Richard C. Hoagland claims NASA suppressed evidence of an ancient Martian civilization, citing the 1976 Viking "face" and 1998 Mars Surveyor reimagings in Mission to Mars, a $120M Disney film co-produced with physicist Bruce DePalma’s alleged research. Press screenings revealed mixed reactions but intrigued reporter David Giamarco, who notes NASA’s refusal to address the trailer’s "25-year cover-up" claim—despite admitting consultation. Hoagland hints at Egyptian symbolism inside the Martian structure and a 1950 countdown tied to the Enterprise Mission, suggesting Disney may have buried deeper truths after years of collaboration, leaving audiences to question whether Hollywood’s spectacle masks real scientific revelations. [Automatically generated summary]
Richard Hoagland, Richard, who was a one-time advisor to NASA, to Walter Cronkite during the really exciting space years, won the Angstrom Science Award.
He's onto this thing about Mission to Mars, the $120 million movie that is going to be released tomorrow that we've been discussing.
And I've had so much input, and so has Richard.
There is a raging, raging controversy about what's going on with this movie.
Now, I have some of my own thoughts on the matter after receiving a lot of messages from those of you who have seen the movie already, but we'll get to that after a while.
Let me first destroy all the bandwidth of my website.
We have the trailer.
We have the audio of the trailer, thanks to David Giamarco, who you will hear shortly.
If you go to my website and you scroll down to tonight's guests, Richard Hoagland and David Giamarco, before Georgia Durante later, you will see under related information, just click on Mission to Mars trailer, and by God, there it is, on NASA cover-up for 25 years.
You can listen to the actual trailer itself.
I almost didn't believe it was real until I heard it from myself about 10 minutes ago.
We've got it on the website right now.
Don't believe me?
Go listen to it.
So, from the mountains of New Mexico, here is Richard C. Hoagland.
Well, we've been at this, what, 20-some years looking at the possibilities that the face on Mars photographed by Viking back in 1976 represented an artifact of an ancient Martian civilization.
A few years ago, like four or five years ago, a bunch of guys at Disney apparently got together and said, hey, let's make a Mars picture.
Spurred on in part, and their deliberations went forward, by the enormous success of the Pathfinder mission and the 100-plus million web hips and all that.
At some point, Brian DePalma got involved, and we need to find out exactly when and how.
That's part of this mystery step.
To Tom Jacobson, who is the producer of the film under Disney, under Touchstone.
It was De Palma who entered the idea into the script consultations and discussions.
Well, let's have them, the mission to Mars, find the face on Mars.
And it was De Palma whose idea was to design and put in all these extraordinary special effects, which, by the way, I now know more about, and we'll get to some of the specifics later on without giving away the plot.
And it turns out that something comes directly from the enterprise.
That's new news.
Anyway, a few weeks ago, we got a heads up from some people in the industry.
You know, Paul Davids is a friend of mine, and Hollis, his wife, is a senior VP now at Universal Studios.
We got a heads up that, in fact, Mission to Mars, which no one had heard anything about, was going to feature the face.
So, you know, my ears prick up.
Gosh, I can't imagine why.
And we went digging.
And one of the people that we came across...
Well, you know, think of them kind of like spock ears.
You know, they get really pointy at this stuff.
So one of our efforts turned up a very good guy, a very, you know, stalwart person who believes in, you know, truth, just, and the Canadian way, because he happens to work for a major Canadian newspaper.
And in the course of our discussions, he told me that he had been invited to come to the Hollywood screening along with everybody else that they all fly in for these things.
And I said, oh, isn't that interesting?
How would you like some background material?
So I sent him a copy of the illusion of the UN stuff, the NASA briefings, because NASA's been inviting us in for years to tell them, the rank and file, over and over again, what we have found.
And we put these on good old home video.
So I sent this whole, you know, care package of stuff to David.
And it takes like almost two weeks for snail mail to get things to Canada in case you are sending anything up north, folks.
It finally arrived.
You went to the premiere.
Inputs that, according to David, are unprecedented in his 14 or 15 years of covering good old Tinseltown.
So with that, Art, I guess we ought to bring on David.
And I've been to literally hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of these screenings, and given that it's the press, you'll hear those types of things.
So yes, there was some of that going on.
But as I said, years of doing these things, I could count on one hand the amount of times that a director has pulled out of a film junket.
I mean, you know, they've worked on these films for two, three, sometimes even four years if it's a major production, and rarely do they ever pull out.
It's usually really extreme circumstances that they won't talk to the press.
Yeah, I mean, they've got tons of money at stake, $120 million.
It's a serious thing.
Absolutely.
So, why do you think he disappeared?
unidentified
It's a mystery.
I mean, we've heard a lot of different stories.
I mean, at first we heard that he was sick and had to leave, but then later on, other stories started surfacing that he was upset with the reaction to the film and took off.
But they kept saying they were hearing a lot of wild stories and a lot of wild rumors why he wasn't talking.
And, you know, Brian De Palma has done a number of junkets before, and if you remember, he directed Bonfire of the Vanities, which was one of the most...
Exactly.
And was one of the worst films of the early 90s there.
We kept hearing, and I kept getting faxes from people who have been saying, I saw a trailer where they said, I mean, NASA did consult very heavily in this movie, right?
Even script approval.
All right, so we're getting these words that there's this trailer out there saying 25 years of cover-up will end.
25 years of cover-up.
My God, there's no way that NASA would approve any such thing as that.
And so I asked the audience to send the trailers, and I got all the other trailers, but I didn't get the one that we now finally have.
And by God, it says 25 years of cover-up ending.
Now, how can that be?
unidentified
And one other note is the face that they showed, the images of the face on Mars in the trailer is of the actual pictures from the Viking mission, not the face that appears in the movie.
But what's even more remarkable is I have been watching, because I work a lot late at night when the phones don't ring, and I watch the Disney Channel because there's a certain, you know, into Vault Disney where they go back into the past.
Disney did a series of films with Wernher von Braun and the early von Braun Pinamunde paperclip NASA scientists or Nazi scientists that were brought over in excruciating detail on missions to Mars, how to go to the moon, the creation of the huge rockets.
There has been a very strong, overwhelming connection between the foundations of NASA and Walt Disney and the Disney Corporation for literally almost 50 years, which makes this even more unbelievable.
unidentified
Even in the early 60s, you know, further to what Richard's talking about, Walt Disney was shut down by J. Edgar Hoover because J. Edgar Hoover didn't approve of a film, a comedy in the early 60s that he felt the FBI agents portrayed in the film were bungling, or bumbling, I should say, and asked for them to change the agents from FBI to just generic government agents.
And finally, I got someone to sort of speak to me, and I believe she was in charge of public affairs, media relations, whatever.
And she said, you know, I just asked her, you know, about this film, what the reaction was, and she said, I'm sorry, we're not allowed to comment on the film.
She said, no, we're not allowed to talk about the film.
And I said, so you can give me a review?
Thumbs up, thumbs down, kind of joking with her.
And she said, well, she said, a number of people here at NASA have seen the film already.
She said, I can confirm that we did work on it, that we were consultants, we did have a hand in the making of the film.
And she said, other than that, I can't talk about it.
And so I said, well, are you aware of this trailer that is running about a 25-year conspiracy and cover-up and that on March 10th, the conspiracy will be exposed?
Yeah, I was going to say, I bet you got a real fast call, uh-huh.
unidentified
Yeah, which is also interesting is that I spoke to a colleague at the Washington Times, and she also happened to be at the junk hit as well and doing the interviews.
And she also was trying to get a comment from NASA.
One of her colleagues was trying to get NASA to speak about the film.
And she said they got stonewalled as well, that they would not talk to them about the film either.
Now, see, this is interesting because if we can flash back to some reality, back in 98, when finally, after enormous efforts from this audience, from the Bell audience, thousands of faxes, tens of thousands were dumped on Dan Golden's floor to get the face on Mars and Sidonia reimaged by Mars Surveyor.
A NASA camera, actually was the Malin camera on a NASA spacecraft that taken the pictures.
Now man.
But people like Edwin Alby and, you know, many others, Mike Carr, all kinds of NASA scientists freely went on talk shows and TV and Dateline and CNN and had all kinds of thoughts and opinions about what the photographs showed, even if there was, quote, no official NASA opinion.
They were not told, you can't talk about those pictures.
And on a movie that doesn't count, where the First Amendment, as far as I understand, still holds sway in the District of Columbia, and this does not fall under the Hatch Act, which prevents politicking on federal property.
That's what Al Gore got into trouble for a couple years ago.
The employees, according to David's first-person testimony, are permitted to talk about the film or even express their own opinion.
Oh, unless, unless, boys and girls, we've been right all along.
This is really something on Mars, and NASA has now got egg all over its face because somebody has pulled a real switcheroo, and Disney, which used to be in their camp, absolutely 100% 24-karat gold, has suddenly turned on NASA.
Hey, listen, one quick almost public service announcement.
A free program celebrating the third anniversary of the Phoenix Lights is being held.
That's right, the Phoenix Lights, they're called.
It's being held at the main library in Glendale, Arizona on Monday, March 13th at 7 o'clock.
Peter Gerston and Richard Masser will join Dr. Skye, heard here on Coast to Coast AM, for a three-hour program of discussions, debate, and audio-visual presentations on the anniversary.
Now, get this, folks.
Believe it or not, this week and next, including Monday the 13th, the Air National Guard is conducting the same Operation Snowbird, which drops flares in the very same area as seen three years ago.
Wouldn't surprise me, but they'll throw six-foot dummies out as a bonus.
Well, it's now like modern art where if you don't understand it, you're with the in-crowd, therefore you kind of go, mmm, yes, wonderful.
Great depth.
Look, I think this film will become a classic if for no other reason we know there's a face on Mars, we know there's a cover-up, we know there's an alien ancient civilization with some connections, and this is the first major film dealing in the history of film with that reality.
David, this other trailer in mind, do you think two endings have been written for this movie?
unidentified
It's possible.
I'm not saying it's for sure, but it's possible.
I mean, it has happened before where we've seen a film two, three weeks before it's due for release, and based on the critical response to a screening, they will change the ending or they will change certain portions of the film or they will shorten it or, you know, that sort of thing.
So it has happened where in that three-week window before release, they can change a movie.
It would move somebody to say, I'm glad you're dead.
unidentified
Yeah, I mean, there were certain things like that.
I mean, I found the story intriguing.
I was intrigued by it.
And by the end, the end of the film, people were, I don't want to say on the edge of their seat, that's quite a cliche, but they were wrapped up in the ending.
It was the process of getting to the ending that I think put off a number of critics.
But, you know, sometimes these things don't come into their own until maybe a half a generation later when there's some perspective.
And it may be, I mean, I'm going to predict that regardless of the immediate reaction to the film, this film, Face of Mars, Mission to Mars, Dealing with the Face, is going to become a classic simply because nothing else has touched this on this scale up until now.
David, let me ask David, Richard, as you have gone through this, David, what is your, you know, like your final conclusion?
I mean, the two trailers, the two possible endings, nobody's talking, no interviews from the director, NASA won't talk.
I mean, what does all this probably mean?
unidentified
It could mean a number of things.
One, you know, it could be that people are trying to distance themselves from the film, that they don't want to speak because there's been an advanced bad buzz from the critics.
But, you know what?
This has happened so many times before, and directors, good or bad, will get out there and defend their film.
You know, he won't, usually, for some reason, if we can't get a director to talk at a weekend when all the press are together, they will at least set up phone interviews or for print press or for TV, they'll set up satellite interviews that you can do at a later date before the film opens.
You know, the thing that strikes me about this is that normally when you play this game of conspiracy, you have a great deal of speculation and almost no facts.
Here we have a lot of facts and some interesting speculation based on the facts.
Fact number one, NASA was in bed with Disney and De Palma on the making of this film.
Everybody agrees.
NASA's not saying, oh, we had nothing to do with it.
They admit they had a lot to do with it.
Fact number two, the director was Brian DePalma, whose brother, the physicist, was intimately connected with this enterprise investigation of the real face on Mars and the mysteries of Sidonia for almost 10 years.
Now, to who's tonight regarding that relationship, which we teased a couple nights ago.
David?
unidentified
Well, thank you, Richard.
When I was interviewing Story Musgrave, his handler was a but works with NASA.
And he handles a lot of, he's a liaison between Hollywood and NASA when they're involved in Hollywood productions.
And he said to me that Bruce DePalma was on set last June.
And he was involved.
He was on set in Vancouver when there was shooting, and he was there.
And I said, did you know that he passed away last summer?
Now, this, of course, makes it even more interesting because we have speculated that somehow in the relationship between De Palma and his brother and Enterprise, Brian De Palma got a lot of background information on what we have really figured out about Sidonia, which then somehow will wind its way into this film.
And one of the reasons I urge you to go is we're going to have a great game next week with how many Enterprise mission research points can you find buried in various aspects of this interesting feature film.
We now know, we've got eyewitness testimony, that Bruce was on the set, not once, but several times.
Now, I can reveal tonight that this is a major piece of information because from the conversations I had with Bruce, there was a lot of, shall we say, distance between the two brothers.
Initially, when I met Bruce, obviously, you know, the name was familiar, and I was thinking in terms of a film someday maybe made by Brian DePalma.
You know, history is incredibly ironic sometimes.
And Bruce quickly disabused me of this idea, saying very flatly, he said, my brother and I do not understand, come to terms on almost anything.
We do not see eye to eye.
We barely even speak.
But sometime between that conversation, which was years ago, and the time that Bruce died, quite suddenly, he somehow made up with his brother and was invited to be an integral part of this film.
And so when I see, in terms of this trailer, some of the most remarkable things that Enterprise has done quietly and not put out there in public, I am very intrigued to know what else is in the film that people would not recognize unless they were intimately familiar with the work of the Enterprise mission.
The end of the film, near the end, I'm not giving away the ending, but one of the spaceships, and he's in the capsule, and some of the other astronauts are at the face.
And he gives him the liftoff time as 1950.
He says, we have to take off by 1950.
And it gets repeated constantly.
You see, you know, the digital clock, 1949, the countdown, the 1950 is liftoff.
And, you know, knowing what Richard has told me and researched and whatnot, I mean, it seemed very ironic.
Okay, well, the folks at The Other Side, who really are creative geniuses, a whole bunch of ex-fighter jocks, and they've turned their time and attention to creating some amazing 3D simulations.
What they did is they worked on with us a three-dimensional simulation of going to Sidonia.
And we worked out the interiors.
I mean, these guys came up with some amazing things with some input from me and some science and whatever.
Well, lo and behold, in one of the major scenes on the film, David, as I gleaned from the trailer this evening, that recreation that the folks at the other side and I did of what's inside the structures on Mars appears in Mission to Mars.
And on and on and on.
So what I'd like to do is to make a little pact.
We will not discuss any more content of the film, but we urge everyone between now and next Tuesday, you better go out and see this.
Because if you don't, by next week, we're going to come back with some more surprises and discuss all the little points and relationship between the fiction and the reality and NASA's weird reaction and Disney turning around and giving the finger to its former best Washington friend, et cetera, et cetera.
So if you want to be unsurprised, you better see a film this weekend.
Because they, you know, realized that this is a much better trailer.
And they said, well, you know.
I mean, the trailers up until now had been building it sort of as, you know, the Space Cowboys going out, you know, conquering the Wild West of, you know, the new frontier out there in outer space.
So then it seems to me that if we could get to the production company that churned the second trailer out, there's a story to be told there that might answer some of our questions.
Well, one of the things that David's source in Washington was going to try to do is to get close to Dan Golden, which apparently is possible, and ask him point blank what the hell is going on.
Well, obviously, we're going to go see it this weekend because I want to talk about it next week, and I want to bring on some more surprise guests that I think will be appropriate.
And I want to get into the content because, look, the backdrop to this film is a reality sitting on Mars tonight.
And we need to take all the attention the film is going to generate and create a political tool to get new pictures of Sidonia and resolve this mystery once and for all.