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Nov. 26, 2012 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:01:31
Edition 97 - Gary Heseltine

This time we talk with Gary Heseltine – a serving British police officer who collates UFOreports from policemen and women and other members of the uniformed services. Often these people willnot formally report what they have seen because they fear for promotion prospects or they're afraid ofridicule from colleagues – but many have spoken to Gary and gone on the record with him. And on thisshow you will hear their stories.

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Across the UK, across continental North America, and around the world on the internet, by webcast and by podcast, my name is Howard Hughes, and this is The Unexplained.
Thank you very much for your very, very kind emails recently.
I will go through some of those in a future edition, but just to say hello to Lynn, and thank you very much for your email recently about my Tinnitus.
I will be in touch about that.
It is an ongoing theme.
Tinnitus, of course, I've talked about before here.
I know a lot of you suffer with this, a ringing in the ears, that basically put my career on hold around about April this year.
And, you know, I haven't been able to work on radio since then, but hopefully getting back into action now.
Although, it might be useful to those of you who have Tinnitus to know that I went to a school reunion in Liverpool.
I haven't seen any of these people, the teachers or the people I went to school with, since we were all 18.
And it was in a very noisy venue.
And the tremendous volume of noise there set me back a little.
So I think the truth of it is that concerts or movies or anything like that that I go to in future, got to be earplugs.
That'll be the way to go.
Thank you very much for your good feedback, as I say to the last couple of shows.
And thank you for the support that you're giving me, because you're making me believe that the work that I'm doing here is worthwhile.
I really do want to build this as we go into 2013.
I do have an announcement, a small one to make here, but it's a significant one.
My webmaster, Adam Cornwell, at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool, a top guy who's given me such tremendous help over these last few years, tells me that, and I can tell you now, that in the last year, The Unexplained has had half a million online listening hours.
Now, that's half a million that we know about, and that equates with a small to medium-sized radio station in the UK, which is fantastic.
Bearing in mind how we do this show, it's only me, it's a small production, Adam gets it out to you.
That is amazing.
Thank you very much, but we need to make this bigger.
I want to go places that you can't even imagine with this show.
I think we can become as big as any mainstream outlet.
But let me tell you, we will keep the ethos that's always guided me with the unexplained.
We will be independent.
We will not be influenced.
We will not have our arm twisted up our back by anyone.
And we will endeavour always to do a good job for you because that's what it's all about.
Weird weather.
Once again, I know I'm always talking when I do these shows about the weather.
We have had days and days and days of heavy rain in the UK.
Not too bad here in London, although we've had more than I would like here.
But in places like the west, southwest of England, the Midlands, and in the north of England, Scotland, they've had tremendous amounts of rain.
I think this morning as I record this show, there are still 250 flood alerts out.
And this year alone, we've had more rain, I think, than we've had for years, which is bizarre because forecasters were predicting early in 2012 that we were going to have a drought.
And here we are with more rain than we can cope with.
Weird stuff.
And we have to return to the subject of the weather.
I know you want me to, anyway, at some point, because it's definitely changing.
And the next thing they're saying is that within a few days here in the UK, we're going to have what they call here a cold snap.
And we have to be ready for ice and temperatures during the day of 3 Celsius and all the rest of it.
So I'll keep you posted about that.
If you want to contact me, by the way, I love to get your emails, your feedback, and guest suggestions, which are vital to what we do.
Go to the website, www.theunexplained.tv.
The website, www.theunexplained.tv.
And as I say, Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot devised and created that website for you, which is so good and so effective for us.
And there'll be developments on that front in 2013 as well.
Now, this time around, we have a very, very good guest.
He was a man that you've requested a reappearance of.
He was on the radio show with me about six years ago.
His name is Gary Hesseltine.
He is a serving police officer who decided to begin collating reports from uniformed people, that's people in the emergency services, police and the like, of UFOs.
Because we know that a lot of these people do have experiences, but because of the fear of perhaps not advancing themselves in their careers or professional ramifications or just ridicule, they tend not to tell their superiors about these instances, but they tell Gary.
Now, Gary has paid a price for his work, as you will hear, but he is a fascinating man to talk with.
Gary Heseltine is his name.
He's got some great projects in the pipeline, I understand, so we're about to hear what they are.
So let's cross now to Home Firth in Yorkshire, a very picturesque and beautiful place, and talk to Gary Heseltine, policeman and UFO investigator.
Gary, thank you for coming back on The Unexplained.
You're welcome.
Now, Gary, I have to tell you that you were another one of these people.
You were on my radio show, I think, about five or six years ago.
And ever since, people have not forgotten.
I keep getting emails about you and people suggesting, hey, get Gary Hesseltine back on the show.
They remembered your first appearance.
You were a very popular guest back then.
I'm flattered.
And you know what I think they liked about you?
The fact that you are an ordinary guy doing police work, a very credible witness, as they say.
And I think they just, they felt comfortable with you.
You know, you had that the stamp of credibility about you.
Well, that's really the principal reason why I came forward to try to bring an air of credibility to the subject that in the media is largely ridiculed.
And I think that is wrong because the level of sightings, the best sightings, are superb and the media are downplaying it in a big way.
They are.
The reason that your involvement is important, I think, and I'm sure you'll agree with this because that's why you went into it.
But tell me, the fact that your involvement is important is because you are working in a uniformed service.
And a lot of people, because of when they work, what they do and how they work, are inclined to have paranormal contacts.
And most of them don't ever report them.
My dad was a policeman for 30 years in Liverpool.
First of all, with Liverpool Constabulary and then with Merseyside Police, as it now is.
And over that time, my father had experiences, not UFO experiences, but paranormal experiences, including very credible ghost stories.
But because he was a serving policeman and because you know what culture in a big organization is like, he tended, apart from telling us around the fireside at Christmas, he tended not to talk about those experiences.
And a lot of people, I think, who wear uniforms, they're pilots or emergency service workers or police, are disinclined to tell what they know.
Do you find that's the case?
I guess you do.
Absolutely.
It's the principal reason why people don't come forward is fear of ridicule and two, they fear a perceived risk to their career if they do put the head above the parapet.
So I think in all these kind of pilots, radar operators, sonar operators, air traffic controllers, police officers, anybody who's in a kind of a disciplined uniform type of service, they are going to be very reluctant to come forward unless it's a really mass sighting for fear of those reasons.
And it's very tangible.
It comes up all the time.
And I suspect that even though my research now, after 10 years, I've garnered now almost over 440 reports going back to 1901 and I've now amassed around 950 British police officers involved in that research.
That's a hell of a lot.
But I still think it's a tip of an iceberg for those that just don't even know about me, don't know my work, and are probably still very reluctant to come forward for fear of ridicule.
I'm not sure if there's a limit on how far you can talk about it, but tell me about your job in service.
You're in the police, aren't you?
Yes, I've been a police officer since 1989, but what I can tell you, Howard, is that the circumstances in which I operate now are considerably different from what they were when I began my research 10 years ago.
What I mean by that is about four years ago, five years ago, some pressure started to come on me from senior quarter, shall we say, within the job.
And at one point, it led me to being given a 12-month written warning because of my research, which was quite a frightening occasion.
Let's just explain that.
So you were lent on to some extent by senior officers.
On what grounds?
Why did they think this was a problem?
Well, this arose.
I have to be careful what I say because I'm still a serving officer.
No, that's fine.
But I'm not saying anything that's not truthful.
Basically, I wrote to the MOD in late 2009 when they suddenly decided to close the UFO reporting desk after 50 or so.
Britain's Ministry of Defence and the person who was in charge of collating reports was Nick Pope, who of course is now an independent investigator.
Well, he was there between, I think, 91 and 94, but in 2009, after 50 years of collecting UFO reports, they suddenly put an announcement out saying in a cost-cutting exercise, we are stopping the UFO reporting desk.
Now, I saw this as an opportunity for me to write to each police force and say, in this modern day and age, what are you going to do with the reports that you will still receive?
Because on average, police receive per year anywhere between 100 and 500 reports countrywide.
Very good question to ask, Gary.
And who's better to ask it than somebody who's in the police?
Absolutely.
So I wrote to them all, to the chief constables of 38 police forces, including my own, and said, what are you going to do?
Because we have to be professional.
You're dealing with 24-hour control rooms that are audio recorded.
People will be ringing up very distressed.
You will have to deal with them in a professional way.
And I said, well, can I suggest that you direct those people to me in a private capacity?
I will take up the research in my own time out of work, which I thought was a sensible thing to do in the circumstances because people were going to still ring the police.
And basically what happened was within days, I got about 24 replies from senior command teams saying that we weren't aware that the MOD had stopped the desk.
And basically, yes, thanks very much for bringing it to our attention.
We'll get back to you.
Within a few weeks from that, I then received phone calls from two of those forces that I'd written to that said, we're going to appoint you as a single point of contact.
We think it's a great idea and we will direct any subsequent UFO-related calls to you.
That's good because in this country we have, and I think in America, it's the same situation, isn't it?
Police forces in this country are independent, separate, autonomous organizations.
There's been some talk of a national police force, but that has not happened.
Personally, I don't think it should.
But did you find that different police forces took a different line on this?
Well, the bottom line was just as police forces were appearing to respond, and I think it would have grown, I suddenly was then told that I was going to be subject of misconduct hearing for bringing the force into disrepute.
And quite how that could happen when I wrote a private letter to a private chief constable.
And in the process of asking an outline what I did, I said I had a database and I said, and the reason why it ended up going to discipline was because I said which force I belonged to.
Right, and you didn't refer it up to whoever your commanding officer was before you did it.
I didn't have a capacity and had been doing my research since 2002.
I didn't think I needed to.
It was just a private request saying, what are you going to do?
Can you send the information to me?
And Gary, did you get any indication, and maybe you can't tell me this, but maybe you can talk around it, that perhaps somebody somewhere was lent on to lean on you in turn?
I can't say at this time any more than What I'm really saying now, suffice to say that in the end, you cannot beat a big organization.
And I ended up with a 12-month written warning for bringing the force into disrepute because I mentioned my force, and there were two other counts.
Where, if you've ever looked at my website, basically all the cases that I have, there's a source at the end that will say something like two officers on duty sighting source MOD files, or if I've got the name PC Smith, for example.
Well, I was also charged with using which force I belong to on two of my own off-duty sightings, which so that was all part of it.
But that was a very uncomfortable thing.
And I think in the end, it's made me realize that probably the time for me is right to leave.
So in April of next year, I do intend to retire.
It would have made, had it been, and I didn't see it reported in the press, maybe it was, I don't think it was, it would have made a great news story because it does seem, just as a journalist and a layman as I am, but of course I do come from a police family, very unfair that that should happen.
Because if you think about it, if you were a caravanner or you were a model plane enthusiast or you built little boats and you wanted to contact your colleagues in other forces and network with them, that happens in the police all the time.
My dad used to take us on holidays that were organized through a police organization.
So I think they were on very shaky ground.
Well, that's my view.
But if you're part of a big organization, you cannot beat a big organization.
So that's perhaps for another day when I'm not your police.
Okay, so you're going to be exiting the police?
I'm going to retire in April 2013 to devote my time to UFO research and writing in general.
So presumably in the years, and you're going to tell me how many years that you've been doing this, collating these reports, you have enough evidence and you've come across enough of a groundswell to think, okay, I can leave the police and pursue this full time.
Yes, yeah.
I mean, there's going to be a certain venture that I can't really mention too much at this stage, but if you invite me back in around the April time, then I may well be able to give you, you know, a lockstock barrel, as it were.
Give us a clue.
But yeah, there's going to be a venture that I'm going to start in April as I leave, which will certainly put me at hopefully the forefront of British ufology and place me somewhere in the world.
I am currently beginning to write a book about the 10 years of my research, which will hopefully come out in October or so of next year.
And, you know, I'm certainly, if anybody's followed my career in this ufology-wise, you know, people will know that I'm very heavily involved in the Rendlesham Forest research, which is Britain's most famous case from December 1980.
And, you know, I've written a film script in collaboration with Colonel Holt, who was then the deputy base commander.
And Holt was the linchpin of this whole thing.
Absolutely.
And you know something?
As you say film script, I would have thought this would be something that should have been done years ago.
Somebody should have picked up on this a long time ago.
Great British story.
I have been told how true it is, I don't know, but I've been told by someone who did the Roswell TV movie, the producer of that, that people like George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have actually looked tentatively at the Rendlesham story.
But because it's not, it's an ensemble piece, it's no obvious hero kind of John Wayne figure, that's probably why Hollywood won't go near it.
But I think I've brought it together in a way that involves all the players, sticks 90% to the truth of what's already in the domain.
Obviously, I've worked with Colonel Holt and several of the other major players and it's very credible.
And it's called Three Nights in December, which is UFO sightings over three successive nights between 26th and 28th of December.
Which just happened to occur at an American military base, an air base, or very close to it.
It was a nuclear base, without a shadow of a doubt, it's a nuclear base because I worked.
This is where I've got a strange quirk in my background, is that between 1983 and 1989, I worked for the Royal Air Force as a police officer.
And on two of my three major tours, I served at nuclear bases.
And I did exactly the same job as the US Air Force police officers did at Rendlesham, including work on the weapon storage area, which features heavily on Holtz Night.
And he's the key to why it happened, because I really believe that this is about nuclear weapons.
That's why it's Rendlesham Forest.
Now, when this show was on national radio in the UK, back in those enlightened times, you were a guest on the show, as we've said.
And around about the time you came on, it wasn't on that edition, I made contact with a woman whose name I've forgotten, but who had the recordings, what she said were the recordings, that were made of radio communications at Rendlesham Forest at that time.
And they were absolutely chilling to hear.
I won't say panic, they're professional people.
I'm sorry?
Have you still got those?
haven't.
I haven't got the You know, I was on air live and I wasn't recording them, so I don't have those.
However, they are around, and I seem to remember the person who had them wanted to be paid for the use of them, which we did do at that time, I seem to recall.
But the recordings show people who are...
I actually think you're wrong.
I think scared is exactly the right word for a number of reasons.
I'll tell you, having worked closely with Holt over the last five years, Holt was scared and he went out to debunk it when he got involved on the third night.
He did not think for one moment that this was a real phenomenon, and he was out there to pour cold water on it.
And unfortunately, when events transpired as they did, and he became a central figure, he was worried for his career.
So, you know, right back to the beginning of this radio show, we mentioned why people don't come forward.
He was straight away thinking, this is, am I ever going to get promoted?
I'll be labelled a UFO.
No, I don't want this.
Well, if that's the case, why is Holt cooperating with you now on a movie script?
The reason why is because Holt was effectively sidelined.
Because don't forget, what Holt did was he was directed about a week or so after the events to write to the Royal Air Force, because it was on British soil, and write to Squadron Leader Morland, who was the RF liaison officer at the base, and basically send a report to the MOD.
And Holt was very reluctant to do so, and he had to be cajoled a bit to do it and prompted by Colonel Williams to do it because he knew that if he put pen to paper and it ever came out, which he hoped it never would, that it was going to come back and haunt him to a certain degree.
So anyway, after a bit of cajoling, he did send a one-page PRESC report, which is now Britain's most famous UFO document called the Holt Memorandum.
It was sent off to the MOD in January of 1981, a couple of weeks afterwards.
And basically, he thought that that would just be the prelude to a major investigation to the MOD.
Well, in reality, he heard nothing ever more, which is really bizarre.
There was no major investigation.
The MOD said nothing.
It wasn't in the public domain and wasn't in the public domain until the Freedom of Information Act in America allowed a copy of that report that he'd written, the whole memorandum, to come out in October 1983.
And a lot of people will remember the big news of the world headline, you know, UFO lands in Suffolk, it's official.
And at that time, that's when that report came out.
So for almost three years after the events, it was secret, it was, you know, it was never meant to come out, which adds to the authenticity and believability of the case.
And when Holt knew that it was about to be released, he tried desperately to get it withdrawn because he knew that his life would never be the same.
And funnily enough, when I first met him in December 2007, I was lucky enough to spend an evening with him in a pub before we did some filming, just one-to-one.
And I was asking him all these questions and he found me very open and whatever.
And I said, at the end of it, I said, you've had a fantastic military career.
I said, but when you're dead and gone, you are not going to be remembered for your brilliant career.
You're going to be remembered for Rendells and Forest and you should remember that.
And I said, would you allow me to write a script based in collaboration with your version of events, etc., etc.?
And he said, yes.
And so that's how it started.
You sometimes have to seize the moment.
And that process of collaboration has gone on.
And he's endorsed the script.
Obviously, like with any film script, you have draft upon draft upon draft.
And it's got to the stage now where I'm pretty happy with it.
It's been read by several professional screenwriters who say it's pretty good.
And now, you know, there are a few prominent people on the sidelines who really want to make this go forward.
Well, we have to keep in touch about that because I think it's a great story.
What is Holt telling you about that then?
Is he saying to you, Gary, I believe that there was an extraterrestrial contact on that night?
Has he actually come out to you and said that?
Yes, he has.
And because that's one of the things that I said I thought was necessary to kind of galvanize people as to what had really happened.
I said, look, after all these years and all the documentaries that you've made, I think you need to make a definitive statement.
And basically in July 2009, he did that when he basically said he believed that they were of extraterrestrial origin.
He thought they were under intelligent control.
And basically they were that he actually went further and said he believed that the shall we say, the military services and special services were involved in trying to dumb it down this case.
Well, you and I both know, don't we?
Because we both met American Larry Warren, who lives in Liverpool now.
He's a very cool rock and roll dude, is Larry Warren.
And I find him very credible and great fun as a guest.
I've met him several times.
He's a good guy.
He says, because he worked there, he says he worked there, that everybody involved, including him, were told that on pain of the most severe consequences that you could imagine, they had to keep their mouths firmly shut.
And most of them have.
Well, I would just clarify that a bit.
I don't think Larry will say that everyone involved, because certainly Holt was basically just kept out the loop.
And this is why he is so keen to draw attention to the case, because he was, in a sentence, hung out to dry.
Basically, he never had any backup from senior officers.
There was no investigation.
And this, you know, and everybody comes to him because he's wrote the Holt memorandum.
But he was never ever questioned, debriefed, etc., etc.
Which is a bit odd, really, when he was the deputy base commander of a nuclear facility.
If that is so, it is absolutely astonishing.
Absolutely.
There was, and I believe there was a cover-up, and you've talked to Holt about this, I'm sure.
Where did it come from?
Was it us?
Were we responsible for that?
Was it the Americans responsible for that?
Was it both?
I think it was probably both.
Although, if you look historically at this subject, which I've done for over 35 years, you will see that Britain, as in most other ventures, follows America's lead.
So I think it was America that pulled the strings.
And I think the Americans basically just left Holt to hang out to dry.
I think there was a disinformation exercise put into place straight away.
And this is what Holt believes.
Holt believes that a number of the airmen were interrogated.
He believes that certainly some of them, including Larry Warren, were implanted with false memories, which we know does exist in other theatres of war, etc.
And to muddy the waters, to downplay the significance of what really occurred.
And you'd have to say that whoever came up with that idea was a genius because it's worked.
Well, if Larry Warren was implanted, if he was implanted with a false memory, then how can he be talking about it now, though?
That's the only hole in the argument, isn't it?
Well, no, not really.
Basically, if you talk to Larry Warren, Larry Warren, and I like Larry and I've met him several times, he will say that this is what he believes.
But he was interrogated, taken to an underground facility.
He was threatened and told bullets are cheap, etc., and frightened silly.
He was abducted and taken, abducted by military services and taken to a special underground facility somewhere on the base, never been truly identified.
But we know from Jim Penniston was given who on the first night with John Burroughs, came across the landed craft, which is described in Holt's memorandum that left ground depressions, radiation readings about eight times higher than background radiation in each of the indentation marks where the landing gear had been.
All this kind of thing, there was at least half a dozen people who have gone on record and say that they were interrogated.
Now, Larry Warren, in my opinion, is probably the biggest victim of all of this because I think it has truly meddled with his mind.
He believes passionately what he saw.
He was definitely involved.
And he is not able to say for certain what is real and what is implanted, but he knows he was being messed with.
And that's like something straight from the Manchurian candidate, isn't it?
Absolutely, absolutely.
But it's worked because the Larry Warren account is seen to be extreme and doesn't sit easily with the other people who are involved, certainly on the first night and when Holt was out with his team.
But Larry Warren's definitely involved and you cannot edit him out of history just because his version of events doesn't sit with everybody else's.
You know, I mean, what supports something that Larry and Peter Robbins, who you wrote the book, left at Eastgate with, they went back years later and got a soil sample from the area where Larry Warren said he saw a landed craft.
And the soil sample was analysed and the reports came back that the soil within the area where the object was claimed to have landed was impermeable to water.
It just wouldn't absorb it.
Whereas the control sample outside in the normal field, it would absorb water in the normal way.
So something very strange happen.
And those are reports that produce documentary evidence for me as a police officer that say that that is an anomalous answer to something.
You know, something very strange happened in the area where Larry said it happened.
So that adds credibility to Larry's account.
I guess I need to be asking this question to Holt himself, but I'll ask you because you know him for now.
Does he believe that if your script that you're working on with him, if it becomes a movie and it becomes notorious, if it gets out there, that it's going to do for him what it also did for the commander of the Roswell base?
Because the commander of the Roswell base, of course, was rubbished.
He was the fall guy for it all.
And it was only when the movie came out and the book came out about it, people began to think this man had been done a very, very bad turn by this.
Does Holt believe that this will vindicate him?
I've not talked to him too much about that, but he has always seen the merit in he wants answers like all the other people.
They want answers as to what they saw, who knew about it, and why wasn't there a major investigation?
I mean, Holt will say things like after the sighting, he saw military aircraft, unmarked military transport aircraft, landing at the base that were unscheduled, that were parked up on the far side, near towards the East Gate, and people were going out into the forest.
And he had no part of that.
And when he asked questions of the base commander, it was basically, you know, we don't want to talk about that.
And he was given kind of like the cold shoulder.
So there was something going on.
And there is a rumor, he believes that people came in, I think, from Langley, CIA, and out into the forest to do a cleanup operation or whatever they do in these circumstances.
But that, if you know the UFO subject in debt, at the best evidence, there is clear evidence that there is kind of retrieval teams or specialist trained teams that come in and clean up sites.
It sounds science fiction, but I really do believe that that is real.
And a hell of a lot easier to do in 1980, even though to you and I this sounds like recent history, but a hell of a lot easier to do then than it would be now because we've got the internet and a lot of communication, people with camera phones and all the rest of it.
Oh, absolutely.
Yeah, and that's why I still think that, you know, within 10 or 15 years, there is, through whatever format, there is going to be some disclosure of some kind about what's gone on in the past.
That's interesting.
And you've talked to people other than Holt.
Have they given you any indication that that might be so?
Well, you know, I certainly, over the last 10 years, I've pretty much got to know all the world's top researchers now, physicists, historians, you know, very eminent people.
And they're regularly in contact.
Some of them talk to politicians in the States and whatever.
And it's certainly edging towards that.
I don't think it's imminent like some people think it is.
And personally, I think that's what's more likely to happen is that mainstream Science are going to announce soon, I think, within the next couple of years that they've found some kind of evidence for life on Mars, whether it be microscopic bacteria or whatever, ancient or still living or whatever.
But I think that when that happens, and there is this announcement that yes, we finally answered that question in mainstream science and the world that can accept that, yeah, there is life on a little planet in our solar system, then that age-old question of life in space, which even the most ardent astronomer now has changed his opinion with what we've discovered over the last 15 years.
And basically all astronomers, mainstream astronomers, are going to say that within a few years they're going to find contact.
How intelligent?
I don't know, but most will say within 15 or 20 years they will find proof of intelligent life out there.
But whenever life is found, the argument against UFOs totally goes out the window for the simple reason is that it will mean in almost certainty that life where there are planets around stars of a similar nature to ours, there will be life if it's in the Goldilocks zone, in the mid-range, not too hot, not too cold, that life will be abundant.
You can't even comprehend the amount of stars in the universe.
And just applying common sense to all of that, if you think about this drip-drip process, if you apply common sense that there will be greater civilizations than ours and lesser civilizations than ours, that's a statistical probability.
Absolutely.
And that's why I say that when life is, mainstream life is accepted, wherever it is, however it is, however small, that will be the first brick in the wall of the dam about disclosure.
Because after that, the premise that we're not alone is gone.
We're certainly not alone.
And that will be the proof.
And brick by brick, that dam will break.
And within probably 10 or 15 years after that, there will be a full disclosure that we've been in contact with UFOs for at least 50, 60 years.
Well, let's see if it happens in our lifetime.
I'd like it to.
We've got about 20 minutes or so left, Gary Heseltine.
Why don't you open up some of your case files and tell me a few stories from people in the uniformed services in the UK who've contacted you with amazing experiences?
Tell me a few of the ones that have really amazed you over the years.
Well, there's a few.
I mean, just what I do is I prepare an annual report with whatever I've gathered over the previous 12 months.
And I thought I'd just highlight, say, three cases that are going to be in the 10th report, which I'm compiling now, which will be out in January, February next year.
One, well, one that actually is amazing.
Two police officers, uniformed police officer.
One of them is called PC Perry.
He's happy to go on record.
And he's, I think, just retiring or at the end of his service.
But in 1984, he's with a uniformed colleague in a marked police vehicle when they see near Northolt, which I think is what they can only describe as a huge triangular object.
But listen to the dimensions.
It's the size of three football fields.
And they're able to determine the size because it's above three football fields.
And it's low, approximately 100 feet off the ground.
There is no noise.
It's the size of three football fields.
They watch it.
And then in blink of an eye, off it's gone.
This made the papers, didn't it?
I think I reported this on the radio.
I'm not aware of it.
Well, maybe I remember North because North Holt is an airbase.
We have to say that.
RAF Northolt, yeah.
Yeah, just out.
Well, it's just on the fringes of London.
It's on the way out of London as you go on the A40 heading west.
But I can certainly remember there have been happenings around North Holt.
And how was this explained?
If it was indeed explained, these guys, presumably, did they put it in their report?
No, the duration of the sighting was seven to eight minutes.
And they said it just hovered there, moving very slowly, moving at approximately 25 miles an hour, as they estimated.
But, you know, can you imagine something the size of that, no noise, being low over what is a, you know, a built-up, you know, area?
A very, very busy area, 24-7 as well.
You have to say that there's traffic running along there past that airbase.
And why did they PC Perry in particular?
Why did he decide not to report this to anybody other than fear of ridicule damaging his career?
And that's what came out.
And he approached me.
And at the end of his service, so this was literally in the last 18 months, he's approached me and he feels now confident and able to reveal what he saw.
And were there any other effects around this object, which was, and we hear reports of the size of these things all the time, some of them battleship size.
Did it have any effect on him, on perhaps the radio that he had?
No electromagnetic effects to the vehicle or anything.
And yet, I've got cases like that.
I've got another one where two uniformed officers, three in the morning, are driving near Lulzgate Airport, which is a little private airport near Bristol.
And as they're driving past the outside of the base, suddenly from nowhere in darkness, this huge object just appears.
It doesn't come left, right, or up or down.
It just appears on like a light bulb.
And it's described as 100 yards wide.
And it's hovering above the road.
They stop.
Their engine stops.
It cuts out.
Their radios fail.
And it's there for about 15, 20 seconds.
They both sit there in amazement.
And then suddenly it blinks off like a light bulb has been switched out.
Now, so far in this conversation, Gary, we've talked about Rendlesham Forest Air Base, Northolt Air Base, and Bristol.
Even though there's not an airbase around there or anything significant, there are plenty of facilities that make the components and parts for planes and planes themselves.
So that indicates that perhaps whatever it is is either a military technology that we have and we know about, however, we developed it, or somebody somewhere out there is interested in what we've got.
Well, I think it's probably the latter because, you know, there will always be the sceptics that will say, oh, well, that's stealth.
But why would you operate something the size of three football fields?
Stealth means you really don't want to tell anybody about it and it's there.
Why would you do it across British soil?
Because I don't think the UK has the capability doing that.
And anything of that size, well, we can't even build that now.
And the stealth argument falls and fails consistently when you look at the best UFO sightings.
What we've gleaned over 60 years of research is that the way UFOs move are totally different from any other way a plane does.
Basically, all stealth planes will do is move from A to B in a single line.
and they were Okay, and this Bristol case, you said there were electromagnetic effects.
Absolutely, yeah.
The engine cut out, the lights went out.
As soon as the object went on, the lights came on, the engine came back on.
Now that is reported worldwide on many, many occasions, similar sightings like that all over the world.
What I'm saying is that the stealth item doesn't work because UFOs make instant accelerations, instant stops, they make vertical ascents at high speed, vertical descents, they make right-angled turns, they make reversals, they have the ability to be invisible, then visible.
Now, stealth doesn't do that.
And these people that said, oh, well, it's just secret aircraft.
Well, the general premise is that secret aircraft are 15 to 20 years in development before they're ever in the public domain.
Well, that means in the 40s, they should have come out in the 60s, the 60s should come out in the 80s, the 80s should come out in 2000.
And they don't.
So we haven't got this technology and they behave in manners that we don't can't understand.
I get the feeling, but I could be wrong, that less of these sightings and experiences are happening now.
I've heard fewer reports, although the ones you do hear are pretty amazing, but I've heard fewer reports in the last couple of years than I was hearing before that.
Well, there could be various reasons.
There could be the fact that people have got technology and they're making little videos and sharing them between themselves, but not telling anybody else.
There could be any one of a variety of reasons.
There could be the fact that people are getting better at hushing these things up.
I mean, agencies, or simply they're not happening.
Or there's another possibility, and that possibility is that governments are even more closely allied to whatever it might be out there, and there is less conflict between their side and our side.
They're not coming down to explore us as much as they were because we're telling them.
I mean, look, I'm just shooting off the top of my head.
I don't know.
Tell you my opinion.
Please, yep.
Right.
Well, let's go back to the MOD closing the MOD reporting desk.
Right.
When they closed the MOD reporting desk, it happened at a time when UFO sightings were high for about 20 years.
So they'd gone from about 300 a year to 600 a year, 700 in the two years prior to the MOD reporting desk.
And the real reason, in my opinion, why the UFO reporting desk closed was not because of government cutbacks and saving £55,000, as Nick Port would claim, but it was really because the MOD was getting clogged with FOI requests about UFOs, and that was taking all their time up.
So they found a way to close the loophole, which was close the desk and then just leave people to scramble.
So if there's no reporting desk, who do people report things to?
Who do the police report to?
Well, the point is, when I got disciplined, my force put out an email to all forces that I'd written to saying this man didn't have the authority to do that, so don't send him any more stuff.
So therefore, all the sightings that are have now are being collected by individual organizations, and therefore there's no collectivity.
There's no one single source.
So therefore, it's in disarray.
So that's why the media then can put a story out that says there's nothing to this and sightings are going down.
From what my understanding is, sightings are absolutely rife.
Absolutely rife.
But you and this notion of, you're right, mobile phones and cameras, sightings are going on all the time and they are being reported, but they're not being put in one place.
So it's very difficult to actually get a true picture of how many sightings there are per year.
But I think there's a big, big increase and it's totally the opposite of what the media and government would lead you to believe.
That's interesting.
Tell me a good sighting then that's happened, say, this year or last year that you know about.
Well, what tends to happen is a lot of retired officers come to me because they've got the pension and they feel less threatened.
And one particular sighting that kind of grabbed my attention was earlier this year.
The sighting relates to the mid-80s, but it's the significance of what the officers are saying.
Basically, the officer that came to me was a close protection officer, an armed officer, effectively doing close protection to a government minister, a well-known conservative government minister in the 80s.
And basically, he was in a safe house in, I believe, North Yorkshire.
And he and another armed officer were doing the guarding of this minister on an overnight safe house en route to somewhere else.
And it was a lovely summer's morning, you know, one of those where you get up at four o'clock and it's bright blue sky.
And they were walking around outside.
And the minister was upstairs in his bed asleep.
And then suddenly the sky goes dark.
And they think this is a bit odd.
And they look up to see a huge cylindrical UFO above the very house where the minister is.
And one of them goes to draw his weapon and he says, I don't think that's going to do any good.
and basically, the object hovers over the house for about a minute, and then suddenly, in the blink of an eye, it shoots off about five or six miles out towards the horizon, stops again, and then is gone after a few seconds after that.
Now, there is absolutely no justification for a retired officer now in his 60s to come forward with such what would appear to be a crazy story.
Well, the basic thing about that is, isn't it?
Why would you do that?
It's just like my dad telling the ghost stories that he tells about Liverpool and seeing things.
I have no doubt that he did see those things.
And what motivation would there be for somebody to make that up?
You know, they risk ridicule, but they feel now that they're able to come forward or they just find out about my database.
But that's an incredible story.
And in the book, I will name the politician.
So, I mean, there's things to come out.
But that just kind of highlights how very real this all is.
And we really only just touched the tip of an iceberg.
Gary, did the politician...
No, he never knew about it.
I never knew about it.
So this was something that was just kept among the people who were on duty, in particular the person who told it.
The two officers kept, they made a bond that they would never talk about it whilst they were serving.
I bet that happens so often.
Because, you know, they were in kind of a privileged job and they were guarding a top politician.
So it's not the kind of thing that you just bandy about.
But they now feel able to mention that.
But, you know, there are certainly sightings.
one actually from this year, from actually one of my own force, but I won't name her because she's a serving officer.
But in February of this year, she's driving on a uniformed officer, driving on a rural...
But basically, she was driving on a rural road and as she's driving down this road to the left of her, she sees this, what she describes as what looks like a sphere moving in from the left, coming towards where she is.
And she's wondering, what is it?
Is it a plane?
Is it a helicopter?
Logical thought processes.
And then suddenly this object stops in the road in front of her, causing her to stop a vehicle.
It stops and hovers right in front of her and then suddenly goes vertically up into the sky and gone.
Now, that's this year.
It's a recent sighting.
But I mean, what motivation has she got to come forward to me?
It's because she's absolutely flabbergasted.
Well, what conventional explanation can we offer for an object that's seen, it's a sphere, it stops in the road, she stops the car, she's absolutely gobsmacked, and then suddenly it's up in the sky.
Was she scared?
Was she scared?
Absolutely.
Terrified.
I'd be absolutely absolutely.
You know, you know, and those kind of stories are actually more frequent than you realize.
And I remember during my 10 years, I've had some great stories from civilians as well, which are less well publicised.
But, you know, when you get validation sometimes as an officer and I look for evidence, and when people independently around the country have rang me up and said, I'm on a rural road driving along with my children, then suddenly this object has come and pulled alongside the car and we're absolutely terrified.
Well, when you hear that once, you think, oh, that's a crazy story.
It just can't be.
But when you hear it twice and three times from independent sources all around the country, your hairs on the back of your neck stand up because you realize that what they're describing is actually very real.
And it's not just occurring to one person.
It's actually far more prevalent than what you realise.
And it brings validation to what people are saying.
Now, Gary, a lesser man would have been closed down by what happened to you.
The disciplinary hearing number one, the fact that your employers wrote to other forces saying, don't cooperate with this man because we haven't sanctioned what he's doing.
A lot of people would just give up and go away.
You didn't do that.
Yes, you're going to retire from the police and concentrate more on this.
But there must be a feeling in your mind somewhere that there are a lot of police officers, perhaps I've got police officers listening to this webcast now, who know things, have seen things.
Maybe that's why they're listening to this show.
But they would be afraid to come forward and even more afraid because of what happened to you.
Well, it certainly since then has made my life pretty uncomfortable.
And what I have done is kept really quite a low profile, doing certainly a lot less media work than I did before and to a certain extent less research.
That's why the figures are down on this year, because I've kept a low profile and the appeals for information aren't getting out there.
But obviously, as I approach retirement and have taken that decision to retire, then far from backing away, I want to actually come out and be far more vocal, which I was not able to be as a serving officer.
I was too many constraints.
But when the, shall we say, the shackles are off, I'll be then a lot more vocal and encouraging people to come forward.
My research is going to continue, but it's going to diversify.
And I certainly want to, if there are media people out there, that's something that I do want to move into.
If I can, I'd love to write and promote and present a TV series based on the best evidence because I'm a detective.
I've been a detective for nigh on 20 years, a police officer 23 years.
I know what evidence is.
You know, I could show them the best cases.
What would stand up in a court of law?
And I'm only talking about the 3%, the 3% unknown.
When you appeared on national radio with me six years ago now, I got a great deal of feedback.
In fact, the show I did with you, I wasn't expecting it, but got almost more feedback than any other.
I think the Philadelphia experiment show with Al Bielik got more feedback, But your show did tremendously, and people are still telling me about it now.
And that's why you're back on here because a couple of listeners said, What about Gary Hesseltime?
Where is he now?
Did you get any feedback after that show yourself from within the force, perhaps?
In other words, did your senior officers know about your appearance on national radio?
No, no, no, nobody came back on that, which I'm still kind of pleased about.
But earlier this year, I did two appearances on ITV This Morning with Philip Schofield, and I actually went on in February against a well-known skeptic called Chris French.
And basically, I went there deliberately to try to provoke them into getting me back where I could highlight some cases.
They fell for that, and they did invite me back, and we did it again in April.
It's all on YouTube, but with the same guy, and I argued the Rendlesham Forest case.
And I think most people will say that I won hands down.
Of course, there would be people saying you would say that, wouldn't you?
But I need to talk to Chris French as well, I suppose.
But what did Chris French say Rendlesham Forest was?
What did he think Rendlesham Forest was, as opposed to what you thought it was?
Well, put it this way, Chris French has never been to Rendlesham Forest.
He's never talked to any of the principal parties, but he believes that it was a lighthouse, that it was falling space debris, people mistaken in the woods and being scared by rabbits.
I've heard this lighthouse one before because there is, bearing in mind it's Suffolk, there is a lighthouse not very far away from there, but that would have to shine for a hell of a long time very brightly.
Yeah, but the reality is I've done a lot of work about the lighthouse, trying to dismantle it.
But the problem that you'll face is even though I can prove that it's absolutely ludicrous, and Holt will say, well, we knew where the lighthouse was because it doesn't move and it won't the lighthouse.
People just ignore that.
And whenever you get involved in the media, and I must have done about 14 or 15 documentaries now, the media, these documentary people don't want to know the truth, really.
They just have to present things fairly.
Well, I can't think of anywhere where you would allow such a ludicrous story to come forward.
But in every TV documentary, it's there and it's an absolute joke.
You know why that is, Dave?
That is the culture of the British media.
And I think it probably derives from the BBC.
And it's not entirely a bad thing where you have to start off the story, you tell the story, and then you bring it back at the end to, well, there's all the evidence that Gary Hesseltine or whoever has given us.
And then you say, but you need to bear in mind this, this, and this.
And unfortunately, the balance swings in this country too far the other way.
And the conclusion is often to deride what you've just been watching for the previous 45 minutes.
Absolutely.
But it's not just the BBC.
I mean, I've worked with lots of the History Channel and the National Geographic Channel Discovery.
All those, they all do the same.
They all do the same.
They've all got their own agenda.
But the bottom line is the media are so successful in dumbing this down.
And until somebody like Richard Branson has the guts or somebody with a mass belief has the financial power to say, well, actually, I'm going to change and take on the national media with my own resources, it's highly unlikely we'll ever kind of have a really truthful series because I don't think it's not in anybody's interest to make a truthful series.
But Gary, don't you think that in a small way you and I are changing things?
Because I'm doing a show where there are no holds barred here.
You know, I produce it to professional parameters, but we can talk about stuff that the mainstream media doesn't talk about.
And my listeners all over the world come back to me on that point all the time.
To an extent, the mainstream media and their documentaries are slowly quickly becoming irrelevant.
Yeah, I think the internet is changing things.
And it's like, I guess, the technology change from books.
And, you know, when you're moving now to e-readers, e-books, iPads, people didn't like to read off the screen.
But now, in the last two or three years, the technology has changed.
So I think technology is changing things and it's allowing people to tell a slightly different version of events.
But the mainstream media still has a massive hold on this subject.
And the reason for that can only be that somebody on high says, we want to dumb it down.
And I think that stems back to the 1940s and the 1953 Robertson panel that was commissioned by the CIA that said, we don't want people to talk about UFOs, so we're going to engage with the media to dumb it down.
And it really stands from that time onwards.
Now, I said there will be police officers.
I know there are listening to this and people in the services.
If they want to contact you, it would be nice if you told me some of the stories they tell you, but if they want to contact you, how do they do that?
All they have to do is put my name into Google.
I'll put police officers and UFOs and my name will come up.
It's got all my contact data.
It's got my mobile number, my email.
And I would urge any officer to come forward because the more that come forward, the more this highlights how wrong we are to demonize credible, genuine people.
I can honestly say that in the 10 years of my research and with all the members of the public that ring me and write to me, that perhaps only on two or three occasions have I thought I'm talking to an outside nut here.
99.99% of people are totally genuine.
And you can tell that within seconds by the way that they talk about what happened to them.
And the other thing, of course, is a police officer has an instinct that my dad had.
And even now he's been retired for years.
He has an instinct that I don't have.
You know, I have a little bit of the psychic thing going on, but he can have somebody standing in front of him.
I've seen him a thousand times do this.
And he can say, you're not telling me the truth.
That's not what happened.
You've been drinking.
He knew things that I couldn't know.
And that's a police officer's instinct, isn't it?
Yeah, I think it's true to say, and it's something it's hard to quantify, but I think many, you know, police officers do develop a kind of a sick sense of picking up.
But I'm also Trained as an advanced interviewer for suspects and witnesses, so I've had some psychological training on what to look forward as well.
And you know, and I can honestly say 99.9% of people are genuine.
And this is, I don't think this is just unique to me.
I think that this is really the reality: is that whilst there are a few people who make great CGI videos, the vast majority aren't, although there are some brilliant fake ones on YouTube.
But if you know your subject well enough, you can tell the real ones pretty much straight away.
And if you, and my golden rule would be, if it looks like a spaceship, it's CGI.
Because US laws generally don't look like that.
Hey, that's a very good rule.
I'm going to remember that one.
So busy 2013 for you as we stare down the barrel of a brand new year.
This year's been frighteningly short, hasn't it?
You've got, first of all, your report on 2012 to come out, the book to come out, and hopefully more progress on the movie script.
Absolutely.
So you're going to be really busy in this new year, aren't you?
Absolutely.
It's an exciting time for me, but there will be a UFO business venture starting in April, which I'll be able to talk to you more at the appropriate time, which I think you'll see with a sense of where I'm going with that when I announce what it is.
I can't wait to find out.
Keep in contact, Gary.
Once again, a very good guest, and thank you very much for giving me your time.
And it's lovely to reconnect with you.
Thank you for having me.
In beautiful Home Firth in Yorkshire, you lucky man.
I am lucky.
It's a lovely place.
Gary Hesseltine, thank you very much indeed.
Thank you indeed.
Gary Hesseltine, a great guest six years ago on the national radio show and a terrific guest today here on The Unexplained online at www.theunexplained.tv, where I will put a link to Gary's website in so that if you want to see more about him, you can.
And I promise you we will keep in touch with Gary.
And if that movie project does come to fruition, I will of course tell you more about that.
But there's a man who's got some very positive and definite plans for 2013, so we'll follow his work.
Thank you very much for supporting me here at The Unexplained.
If you'd like to make a donation to the show, it is, particularly at this time for me, utterly vital that perhaps you consider that if you think it's worth it, go to the website www.theunexplained.tv and you can leave a donation there.
There's a little button for it.
Or you can leave me feedback about the show, make a guess suggestion, whatever.
I read all of your emails.
And even if I instantly don't get the chance to respond to them, believe me, I see them all, which is more than you can say for many media outlets in this country and indeed around the world.
I see every email that you send to me and thank you so much.
Your emails mean so much to me.
Thank you to Adam Cornwell at Creative Hotspot in Liverpool for making the great website that we have and for getting the show out to you.
Thank you to Martin for the theme, tune, and above all, thank you to you for keeping the faith with the unexplained.
My name is Howard Hughes.
We're coming to the end of 2012 and I will return with another edition very, very soon.
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