects Sign and Blue Book.
The Pentagon ran this program officially from 2007 to 2012, although there's a lot of reason to believe that the program not only has continued, but that multiple programs of this sort have continued.
NARRATOR: But why would the U.
S.
government allow such sensitive research to take place outside of its secure military facilities? According to ancient astronaut theorists, the answer is all too obvious.
BIRNES: Over the years, the government realized, if you can take projects that were developing and move them from inside the Pentagon itself, and move them into industry, guess what you get to avoid? Freedom of information.
TAYLOR: Inside the government, the military, Department of Defense, the scientists and engineers there are possibly susceptible to the Freedom of Information Act.
People can fill out a Freedom of Information Act form and request information on any government program.
Well, private companies are not susceptible.
They don't have to adhere to the Freedom of Information Act.
So the big aerospace defense companies, for example, can do their own research in their own private facilities, and they never have to tell you anything about that if they don't want to.
And when you look at the exemptions to the Freedom of Information Act, exemption number four covers trade secrets, information which belongs to the private sector.
So when the government put out some of their UFO programs to Bigelow Aerospace, what they were doing, cleverly, was making scrutiny much more difficult.
DOLAN: And we know from Luis Elizondo, the program manager of the AATIP program, that they received a number of shocking UFO cases that came their way in connection with the U.
S.
military.
The word he used was "beyond next generation technology.
" NARRATOR: According to sources within the AATIP program, the government secretly collects materials often referred to as "metamaterials" from extraterrestrial crash sites and then turns them over to be reverse engineered by approved contractors, like those at Bigelow Aerospace.
BIRNES: Metamaterials are materials that have been combined in such a way that the isotopic ratios of the materials are not found on Planet Earth.
I worked with, uh, some of these artifacts.
I put them through various tests.
There was nothing unusual about the materials they were made of, but they were layered in such a way that it took some doing to make them in their configuration.
And also, the interesting piece of it was when you put them under extremely high electric fields, they tend to show properties of propulsion, meaning they would move in directions, sometimes toward the field, sometimes away from the field, that wasn't typical of standard electrostatic things that I had seen before.
What metamaterials will do is they will alter electromagnetic frequencies, or the visual spectrum.
They can bend light if they're engineered in such a way.
They can change acoustic properties.
And the imagination is the limit.
So they can really do almost anything.
NARRATOR: Is the government's increasing use of outside agencies and contractors designed to throw UFO investigators and ancient astronaut theorists off? And if so, does that mean that infamous top secret sites, like Area 51 and its alleged underground network of covert laboratories and military installations, will soon be obsolete? Ancient astronaut theorists say no, and they insist that, if anything, there are now more government sites engaged in extraterrestrial research than ever, and that this research is no longer being confined to areas within the United States, or even on Planet Earth.
The U.
S.
Air Force announces that SpaceX, an aerospace company run by billionaire CEO Elon Musk, is now eligible to participate in the launch of military satellites.
The announcement leads many to speculate whether SpaceX may be contracted in the future for additional, and perhaps even more covert, military space projects.
BARA: In 2015, SpaceX which is a private corporation, of course Was actually certified by the U.
S.
government for national security launches into space.
And what that means is, you've now got another private corporation which is authorized to actually put secret payloads into orbit.
What that means is that their entire operation now kind of flows under the dark umbrella of national security.
TAYLOR: It's possible that the private ventures, like SpaceX, like Bigelow Aerospace and the various others, will come up with a way to make it economically viable to colonize Mars.
NARRATOR: For decades ever since the first Earth satellites and rovers began sending back data about the so-called "Red Planet" Mars has been the focus of intense scrutiny by ancient astronaut theorists.
They cite images of structures carvings and other strange anomalies as evidence that Mars was and might still be a hub of extraterrestrial activity.
Is it possible that the U.
S.
government, along with other nations, has proof that such an audacious notion is true? And could this be the reason why the human-based Mars missions are being conducted not by publicly funded governments, but by a number of privately funded corporations with their own seemingly disparate agendas? I am extremely familiar with this technique, and it's one of the ways that you protect classified information and big secrets.
You can have a highly classified project, but effectively, it's broken into small parts.
Everyone's working on a piece of it.
No one necessarily knows what the person next door to them is doing, and very few people have the big picture.
It's a world that I've operated in myself in my 21 years at the Ministry of Defense.
POPE: It's even possible that somebody could be working on extraterrestrial technology and not know it.
HENRY: We are on the cusp of a brand-new reality of super-advanced technology, that will see us colonizing the Moon, Mars, traveling into deep space.
This is a chapter that's opening in human affairs that began as long ago as 1947 with the Roswell crash, after which the U.
S.
military began preparing us for a life in which we will be living with extraterrestrials, both on Earth and in space.
NARRATOR: Are the U.
S.
government's efforts to examine and utilize extraterrestrials and their technology really on the threshold of a bold new era? One where places like Area 51, Wright-Patterson, Montauk, and even Mars will all become part of a larger and more powerful network? One that will facilitate mankind's anticipated journey to the stars? Ancient astronaut theorists believe there are forces in the government that insist we are not yet ready to have the answers, and that the truth must remain hidden away, behind electric fences and security cameras, at places both known and unknown, and equally protected by the notion that what we can see with our own eyes could not possibly be true.