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Jan. 19, 2017 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes
01:00:06
Edition 284 - Col. Charles Halt (Rendlesham Forest)

Now retired, Colonel Halt was in charge when the strange events at Rendlesham Forestoccurred - in 1980...

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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.
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We have a very special guest.
More about him in just a moment here.
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Okay, on this edition of The Unexplained, we have a very special guest.
His name is Charles Holt.
You may know that name if you're interested in ufology at all, if you're interested in anything paranormal, you might know already that this man was very much in the headlines in the last few decades because he was the man who was the deputy base commander and then the base commander at RAF Bentwaters, which was an American facility on UK soil in the east of England.
Now, this is the place where, at the back end of 1980, there was, supposedly, an event comparable with Roswell, where a very strange contact with something.
And nobody really has been able to fully and adequately explain what it was.
It's never out of the headlines.
Every year there'll be a newspaper that will want to do a feature about it.
There are constantly books that reference it or write directly about it.
But of course, the man who was directly involved in the whole thing was the man who was more or less in charge there.
On those nights, back in December 1980, Chuck Holt, Charles Holt, is on this edition of The Unexplained.
Thank you very much for keeping the faith with me.
Please stay in touch.
I'm not going to keep you waiting.
Let's cross to the United States now and talk to Chuck Holt, who is now retired from the U.S. military but has been involved in a brand new book.
And I've just got the book down.
It's a very heavy book.
Brilliantly put together.
It's called The Holt Perspective, plus previously unpublished UFO sightings over East Anglia.
It's basically a collaboration between him and a man who we've had on this show before, John Hansen, very much involved in UFOs and ufology.
Fabulous book.
I'm counting the pages here.
There are pretty much 800 of them.
Fabulous illustrations, a great book, and a very big, very large section on Rendlesham Forest here.
So let's speak to the man who was there.
And if anybody knows what went on, he will know.
Chuck Holt.
Chuck, thank you very much for coming on The Unexplained.
Well, you're quite welcome.
My pleasure.
Now, Chuck, I've spoken to a number of people over the years about the incident, a series of incidents at Rendlesham Forest.
And down the years, there are people who have got themselves mired in controversy with all of this.
There seem to be many views competing of people who say that they were there, people who were there, people who say they were there, and others say they weren't there.
Do you think that as you look back down the years, and it's 36 now, it's more than 36 now, that a chronology of events that happened back in 1980 is any clearer or is it getting less clear year by year?
Actually, it's getting clearer.
The reason being, more people have come forward, especially since they've retired or left the military.
For instance, the air traffic controllers that were on duty the night I was there, from the Bentwaters air traffic control tower, they never said anything.
They denied anything at the time because they were afraid of being decertified because they had colleagues that had been decertified for reporting UFOs.
So when I called the command post on the radio and said, have them check the control tower, check Eastern radar, check Heathrow, you know, for any activity when they see these things that we were seeing, they said no.
But years later, they made formal statements that they did see objects.
For instance, something went across their radar screen at over 5,000 miles an hour twice, came back by.
They visually saw it.
It was a glowing orange globe-like, and they saw it go in near we were in the forest.
That's just one example.
Now, there's a lot of wannabes that have kind of tagged along and suddenly come out and said, oh, I was there.
I did this.
I did that.
Many of them can be immediately discounted because we know enough people were involved, that were involved, rather, that knew who went where and when they were there.
Right, and this is the difficulty, isn't it?
And this is where the waters get a little muddy because people do come out of the woodwork and have come out of the woodwork.
Some of them have approached me, and it is looking on the balance of probabilities that some of these people, as you say, weren't there.
Well, some of them were on the base then.
In fact, all of them that I know of were on the base then, but that doesn't mean they were in the forest then.
Okay, I think since I'm talking to the man himself who was involved at such a high level there, if you don't mind, and we're relating all of this to a great new book called The HALT Perspective, which is not only about the events at Rendlesham Forest REF Bentwaters, it's also about a number of other incidents.
But let's talk about this primarily.
Can you unfold for me what actually happened across those nights?
Well, the first night, there were three nights, and actually there were more incidents than that, but there were three nights that were directly involved in this series, in other words, the night of the 25th, 26th, 26th, 27th, and 27th, 28th.
The first night, I have to be very brief because we don't have a whole lot of time.
Three individuals, Jim Penniston, John Burroughs, and Ed Kabanasak, actually went into the forest and confronted an object of some type.
Something happened there, and there's some difficulty with that because what happened to them in the forest and what happened in a later debriefing with the use of drugs and hypnosis, things are a little muddy, if you know what I mean.
But we do know this.
We do know only three people went into the forest because the maintenance of the cop supervisor, JD Chandler, stayed at the Eastgate along with Bud Steffens and a couple other cops.
Nobody else went into the forest the first night.
They lost track of them on the radio for about 40 minutes, and we're getting ready to send a rescue party or whatever out to find them when they came back with a wild tale, as I would say.
At what stage, Chuck, were you involved in this?
The following morning, I went to the police station to collect the police blotters, which I quite often did around 6.30, 7 o'clock in the morning.
And the desk sergeant described what happened.
All he knew was that there was a reported dynamite aircraft.
It turned out not to be an aircraft.
There were lights.
They couldn't explain.
Something happened.
He didn't know all the details.
I assumed there was an explanation and kind of laughed about it.
The following night, something happened, but I did not find out until years later.
The police lieutenant and senior NCO actually confronted something in the forest, and she had a nervous breakdown.
When you say something, something in the forest, and that account I just heard you say, was covered up.
Because she disappeared and nobody wanted to talk about it.
I asked what happened to her, and they said she had a nervous breakdown and was shipped back to the States.
She disappeared from the States and popped up in Italy, where I think she still lives.
Mysteriously.
So you were in the middle of all of this.
At those early stages, what were you feeling and thinking, Chuck?
Well, initially, after the first night, I was thinking there was an explanation.
And I didn't, you know, put too much confidence in her actually being a UFO, so to speak, because I didn't believe it.
The third night, when I was approached and actually went out into the forest, it became a reality.
And I kept thinking, gee, I wish I hadn't gotten involved.
How am I going to explain this?
Nobody's going to believe this.
This is ridiculous.
And how much of this did you see and experience yourself?
Basically what I saw, I was taken to where the object had allegedly landed two nights before, shown the indentations in the ground.
They were all the same, equidistance apart.
It was definitely higher than background radiation.
I'm told it's about nine times normal radiation.
Not enough to be dangerous, but enough to be certainly picked up on the machine.
And while we were there observing, something happened.
One of us, I think it was Bruce England who was with me, looked out and saw this glowing object.
The best way I can describe it is something like an eye, a little larger than an American football.
It was bright orange-red.
It had a dark center, and it appeared to be dripping something like molten metal.
We watched it for a period of time and watched the reflection off the farmhouse, which was across the field from us outside the forest.
And I was quite concerned for the people in the farmhouse because it was fairly close to the house.
The object came into the forest, moved through the trees.
These are tall Corsica pines, about 12, 14 inches in diameter, maybe a little larger, with a high canopy.
Obviously under intelligent control because it could have bobbed up and down, went through the trees.
We tried to get closer to it.
We moved up toward it and it went back out into the field.
We watched for a couple minutes at the edge of the forest and it silently exploded into five white objects and disappeared.
So we went out into the field looking for any evidence.
Obviously was something that appeared to be dripping off it.
I would describe it as molten metal was what it looked like, like slag.
We didn't find anything.
And while we were out there, we saw objects to the north in the sky.
They were elliptical.
And they had multicolored lights on, and they were moving in unison together as though they were doing a grid search or flying in a pattern.
And in the meantime, of course, the Army, the military, the Air Force, they're hierarchical organizations.
So just as you had a rank in that organization and you had a status, you would have had to report upwards.
What were the people above you telling you to do and saying to you?
Let me explain.
This is the middle of the night, remember.
I was communicating through the command post.
And the command post did not contact, that I know of, any of the senior officers.
What I told them I was seeing, and I asked them to have the air traffic controllers and have the radar people, everybody look, and here's where to look in the sky and see what they could find.
And they kept telling me they saw nothing.
And I didn't seem to get any response from anybody through the command post back to me.
And we were out there for a long period of time.
And we were out there for several hours.
Now, objects we saw, the North stayed there.
There were two objects to the south.
Now, we could not discern a physical shape because there were bright white lights.
And one light came overhead at very high speed, stopped, became stationary, and sent down the equivalent of a laser beam about 10 feet from where we were standing.
And where was that...
Did there appear to be any...
No, it just seemed to be, well, I was thinking, you know, is this a weapon?
Is this a method of communication?
You know, what is a warning?
And as suddenly as it appeared, it was like a light click, it went off.
And the other object moved out over bentwater space and sent down similar beams.
Now, the people in the weapon storage area had binoculars, and one of them or more saw a large craft, a triangular craft.
They could see a triangular craft.
They did see the objects.
Now, there's some conjecture as to where those beams landed and what they did.
I was not close enough to tell.
All I could say is I could see the beams.
Well, we were out there until around 3 or 4 o'clock in the morning, and nobody seemed to be too interested.
It was cold.
It was windy.
We'd stepped in a small pond or creek as we were crossing the farmer's field looking around.
So we decided to go back to the base.
And then I was in a quandary as to what to do.
And just clarify for me, were you number one or number two at the base at the time?
I was a deputy base commander.
So that's a pretty heavy responsibility because, number one, it's a difficult situation to handle for the humans involved in it.
Number two, as the deputy base commander, how do you explain to those above you when you get the chance to do that what was transpiring there?
I had a chance to do that because my big boss came in.
I went home after the incident.
I couldn't sleep.
I took a shower, Had something to eat and went into the office because I just couldn't.
I was kind of shaken, to be very honest with you.
And I ran into my big boss, who's now a retired two-star general.
And he overheard part of my conversations because most of the five or six senior officers had what we call the command radios.
We were all tied in on a net.
And he never turned his radio off, I don't think, even when he slept.
And he heard most of my conversations.
And he made a comment to me, something to the effect that that was some light you had last night.
I said, yes, it was.
And I said, I recorded some of it.
And then he got real interested.
So I played the recording for him.
And he said, wow.
He said, let me have it.
So I gave it to him.
I said, what are you going to do?
He said, on Wednesday, this was Monday, I believe.
Wednesday, we have a staff meeting with a third Air Force commander.
I'm going to take and play it for him.
And I was thinking, well, this is the end of my career.
He took the tape and played it for General Baisley.
Basley listened intently and said, Williams, is all credible?
And he said, yes.
He said, hmm.
He turned to the staff and said, what do we do?
Nobody answered.
This is all what Williams told me when he came back.
So I said, well, what happened then?
He said, well, the general in his infinite wisdom said it happened off the base.
It's a British affair.
Case closed.
So he gave me the tape back and I said, what do I do?
He said, well, get with Squadron Leader Morland, who was a liaison from the RAF, and see what he wants to do.
Well, Don Morland was in Wales.
That was his home, Alan Angassi Island.
So I had to wait until he came back from his Christmas holiday, hence the delay from when the incident occurred until I wrote my memo.
So I talked with him, and he made some phone calls and said, give me a memo.
So I kind of, I would say, cleaned it up.
I made it brief, just enough said unexplained lights.
I didn't say UFO.
And I thought, well, the British will be here momentarily to investigate.
I had it typed in the office.
We didn't even keep a copy.
All we had was what was called the typing manifold or a carbon copy, which went missing somewhere through the years.
And I gave it to Conrad to Reed, who was my boss.
He took it and showed it to Williams, who read it apparently.
Unbeknownst to me, they may have made a copy.
I don't know for a fact.
He brought it back.
I gave it to Moreland.
Moreland sent it off to the MOD.
He also, unbeknownst to me, made a copy and sent it to his boss, who was the liaison at 3rd Air Force.
That's Air Force headquarters in England.
That's the copy that eventually got released.
Time went by, nothing happened, and I was delighted.
I got teased about it all the time, but I was just happy.
This was going to go away.
And what about you, though?
Did you have any form of debriefing?
Did anybody else come and speak with you?
Did anybody say, well, you know, let's just draw a line under this now?
Nobody ever.
The closest anybody ever came to debriefing me was in 1990, I believe it was, when John Alexander, you may not know him, John Alexander ran the non-lethal weapons laboratory at Sandillo.
But he had, at first I thought he was officially debriefing me, and he and I spent some time together and I realized he had a personal interest.
It had nothing to do with his official job, or I didn't think it did.
Now, in the meantime, you're all in the military.
You are used to dealing with difficult and unusual situations.
But nevertheless, you're human beings, all of you, whether you're highest rank or lowest rank, you have to try, and they have to try to assimilate what has gone on.
So what was it like in the period afterwards?
How were you helping the people who went through these experiences?
And how were you helping yourself?
Well, I met with all and took statements from everybody that was involved on all three nights, except for the second night when I didn't know about the second night two years later.
And I discussed it with them, and I told them, about the best thing you can do since the American military has no interest or no apparent interest is a better way to put it, put it on a shelf and just don't deal with it.
Just pretend it didn't happen.
Get on with your life, is what I told them.
And that's what I tried to do until it became public knowledge.
And how did it become public knowledge?
Well, two ways.
First of all, Mr. Warren, who was, in my opinion, a wannabe, was put out of the service as unsuitable, undesirable, went back to the States and started talking to UFO people.
He had taken a lot of people's tales and put it all together and didn't get it quite right.
But anyhow, he got in contact with Larry Fawcett and Barry Greenwood, two authors and UFON people who had written a book called Clear Intent.
They contacted me.
They tried to find a copy of my memo.
I didn't have a copy, and we went back and told them we didn't have a copy, which was true.
In fact, years later, when I wanted a copy, I had to go on the internet to get it.
That's another story.
So he kept poking around, Larry Warren, or excuse me, Larry Fawcett and Barry Greenwood, and they went to Third Air Force.
And somebody there remembered that the MOD representative, the RAF liaison, had talked about or had a copy.
So the next thing I know, I get a call from the acting Third Air Force commander, Pete Bent, who was a good personal friend of mine.
He said, Chuck, I've got this memo.
I'm going to have to release it.
I said, Pete, burn it.
I said, you release that, and my life and yours will never be the same.
He said, I've got to.
So he released it.
Well, you know what broke loose immediately thereafter.
I met BBC One, BBC Two, ITV, German TV, Japanese TV, Radio Warwell, on and on and on and on.
And I'd had to go into hiding almost.
Right.
And no, look, you mentioned Larry Warren.
I have personally met Larry Warren in Liverpool, and, you know, he's not here to speak for himself, so we have to be fair.
I looked into his eyes.
I asked if he was telling me a true story about what he went through around that time and what he'd been told would happen to him if he spoke about this.
I looked right into his eyes, and he seemed to be telling me a credible story, but I know opinions may differ about this.
And this is part of the difficulty, isn't it, about the whole Rendlesham thing.
He's entitled to his opinion.
Read my book, and I think you'll understand.
All right.
Okay.
Well, look, this is a story that, of course, captivates so many people.
The newspapers never fail to be interested in this, and they mark all of The anniversaries.
So the cat is out of the bank.
People are talking about this.
It's known about.
And as you had said, our lives are going to be not worth living if this gets out there.
What exactly was your life like subsequent to the news getting out?
Well, there was no problem because most of the people on the base there understood that something unusual happened.
There were enough of us involved.
They knew something happened, but they didn't want to get involved in it, and they joked about it.
I had no serious issues, and fortunately, it didn't become public before I got promoted to colonel, or it probably would have ruined my chances for promotion.
What was the general, when you were talking to your senior colleagues in the days and the months and maybe the years subsequent to all of that, you know, what was the general view of what happened?
Because look, even if it wasn't something extraterrestrial, it was damned weird.
And more importantly, perhaps than any of that for both the UK and the U.S., there would have been big security implications, wouldn't there?
There certainly would have been.
But none of the senior officers wanted to touch it.
It's like a tar baby.
Once you tuck it, touch it, you're stuck with it.
They kept at arm's length.
They wanted nothing to do with it.
That's why I was tasked with writing a memo instead of somebody above me.
Before any of this happened, were you interested in UFOs and ufology?
Did you know about Roswell?
Well, I heard the term, but you know, the only other contact or whatever experience you might say was when I was a teenager, probably 14 or 15.
My mother was involved in a big rummage sale, which is a jumble sale or whatever you call it in England.
And there were some books there, and I did read Major Donald Kehoe's book on UFOs, but I put it aside and never gave it another thought.
I don't remember reading anything else or hearing anything else about UFOs until I was at Bentwater's.
Okay.
What about the people who said that they had encounters with beings or energies not of this world?
Talk to me about that.
Well, I haven't had any other contact with any being or any other entity or any other object since or even before.
So I really can't say a whole lot, although they seem to be very sincere, and there's certainly enough of them that there must be something there.
And in the meantime, work has to continue.
Life has to go on.
Security for the NATO countries has to be maintained.
Of course, there is a modern theory, and there are a number of people I've spoken to who say this, and I have a feeling you won't be able to say anything about this, that there were some kinds of nuclear weapons being stored at that base.
And that was why something or someone was interested in that place.
Do you have anything to say about that?
I really can't comment on that.
I can tell you this, there's something strange about that area, and it continues to this day.
Now, the base is closed.
I say closed.
We're gone, as you well know.
The British military has a presence at Woodbridge.
The housing's been sold off.
Bill Kimball, who was a friend of mine, bought the industrial side and airfield side of Bentwaters.
But activity of some nature continues there to this day.
Now, there's a lot of interesting things.
Keep in mind, Orford Nest, where the lighthouse is, had some very high-classified activities prior to that.
Well, there's certainly some kind of over-the-horizon radar, wasn't there, at Orford Nest?
Oh, there was all sorts of things done out there.
A lot of that's now in the public domain.
You'd have to do some research, but some high-energy things, all kinds of different things were triggers for nuclear weapons, they tell me, and all sorts of things.
It's now barren, so to speak, pretty much.
Just to the north of there is Butley Village, which was a stone's throw from Bentwaters, home of British witchcraft, interesting.
Just south of there is our F. Bodzee, where the big experimental radar stations were set up during World War II.
So a lot of things in that area.
Now, you've just mentioned to me witchcraft.
You talked about the possibility that there may have been something alien there.
Were you a man before this who was willing to entertain any of those things, anything to do with the paranormal, supernatural, and all of that stuff?
No, I never had any real interest in it or any real contact in any way, shape.
As I told you, I don't belong to any organization like that that has anything to do with any of that or UFOs.
I don't subscribe to any journals.
I certainly get fed an awful lot of information from people that, you know, want me to know about either their experience or what they know or what they've heard.
One section of this book, and this is a big, well put together, and John Hansen is involved in this, so we've spoken to him on this show before, but this is a very big, very heavy, very well-documented book.
There is the transcript of a conversation that you had, the HALT tape recording.
It's page 231, where verbatim, we're told a transcript of your conversation is in here.
Why is this in here?
What's this telling us?
Well, I don't have the book in front of me, so I've put so much stuff in the book that you have to refresh my memory with which one it is.
Okay, well, this is involving people including Sergeant Monroe Ruby Nevilles, or Nevelles, I think it is.
Nevels, mm-hmm.
Sergeant Butsina or Bustinza?
Bustenza?
Yeah, Bustinsa.
So those appear to be the principal people involved in this.
There were four people that went into the forest with me and stayed with me the whole time.
In fact, they kind of stuck to me like glue after the first experience when we saw that glowing object.
People got very nervous and very concerned and very upset, I guess one way to put it.
I know that you're trained not to feel, other than in a useful way, fear, but did you feel fear?
Did you feel trepidation?
Any of you really involved in this?
You must have.
We all did, especially when the object was coming toward us in the forest.
And we moved forward.
In fact, my tape was analyzed by the people that did the Watergate tapes.
Well, that was a long time ago.
And they said, you know, they did voice Stress analysis, they said, Wow, you guys went off the chart there for a while.
Yeah, now there is.
I played this on a radio show that I did a few years ago.
I think we had to pay for the privilege of playing these things at the time, but there were actual recordings of your conversations there.
And from memory, I don't have a copy of the tapes we played because it's like 12 years ago on the radio on another radio station.
But it did sound pretty tense, certainly at certain points.
Well, I'm sorry you had to pay for them.
They're in the public domain.
You shouldn't have had to pay.
Well, I seem to remember that we had to.
There was somebody who made them available to us, but it's a long time ago.
But the general tenor of those tapes, from what I remember, was people doing their duty, but people also beginning to go off the scale a bit when it comes to stress.
Well, we were very, very concerned, to put it mildly.
When the Brits arrived.
We really didn't have any choice but to investigate.
Yeah, well, it's your duty, isn't it?
And you have to do it, I guess.
When the Brits arrived, now you know what the Brits are like for secrecy and being straight, you know, playing a straight bat and all the rest of it.
How did they handle this?
Actually, Don Morland was quite upset, too, the liaison officer.
I didn't have any interface with anybody else over it.
None of the British military.
Now, I did work with the local territory armor out of it, Smiths, which I marched in every Member's Day Parade, and I occasionally socialized with the officers at their mess, and they all joked about it.
In fact, they said to me many times, next time that happens, call us.
We'll come out and solve the problem.
You may have seen more recently there were samples, weren't there, of earth taken from the site, taken from the forest, and they are seemingly anomalous.
What do you make of all of that?
If you really want to know the truth, the farmer probably burned brush there.
There's a lot of silicon in that soil there.
There's a lot of sand.
And I've burned many brush piles myself.
I've cleared a couple acres here on some rural property I have.
And that's the same thing I had happen there.
And what happens is the soil, the composition changes, the crystalline structure changes.
And it's very similar to what was reported.
And also, the claim was made that the area got very green then.
Well, you know what one of the byproducts of burning brush and burning wood is?
Potash.
You know what?
That's potassium, one of the three ingredients in almost all fertilizers.
So you're saying that we really, although we have to bear in mind that something very, very unusual that hasn't been fully explained went on there, we have to get a sense of perspective.
That's correct.
And the place that that soil sample was taken from is not where we had the experience and the people who did the first night.
Okay, point taken.
And if anybody ever mentions that to me again, I will tell them what you told me.
In the book also, there's a little bit of chronology here.
11 p.m. on December 28th, strange figures seen on the A-12 road.
Now, this is an area where stuff like that happens.
You're quite right.
I know people who've seen and experienced things.
And that whole East Anglia area seems to be some kind of, you know, seems to be some kind of vortex, some kind of area for those things to happen.
What was that all about?
Because I have enough British friends that have told me tales that are hard to believe, and they're very credible people.
Well, this story is Anne Clark, backseat passenger in a car traveling south at 8.12, 11 p.m., 28th of December, 1980, so right in the middle of all of this.
And there's a quote here, just past the South World Turn, I saw a figure sitting on a fence well back from the right-hand side.
I watched as it got off the fence and walked to the edge of the road in very small steps, as if it was weak or suffering from illness, followed by another similarly dressed person in inverted commas, wearing a long and voluminous cloak or habit, heavy cowl preventing me from seeing their faces.
Weird indeed.
Well, that sort of thing apparently continues to this day.
So when you look back on it then, Chuck, what do you think about it?
Is it something that you would prefer not to have to keep being asked about and keep referring to?
Because I know the media constantly want to talk with you.
How do you think about it?
Well, you know, I've been so disappointed in dealing with the media.
I'll tell you why.
Because they tend to sensationalize it and use it to sell the program or to sell newspapers or to sell something.
They're not really interested in the facts in most cases.
They're more interested in a story.
Okay, well, I guess that's the nature of journalism.
I'm not accusing you of anything.
No, no, no, but I mean, I like to think that I'm doing something a bit different here, although my training is journalistic, but I do completely understand what you say.
At any stage in all of this, did anybody warn you off?
No, never.
That's the interesting part.
And that's the disappointing part.
Why didn't somebody from the MOD contact me?
You can't answer that question, and I can't answer that question.
Maybe they didn't know what to do.
It seems to me that the whole approach to it was very laid back.
It almost seems to me that the people at a higher level who were told about this maybe were aware that such things happen and were very aware that, okay, it's happened here.
It's happened on a fairly large scale involving people.
And we need to close the door on it pretty quick.
And maybe it'll all just go away if we ignore it.
Of course it didn't.
Well, they were pretty successful for a while.
Why did you get involved in this book, Chuck?
Because of all the nonsense in Left at the East Gate.
I can walk you through that book.
There are 50 things that are nonsense.
Everything claims that airplanes were shot at, nonsense.
You name it, people that were supposedly there, that weren't there, that couldn't have been there.
underground facility which doesn't exist, on and on and on and on.
And yet they even talk about the cloud busters which turned out to They were dummy missiles that Kharabarov, Colonel Baro Baroff, put together To fool the Russian satellites.
I suppose, to an extent, though, you can understand why imperfections creep into a story like this, because if nobody is confirming anything, and if the general mood of it is we need to close this down pretty quick, then of course there are going to be misinterpretations, facts that are perhaps not quite correct, those sorts of things will creep in.
Well, some of those things don't just creep in.
There is a very large group of people that are very skillful in what I call deception.
And what better way to discredit a story than to make it so ridiculous or so entertaining that people laugh?
Who might they be?
Would they be connected with the government or an agency of some kind?
All of the above.
Really?
And how do you feel about that?
You know, bearing in mind that the United Kingdom and the United States are founded on freedom and truth and honesty and all the rest of it.
How do you feel that somebody might be wanting to do that, Chuck?
Disappointed.
I can tell you there's an agency that's beyond the government that is in the background that they're pulling the strings.
All of our three-digit near-M, whatever agencies are only pools.
They only report.
They don't have the full story.
And it's unfortunate.
How do you know that?
I've been able to piece together enough stuff.
Okay, well, I don't want you to tell me anything that you would be uncomfortable with.
I'm not going to tell you any more than that on the radio.
And does that involve...
There's some very, very, how shall I say, intelligent people that have had unbelievable contacts in all the right places, and they've come to the same conclusion.
We are not alone.
And that knowledge, how does that make you feel?
A bit uncomfortable, but I can't do anything about it.
So what I do is I put the whole incident on a shelf, and I don't even worry about it until someone such as yourself comes along and asks some questions.
If you're legitimate, I'll answer your questions.
Okay.
I didn't do the book to make it a bestseller.
The book was probably, we're going to lose money on the book, to be very honest with you.
800 pages, 1,000 pictures, many in color, is costing us more than what we're getting for each book to put it together.
The idea is to get the truth out there, let you read it, and let you come to your own conclusion.
And I have to say, it's a fabulous book.
I mean, I haven't had it for very long, so I haven't been able to read it cover to cover.
But in terms of the documentation, the original documents, the photographs of people who were involved, the sketches and diagrams, I have to say that, and I get across my desk a lot of books like this.
I have never quite seen one this good.
So you've done it incredibly well.
And if I can do anything to put the word out there, then that's fantastic.
Just to take you back briefly, though, to this idea that there is an agency or a group of people, a cabal, whatever it might be, that doesn't want the truth getting out there.
That is an enormous thing for the world to know, isn't it?
The truth of that is an enormous thing for ordinary people going about their day-to-day lives to grab hold of.
I'm not the only one saying that.
And how do you think that fits in with all of the political changes that we're seeing in the world, with the election of Donald Trump on a populist agenda, with the fact that the United Kingdom voted to leave the European Union and all of that stuff?
Do you think we're going to see more disclosure?
No, I don't think you're going to.
That's not going to happen until the powers to be, so to speak, decide it's time, or something very unusual happens that can't be covered up or can't be explained.
Of the people that you know- He turned to Warren Hubble, who was then his chief of staff.
By the way, Warren Hubble got himself in some personal trouble, but he was a very competent man.
And Clinton turned to Warren Hubble, and this is well documented, said, I want to know two things.
I want to know who killed Kennedy and are UFOs real.
He never got an answer to either one.
And what do you make of all of this stuff?
Every time there's a change of president, and I go back quite a few years and have done quite a lot of interviews and a lot of radio over my lifetime, for better or worse.
Everybody always says every time there's a change of president, well, of course, the president will be given access to the UFO alien files.
We'll get to know the truth.
That's a joke.
Really?
You don't think they do?
No.
So all of this stuff that I was hearing before the election along the lines of if Hillary gets elected, then Hillary's going to be the one to do it.
All rubbish, you think?
All right.
You know who was behind Hillary?
John Podesta.
You heard the name?
He's the guy that had all his emails leaked, by the way.
Yes, yeah.
John's a brilliant guy, very talented, a very astute politician.
I met him, I briefed him, had very strong interest in having disclosure, and, you know, did all but promise if, you know, she got in the White House, there would be disclosure.
And a lot of people ran around with their hair on fire saying, oh, get her elected so we get disclosure.
She would not have been told anything, I can tell you right now.
Presidents come and presidents go.
And what about stories of various people?
I think there's even a story about my namesake, Howard Hughes, but certainly various prominent people down the decades in the United States being shown inside the gates of Area 51 or wherever it happens to be, being shown aliens, craft, and all the rest of it.
What do you make of that?
It might be true.
But my question is, why would they show somebody like that or someone like Steven Spielberg or someone like Jackie Gleason, who allegedly saw UFOs, etc.?
That's who I was thinking of.
Jackie Gleason was taken there.
Was it Truman who was taken there?
They say.
Now, is that true?
We don't know.
So at this stage in your life, saying the things that you're saying, do you feel any sense of personal risk, I suppose, is the phrase I want to use?
Well, one thing I have done, I did years and years and years ago, in fact, I initially did it with Barry Greenwood and Larry Fawcett, is I made a tape of everything I know, and I gave several copies to several people.
They have one.
There's others that are available.
But I've pretty much said everything I have To say other than opinion.
Okay, you said pretty much.
I haven't hit anything.
I've been accused of having a second tape.
I've been accused of manipulating and editing the original tape, which I didn't.
Well, there actually is a mistake on it.
The original tape has a very short bar of music on it.
I was playing it with a little Lanair recorder one day at my home for a friend, and my daughter was practicing piano in the next room.
And the switch that you play, if you slid it the wrong way, it recorded.
It went record one way and play the other way.
And I accidentally bumped it into record while she was playing.
So there was a boop-boop-boop-boop of music on there.
But other than that, the tape was not edited.
I did not make a second tape that night.
I only had one tape with me.
I only had one set of batteries.
I never expected to be in the forest very long.
I was going to go out and say, look, there's nothing here.
Let's go home, guys.
So, no, I didn't have a second tape there.
I mentioned to somebody that I had a second tape, but what I tried to explain to them was my tape made later of the whole event and everything I knew.
Why did you make a tape?
Just so I had all the information down of something happened to me, I lost my memory, I got hit by a bus, whatever.
And you said to me that you already said pretty much all there is to be said.
Now, pretty much allows for a certain percentage of stuff you haven't said.
What is it that you might be holding back?
Well, there's things I can't talk about.
You have to understand.
My last job was a very sensitive job.
I had more than a top secret clearance.
I was exposed to a lot of things that we just don't talk about.
And are those things directly involved in what happened at Rendlesham Forest, or are they just general military things?
General military things.
In fact, when I left the military, I got debriefed by several very skilled debriefers.
In other words, they sat me down and said, you're leaving.
You cannot talk about the following things, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
We went over everything.
They were very thorough.
They knew what they were doing.
And at the end, they never brought up Bentwaters.
So I said to them, I said, how about the incident at Bentwaters?
And they looked at each other and said, what was that?
I said, well, there was an alleged UFO incident at Bentwaters that I was involved in.
They kind of chuckled and said, that's not an issue.
Don't worry about it.
When I was approached to do the first TV program for Unsolved Mysteries in 1991, I was working for the Secretary of Defense.
I had total inspection oversight of the whole Department of Defense, all services, all agencies, including NSA and DIA.
Unsolved Mysteries approached me, and I was interested.
It's time to put the truth out there.
So I went to the DODIG I work for, who works for the Secretary of Defense, and said, here's what's going on.
He said, well, tell me about this.
So I sat him down, or he sat me down, rather.
And for about an hour, an hour and a half, I walked him through everything I knew.
And he said, go ahead and do it.
So I did.
Why do you think that was, Chuck?
Why do you think they were so amenable?
This is so compartmentalized, whatever's behind all this, that, you know, you can't get to it.
Do you think it would be a good thing, you said we are not alone, and I'm inclined to think that too.
Would it be a good thing if the various agencies, the U.S. government, whoever does know stuff, actually did go for disclosure and did tell the people?
I don't think you'll find anything there.
I think everything's a pass-through.
So in other words, if you went in under what's known as the Freedom of Information Act, and I think you have something comparable now in Great Britain to get the documents, you wouldn't find any documents.
But there are still people who know, even if it's not written down anyway.
I'm not sure how much they know.
There's obviously people, assuming we have alien bodies, which I have suspicion I don't know.
You know, I can't even comment on that.
We have craft that we've reconstructed or reversed engineering, certainly possible.
But yes, there are some people that would know that.
Sounds to me talking to you, Chuck, and I'm really pleased that you've made time to talk with me.
And I hope that you know that I'm not one of the sensationalist media.
I'm genuinely interested, and I'm generally trying to get to some kind of truth here.
But it sounds to me like you have a whole bunch of questions yourself that you'd like an answer to.
I do.
I do, but I don't know where do you get the answers.
So what are you going to do?
Are you going to continue to be the custodian of this information and put it out in this form?
Are you doing more research?
Not really, although I've picked up some more stuff, and John has some more information.
He's probably going to put a supplement up sometime in the near future, or maybe a soft cover or an e-book or something.
Because a few more things have come to light.
Nothing earth-shattering, but more that, how should I say, lends credibility to some of the people's statements and comments, or puts a little more, a better light on what happened.
So anything further we get, we will put out.
And what do you make, I know it's referenced in the book, what do you make, and I've done a couple of shows about this and done a few interviews about it, of the idea that extraterrestrials, whatever they might be, other dimensional creatures and UFOs, are interested in nuclear facilities.
I spoke to Robert Savas, for example, on that.
What do you think about that?
I would suggest you read Robert Hastings' book.
Yes, I've interviewed Robert Hastings.
He has a very good book.
He's done extensive research on it.
Does it sound to you like the kind of thing that may well have happened?
Quite possibly, yes.
I'm talking about the whole book.
I'm not talking about anything specific.
There are many, many other stories about East Anglia in here.
Many.
And they're all documented.
There are sketches, some photographs, photographs of the people, documents, all the rest of it.
Of those stories, which are the most compelling to you?
Do you have a favorite?
No, not really.
I'll tell you what I do believe.
I do believe there's some type of attractant in that area and has not entirely due to the base.
And it's either a portal or some type of attraction or some type of magnetic field.
There's something to deal with that area.
There's something funny about that area.
I'm just turning to the section on 1988 in that area.
7th of May couple sight flying saucer.
And there is an amazing sketch of a flying saucer typical craft with what appear to be windows and lights in it.
But there are lots of accounts like this in here.
What would you like to see happen to all of this information?
Do you think, you know, that Nick Pope was involved in collating a lot of this information for the Brits, and now he's an independent consultant.
Do you think that we need to get back some kind of governmental organization that will coordinate all this information?
I would love to see a professional organization backed by governmental funding or, you know, SNSON investigate these things properly.
Several countries do that.
Chile does that.
I think the French are moving in that direction.
There is definitely something there, as you and I both know.
When you go to all of these conventions, which I presume you do, and the— I rarely do.
I'm going to speak at, well, I spoke in Maryland last month.
I'm going to speak in February at the big conference in Scottsdale, Arizona in February.
And I've agreed to do something next fall in Pennsylvania.
And that's probably all.
And all I'm really doing is just tell the story and tell people, go buy the book, read the book.
So you ration your appearances.
So you ration your appearances, which I think is a good thing.
When you stand up on the podium and the rapt attention of all of those people interested in this subject is yours, what are the first things you say?
How do you introduce it?
Well, basically, I tell them a little bit about my background.
I tell them about the base so they understand and can put it in perspective.
And I walk them basically through what happened.
And then I comment.
And I always love to take questions because I get some very good questions, some of which I can't answer because, you know, they'll ask me, you know, where do they come from?
Well, I don't know.
Okay.
What is the most interesting question that you've been asked that you can remember?
I can't answer that.
That's about because it has to do with the classified subject.
Wow.
Okay.
See, there's so much of this to go through, isn't there?
Now, keep in mind, the UFO incident is not classified.
Never has been.
People talk about it being a secret or top-secret document.
My memo is not classified.
It was restricted to who it went to.
I only gave it to Morning, or that's how long it was intended for.
Now, this is interesting.
Anybody who does anything like you've done, who speaks out about matters like this, of course you get communications from people, especially in this era of email.
From those communications that you've had, have you had people contact you and say, Chuck, right on, these things are going on.
I'm in the military and this stuff is happening now.
Do you get communications like that?
Oh, I've got hundreds.
I have three or four file drawers full of stuff.
I have seen everything from the second coming of Christ to I'm in cahoots with the devil.
There are some really strange people out there.
Well, I'm thinking about the ones who perhaps are a little more credible, the ones who you know just from the tenor of the communication, that they are in the military and they've been involved.
Yes.
In fact, quite a few people who were at Bentwaters before 1980 and since 1980 have come forward with stories, very compelling stories of strange things, too.
Do you think this stuff is going on now?
John just had correspondence recently from one of the controllers at R.F. Wadersham.
That's the air traffic control people.
And they confirm that right after my incident, men in uniform and suits showed up and took all the tapes and took everything and told everybody it didn't happen and left.
Why do you think, I mean, I've done some bits on the radio about this.
Why do you think it's taken 30 years for these controllers to speak out now?
That's interesting.
I think one reason is because the book came out and somebody was able to put the pieces together and say, hey, I was there then and this did happen.
He's actually got a name.
It's in the book, I think.
As I remember, we put it in the book.
And do you think things like this are happening now in 2017 as it is?
Yes.
And do you say that advisedly, Chuck?
Do you know that?
Well, not firsthand, no.
I've got it from people that are very credible.
And from the accounts that you've heard and from what you went through, what do you believe planet Earth is going through?
Well, we're in trouble.
We know that.
From climate change and all the activity and the potential for a nuclear disaster, something stupid from North Korea or Lord knows where, or an accident somewhere.
But do you believe that we're being observed, perhaps part of somebody else's experiment, or visited?
What do you think it's all about?
All I know is there's some other, how you want to call it, force, being, entity, or something that we share the universe with.
And they have a great deal of interest in us.
Now, are they being beneficial?
Perhaps.
Are they being detrimental?
Maybe there's more than one agency, maybe more than one group.
I don't know.
I just have an opinion, but there's definitely something there.
Sum up for me, and I can hear in the stories that you've told me and the way that you put the story across.
Sum up for me, Chuck, the difference that this made to your life.
How are you a different man now than you were, say, at the beginning of December that year?
Actually, you know, I've been pretty successful in putting it on the shelf and just, in other words, only deal with it when I needed to deal with it and forget all about it at any other time.
In other words, I still do my normal things.
I still go to, you know, about doing things.
I still pay my bills.
It hasn't really made a big effect on me, other than it's taken some of my time from time to time.
Do you sometimes wish that it had never happened and you hadn't had to be embroiled with it?
You hit the nail in the head there.
But do I have a choice?
I was thrust into it, and I accept that.
And so I'm not an entertainer.
I'm not in for the money.
I usually lose money.
In fact, one conference I lost $1,500 because the organizer never paid my airfare or hotel bill.
And I normally accept expense money, and that's all.
In fact, when I came back to Woodbridge last year, the deal was they would pay my expenses.
My son came with me, my older son.
I paid for his expenses.
I paid for my hotel.
They provided meals and travel, et cetera.
And I said, any money we make, which I think there was, well, there was supposed to be some money made, and that's another story, goes to the Forest Service for improving the area there and doing some work that they needed to get done.
We had somebody that filmed the thing, and the film was supposed to be sold.
They apparently put it on the internet the next day, so that went out the window.
The problem is that the people who were involved in the service at that time, inevitably the march of time catches up with all of us, and there will be a time when none of those people are around.
How would you like the events of December 1980 to be remembered by future generations?
That's one reason I put the book together.
So if somebody 10 or 20 or 30 years from now is doing some research, they can go back and they can read all the original statements.
They can read my comments.
They can read my comments to other people's activity so that it's well documented.
That's the reason.
I've interviewed Paul Hellier, the former Defense Minister of Canada, a number of times.
Have you met him?
Well, yeah, he and I are friends.
In fact, he endorsed the book.
Read the cover of the book.
And what does he make of what happened at Rendlesham Forest and your experience?
What does he tell you?
He's a believer.
In fact, he came all the way down here, and he and I sat down and spent an afternoon, had lunch, and then spent an afternoon together.
And he explained his philosophy.
He has some thoughts on a lot of other things, too, you know, in the financial end of things.
But he's an avid believer and a strong supporter of UFO research and disclosure.
When you look at the world today, 2017, versus the world in 1980, and look, Chuck, I can remember 1980, and I think it was a pretty good time.
What do you make of this world?
This internet-connected world where everybody supposedly knows everything about everything?
Well, it's scary, I tell you.
I went to the dentist yesterday, and the dentist retired, and I got a new dentist, and he automated his whole office system.
And the first thing they did was give me a five-page thing to fill in with my life history.
And they wanted my social security number, which I refused to give them.
They wanted to know this.
They wanted to know that.
The age of my father when he died.
I said, that's none of your cursed business.
I'm here to get my teeth checked and cleaned.
I'm very sad.
I don't have a Twitter account.
I have a Facebook account, which I don't use.
I very rarely do anything that attracts attention.
I'd like to keep a low profile.
See, I wonder if aliens were monitoring us and were regularly visiting us, which I believe, actually, they probably are.
Of course, in this day and age, they would be Facebooked and Twittered.
They'd be on YouTube.
They'd be just about on every portal.
The only problem is that even fewer people would believe that that's what was happening than would have believed that in 1980.
People would be much more skeptical now, much more ready to say, don't you think, Chuck, that's a fake?
Yeah, I tend to agree with you.
How do you deal with skepticism?
Oh, I hear it all the time.
I just tell them, you know, you can think what you want to think.
Here's what happened.
Draw your own conclusion.
How would you like to be remembered in future generations?
You yourself?
Well, not as a guy that reported a UFO.
I can see it now on a tombstone.
This guy saw a UFO.
Well, you know, there are worse ways to be remembered, Chuck.
Oh, I suppose so.
Are you coming back to England?
I have no immediate plans, no.
If John puts something together and there's enough interest, I would certainly consider it.
But that's not foremost in my mind right now.
I know there was a lot of flurry and kerfuffle around the, I think it was the 35th anniversary.
It must have been because it was only a couple of years ago, and we were told we're going to get all sorts of new information and all the rest of it.
The 35th anniversary came and went.
Were you disappointed that we didn't get more information on the 35th anniversary?
Well, I didn't participate.
I was invited.
Was there any reason for that?
Were you tired of doing these things?
Well, because some of the stuff that was going on was not factual.
And some of the people that were going to speak there, it's nonsense, so I just didn't want to be involved in it.
Fabulous book, Chuck.
And you and John Hansen have done a great job on this.
The book is called The HALT Perspective, plus previously unpublished UFO sightings over East Anglia.
So it's the full story of Rendlesham Forest, plus a whole lot of other stuff in a very strange area.
Congratulations on the book.
Now that this is out there, do you want to put your feet up?
Sort of.
I'm still getting comments from people, so I'm collecting any more information I can get, and we'll make it publicly available.
You mean there's going to be a second edition, you think?
I don't know that for a fact.
There's some more information coming, and we'll put that out one way or another.
It's nothing, how should I say that changes anything that's in the book?
And you're retired these days.
How do you spend your days?
Today I'm going to take, when we get off the phone, I'm going to take the dog for a two-mile walk.
I have a dog that looks like Lassie, a big collie.
I have a vacation home in the mountains, which I've been working on for years, and 125 acres, which requires a lot of time and effort.
I'm doing things I've always wanted to do.
If you were at your vacation home in the mountains and you're in complete darkness and you're connecting with nature, beautiful situation to be in, and you saw a triangular craft in the sky or something like that, knowing what you know, would you report it?
Probably.
I would probably report it to Mufon.
I would also probably take a picture of her, try and take a picture of it.
You get yourself in the papers all over again, Chuck.
Oh, I understand.
Charles Holt, it's been a real pleasure to talk with You.
Is there anything that I haven't covered that I should have?
No, I don't think so.
Well, I thank you very much for speaking with me.
You've been a very gracious interviewee.
I wish you and John Hansen all the best with the book and anything that I can do to help, then I certainly will.
And thank you very much, Chuck.
Well, I appreciate it too.
Thank you.
Colonel Charles Holt, Chuck Holt, on this edition of The Unexplained, with the first-hand story of what happened at Rendlesham Forest in December 1980.
It seems like a very long time ago in some ways, and yet to me I was a young boy, almost in those days.
And when I think back, it seems like only yesterday, but the world was such a different place.
I mean, the question that I asked, Chuck, I think is a very interesting one.
If something like that happened today, how would we report it?
How would we reflect it?
And could it be kept secret in this modern world of ours?
Questions that you might want to think about.
If you want to get in touch with me, give me your feedback about this show, maybe suggest guests for future shows, or just tell me what you think about the way the shows are done.
Generally, any ideas or suggestions, whatever, you can go to the website theunexplained.tv and there you can send me an email.
When you do email, tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use the show.
And if you'd like to make a donation to the show, that'll be gratefully received too.
We have more great guests coming up in 2017, so until next we meet, my name is Howard Hughes.
This has been The Unexplained, and please stay safe, please stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
Thank you very much.
Take care.
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