Edition 331 - John Burroughs/Rendlesham Forest
John Burroughs - who was on the scene of deeply strange events near a US military base inthe UK in 1980...
John Burroughs - who was on the scene of deeply strange events near a US military base inthe UK 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 Return of the Unexplained. | |
Well, by the looks of it, we're getting well and truly stuck into 2018. | |
It's now February and the year chugs on. | |
Big guest on this edition, more about that in a moment. | |
No shout-outs on this one because of the big guest. | |
But thank you very much for all of the points that you've been making in your emails, the nice things you've been saying. | |
When you get in touch with me by email, please tell me who you are, where you are, and how you use this show. | |
That information vital to me. | |
You can go to the website, theunexplained.tv, and follow the link, and you can send me a message of any kind from there. | |
If you've got a guest suggestion, thoughts on the show, ways that I can improve it, then I love to hear from you wherever in the world you are. | |
And thank you very much for being part of this big international family that we seem to have created together over the last 12 years or so. | |
Boy, long time. | |
Big show. | |
So no shout-outs on this edition. | |
The guest, though, is a man who was at Rendlesham Forest. | |
Now, I think you know what I'm talking about when I say those words, but just in case you don't. | |
Rendlesham Forest, the site of what has been claimed to be the biggest UFO-stroke alien encounter there has ever been. | |
Certainly the site across three nights at the end of 1980 of some very, very weird happenings. | |
The area adjacent to an American airbase, and the events of those nights involved not only U.S. service personnel, but also British police and others, and they are still hotly debated to this day. | |
Did something land there? | |
What were the strange lights? | |
What about the radiation? | |
Was it all a hoax? | |
Were they just beams that were seen by people from a nearby lighthouse? | |
Was there some kind of military research going on there? | |
Many questions to be asked, and these questions have hovered in the mind of the guest on this edition for all of those 37 odd years. | |
His name, John Burroughs, he was there. | |
He's a U.S. serviceman, former U.S. serviceman. | |
He's due to be coming over to the UK to talk to a conference in May. | |
Check the web for details of that, of course. | |
But I've wanted to speak with John Burroughs about this for some time, and I'm really, really pleased, thanks to Ronnie Dugdale in the UK, that it's about to happen here. | |
So I would welcome your thoughts about the story that you're about to hear from John Burroughs, who is a man who's quested for answers about the events at Rendlesham Forest for a huge chunk of his life. | |
And if you're like me and clearly like him, if something happens that you don't entirely get an answer to, and it has a massive effect on your life, you're probably going to spend as many years as it takes trying to get some answers. | |
And it strikes me that John Burroughs is one of those people, and I totally get why that is. | |
So let's get to the U.S. now to the guest on this edition of The Unexplained, John Burroughs is here. | |
John, thank you very much for coming on my show. | |
Thanks for having me on, Howard. | |
I look forward to the interview. | |
Well, look, you have stepped into, but then, you know, this happened in 1980, you stepped into one of the deepest and broadest and biggest controversies I think there has ever been. | |
And it seems rather than getting less controversial as people get older and as time goes by, it seems to be getting more controversial. | |
There seem to be more people wanting to put their two cents into this story. | |
What do you think about my observation there? | |
Is that right? | |
Well, I mean, in some ways, yes. | |
And I think that the part of the problem with Rendlesham is it happened over more than one night. | |
So there wasn't one little event where two or three people were involved and saw something. | |
It went over at least a three, if not a four night period at one point. | |
There was stuff that's happened prior and after the main four nights, and there's stuff still going on today, and there's stuff going back on in the 50s in that area. | |
So you have a lot of interest in it, besides the fact that you have military personnel involved, that you can actually see some documentation to support it. | |
But you have a broad scrope of people that either witnessed something or heard something or both. | |
So, yeah, it grows. | |
Plus, the internet itself makes it so much easier now to bring stuff into focus and into one area. | |
True enough. | |
When you arrived for your military service, and I guess you were, what, in your 20s or thereabouts then, were you aware that this area, and I, of course, I'm British, I know, were you aware that this area had a bit of a history going for it? | |
Actually, I got there when I was 19 or 18, I think 18 or 19, and the incident happened right after I turned 20. | |
Not really. | |
The only thing that I kind of knew was there was some folklore or some talk about some ghosts and then witches, you know, witchcraft in the area. | |
But I was a young kid, and to be honest with you, I didn't pay much attention to it. | |
I mean, I just lived my life. | |
So I didn't know much about the lore or, you know, anything like that in the area until that fateful night. | |
All right. | |
What were you employed to do there? | |
What was your rank? | |
What was your job? | |
I was in the Air Force. | |
I was in security police, which is what it was called at the time. | |
They've changed it now today, but it was security police at that point. | |
And at that point, also, security police was divided into two career fields. | |
It was security and law enforcement. | |
And security was what it's called. | |
It was security of the base resources. | |
And law enforcement was like a cop, like a regular cop. | |
And I worked the law enforcement end. | |
When we talk about base resources, were you aware at the time, and of course it has been sidestepped and denied down the years, that there were nuclear weapons there? | |
It's still being denied now, but a lot of people authoritatively say that there were. | |
Well, you know, people could say what they want, but when you're in the military, you sign certain paperwork and it lasts a lifetime. | |
And so there are certain places that you are in the world that you never were, and there's certain resources that you refuse to comment on. | |
Okay, and now our mutual friend Ronnie Dugdale sent me a copy of a very good article that he wrote about this that chronicles in his words what happened here, and in some of your words too, from the point of view of the principles. | |
It's good, but I have to say, I've printed this out, I've printed a lot of other stuff out for this recording that we're doing. | |
My printer is begging me not to hit the print button anymore because I've got so much paper here. | |
Why do you think, before we get into the detail of your story, there are so many conflicting versions of what occurred across those nights? | |
Well, I think some of it—why don't you—why don't you—why don't you—why don't you Okay, maybe we can narrow that down a little bit. | |
Well, should we say that the detail that comes out is different in some cases, even between yourself and Jim Penniston, who you were working directly with. | |
The accounts that you have as chronicled as I've seen them are slightly different. | |
Well, okay, I'm glad you narrowed that in. | |
Okay, there's a couple possibilities. | |
Now, you've got to be willing to understand that what we dealt with could very well be what a lot of people have dealt with or seen over the years. | |
There's even a movement here in the United States with a group of physicists, scientists, military people, you know, to try to expand on what the phenomenon is or what we're dealing with. | |
But one of the things is, is that whatever, when you deal with something like this, there's a report that was released in the UK. | |
It was sanctioned by the Ministry of Defense to look into the encounters that people were having and reports that were coming in. | |
And it's called Project Condine. | |
And in Project Condine, what's been released of it so far, that's not still classified completely or partly, you know, it was released, some of it with a lot of it redacted, is that when you actually have the encounter with whatever this is, it can affect how you see it, what you remember, and everything else. | |
And part of that's based on the frequencies that it gives off and even some radiation. | |
So people see it. | |
And if you go back in history and you look at a lot of these people, I call them experiencers, just simply because they've experienced something, not necessarily their contactees of what. | |
I mean, basically, people have had weird experiences over their lifetimes and you can have people see it totally different that we're there together. | |
So I think a lot of this plays into what happened with us, especially those that got really close to it. | |
It seems like the people that were in the distance looking at it from a distance saw it about the same way, but the people that got closest to it perceived it a little bit different. | |
Then you have the second factor that's been talked about by Colonel Hall. | |
And I do a weekly radio show called Phenomenon Radio. | |
And we had an OSI agent. | |
We verified he was on OSI. | |
He's been involved in this phenomenon for years. | |
He was the case agent that handled the Albuquerque incident. | |
But he claims to have read the report that was done by OSI on the Bentwaters incident. | |
And he said within it, there was also some interrogation and even some hypnosis done. | |
Now, he claimed the hypnosis had more to do with they were trying to get us to recall what we saw. | |
They seemed to be having trouble getting the same story straight and they didn't understand it. | |
But Colonel Haltz made the assumption that because of hypnosis was done, it may have messed with our memories. | |
I kind of go with the fact that I think based on if you really dig deep, the testimony's different by those who were the closest because of the phenomenon we encountered ourselves. | |
And let's just bear this in mind. | |
It is unlikely that they would waste their time, effort, shoe leather, and money on hypnosis if they didn't think something way beyond the normal had happened there. | |
Well, I agree. | |
And the thing is, is I think that was the initial when the story first broke years ago. | |
And like I said earlier, the internet's changed everything. | |
But it was real easy just to say, oh, they went out there, they saw this, they saw that, they were fooled by this, we were fooled by that. | |
But if you just start digging into the case and you look at the fact there was an investigation done, and again, going back to Project Condine, when you go into Condine, the one case they discuss is ours. | |
And they say that there's a good possibility we were exposed to higher than a normal background radiation from the phenomenon. | |
It's called UAPs. | |
So even in this official British report, it talks about Rendlesham itself and that the people that went out there encountered this phenomenon were exposed to UAP radiation. | |
And we just have to say for people who are not familiar with the term, I think if they're listening to this, they will be, UAP is unidentified aerial phenomenon or phenomena. | |
And it's the term that the British Air Force, and I think your Air Force also use, to avoid saying UFOs, because UFOs to most people mean a kind of spinning disc of the kind that you saw on the TV show, The Invaders. | |
That's right, isn't it? | |
Well, yes and no, because honestly, that's where I was talking about perception. | |
You can have people that say they saw discs, that they saw lights. | |
So the thing is, is what they're narrowing in on in this To the Stars group is that the actual physics behind it, they're looking at the capabilities of whatever this is, what it can do, goes into Condine. | |
Condine report goes into that too. | |
So there might be somebody that sees a disc. | |
Is it a disc or is it just an energy force? | |
So, yeah, they label it UAP and one of the things is that they're trying to cover up UFOs. | |
But realistically, yeah, UFOs has got a bad name. | |
Every time you say a UFO, you think of aliens. | |
But at the same time, I think UAP may be what they've studied this enough to know that that's the true nature of it, that they're not totally sure. | |
They've taken it one level higher than a UFO. | |
You know, they've kind of identified what it could be, but a little bit further advanced than a UFO, which is completely unidentified. | |
All right, after we've told your story, I want to talk with you more about the radiation because there is a very serious and personal reason why that is pertinent to you particularly. | |
but we'll get into that when we've unfolded the story. | |
And I'm going to shut up for a while because I want you to tell me the story of what happened from your perspective. | |
Now, all I will say is we'll set the scene. | |
It is December 1980. | |
It's almost Christmas time. | |
And, you know, what is going on at the base and then what happens? | |
You tell me your story, your way. | |
Well, sure. | |
I want to clarify some dates that we've been able to narrow in on based on documents and different things that have been recovered and found. | |
And Ronnie had a lot to do with that. | |
But we were working, we worked on a shift. | |
The different flights worked three swings, three mids, three days of break. | |
Okay. | |
So we were on our last midnight shift. | |
We came on duty at 2,300 on Christmas night. | |
Now, what we found out from some testimony from some different people that were working the shift prior to us, 3 to 11, there may have been some strange lights seen in the forest. | |
And some people got briefed on it, but we didn't. | |
The people that were at Woodbridge didn't know about this. | |
So it came on on Christmas night, December 25th at 2300, about 0300 on the 26th of December. | |
I was on patrol and actually met up with my supervisor. | |
It was a slow night at Woodbridge, and we rode around for a little bit. | |
He had just been assigned to the base. | |
He was my supervisor, going to be my supervisor until I departed, which was about six months away. | |
And he wanted to talk to me a little bit. | |
So we started driving around. | |
One of the checks that we were doing was driving down by the East Gate to make sure it was secure. | |
And as we were driving down the road that led up to the East Gate, he saw some strange lights in the forest. | |
He turned to me and said, take a look at that. | |
Have you seen anything like that before? | |
And I looked out towards the forest down into the forest area. | |
And I said, no, I haven't. | |
I've been there over a year and a half and I'd never seen anything strange like that like that. | |
So we opened up the gate, drove down to the end of the road where you had, you could take a left and head back to Bentwaters. | |
And the forest borderlines the road. | |
And he kind of turned the car around. | |
I jumped out. | |
When I jumped out, you could see the lighting. | |
It was strange lighting. | |
They'd been asked, what I said before, it looked like a Christmas type display of different coloring lights. | |
But there was like a static electricity in the air. | |
So it just didn't feel right. | |
We rocked base, went back up to the gate, called it in, ended up sending security patrol down. | |
They verified the same thing because they went ahead and when they came down, they called CSC. | |
And one of the other factors that was involved with all this at the very beginning was that once we saw this, they started making phone calls. | |
They called our radar. | |
Our radar called Eastern Radar and a couple other sources. | |
And they actually picked up something on radar that was supposedly over that forest area and disappeared. | |
So because of the lighting we were seeing and the fact that radar verified something had been on there and disappeared, our shift commander, Lieutenant Buran, was concerned that maybe an aircraft went down. | |
So it's very important that we clarify that something was noted on radar at the time. | |
Right. | |
Yes. | |
That was the only reason why we could go off base. | |
That's always been a huge debate over the years. | |
We should have gone off base. | |
We shouldn't have done this. | |
Or why did we go off base? | |
And even the lieutenant who wrote a statement later, and then it's been put out for the public to view, he doesn't like to talk about that part of it. | |
The fact of the matter was the only reason we could go off base, because whatever it was, was not on the perimeter fence line. | |
Do you know what I mean? | |
It wasn't like trying to gain entry onto the base or flying over the base. | |
Yeah, it was effectively too close for comfort. | |
Well, no, no, actually, it really wasn't. | |
I mean, what standard operating procedure should have been we contacted the British police and the fire department because it'd just be like if we were in the States. | |
If a civilian aircraft went down off base, we would contact everybody. | |
Now, mutual aid in the States, we would respond out if we could verify what it was. | |
But if it was just some suspicious report to us, most likely what would happen would be the civilians would look at it unless they requested us to go out there too. | |
Right, so this one was different then. | |
This one you were required to be more proactive. | |
Well, yeah, there was no contact with the British originally. | |
So basically, our shift commander based this simply on we had some radar contact and we had something strange in the woods. | |
Could be an aircraft, so he sent us out to see what it was. | |
And we left our weapons up at the gate and we went out into the forest because we don't have a lot of time. | |
Basically, we started going, we went into the forest so far in our vehicle. | |
We couldn't go any further. | |
We got out, the three of us, there were three of us, believe it or not, one of the three of us was a brand new airman, his first night on flight. | |
He later on said he even thought we were playing a gag on him because we used to used to jeep. | |
They called it Jeep, the young airman, the new guys. | |
Yeah, no, I read, in fact, in Ronnie's piece that you had a bit of a reputation anyway as a joker. | |
Yeah, I like a horse around. | |
Yeah, that kept things light and fun. | |
But so we got out of the vehicle. | |
We formed like a line formation. | |
We started going through the woods. | |
It seemed like at some point you got close to it, but then it seemed farther away. | |
But eventually what happened was we were coming down. | |
We were going through the forest, kind of went up like on a berm. | |
And as we came up over the top of the berm, there this bright light, white light was. | |
And this is where we start getting differences. | |
What I remember happening was the light was bright. | |
We hit the ground. | |
It seemed to like dim for a brief moment and then get bright again and go up into the sky and disappear. | |
Well, one of the people with me who was this, it was the staff sergeant, Penniston was his name. | |
He goes into more detail. | |
He claims that as the light dimmed, he got up. | |
He walked around it. | |
He touched it. | |
He saw glyphs. | |
He touched the glyphs. | |
He got a binary download. | |
He took notes of all this and everything else that took place. | |
Then it got bright again, lifted up and left. | |
So there's definitely a difference right there on the very first night and the early contact. | |
It went back towards the coast. | |
We followed it further, and then we lost it, and we got ordered to come back to base. | |
And for people who are new to this story, can we just clarify? | |
You said that Jim Penniston, who was working with you, claimed to have had a different experience and he saw hieroglyphs on this thing and had other experiences there. | |
Now, you were still working together as you pursued this thing, so he must have been talking about it to you, was he? | |
Well, a couple of things stand out. | |
Number one, we kind of split up as we, you know, split up further and we went into the field. | |
There isn't a lot of memory, especially for me, as far as what I can remember, what we said, or what went on from the point we saw it going forward, other than I could remember brief things about seeing it farther out down and across over the fence line in the field. | |
And do you mean by that? | |
I'm sorry, John, to interrupt. | |
Do you mean by that, John, that you've forgotten some things about this? | |
I don't, no, I've just never, I don't know about forgotten. | |
I just, there's certain things that I just don't, I can't remember. | |
Now, I've gone under hypnosis and there's some details filled in, but I like to make it clear that what I remember in hypnosis is different. | |
And there's a lot of people that are skeptical on hypnosis. | |
But yes, under hypnosis, we did chat. | |
We couldn't believe what it could do. | |
We, at one point coming back, we didn't even understand how we got from point A to point B and back so quick. | |
So I don't have a lot of memory other than just a few things, like at the point where one of the things that goes on, and I've got to be careful now because as the story's gone along, there's more and more people that throw their two cents worth in. | |
I'm not saying I have any idea for sure how all this happened. | |
I'm only trying to fill in the details I remember. | |
One of the things in my hypnosis and one of the things that when I returned over to Bentwaters is from where it started to where we went and ended, it's almost physically impossible for us to get there and back. | |
There's a hill and I won't, I can't remember the name of it. | |
I always forget it. | |
But one of the things I do remember was standing on this hill and looking down at the coast and you could see like a river or a waterway going out into the ocean itself and you could see the lighthouse. | |
There was a lighthouse out there. | |
So for us to get from 0300 till getting out there back, it would almost be physically impossible for us to do it. | |
And yet you did it. | |
Well, yeah, yeah. | |
Yeah. | |
I mean, that's the memory I have. | |
I was up there looking. | |
And even in my statement, we talk about how you could see the coast. | |
So, yeah, we did. | |
But what I'm trying to be careful with this case is this is where the hysterics come in. | |
I really don't know for sure what it was we encountered. | |
There's several possibilities that could be individually correct or mixed together. | |
And I really, I'm not trying to claim that we were abducted. | |
Now, some testimony of what people saw happen to me leads people to believe I could have been what they call abduction. | |
And as you know, this made the news in the UK about two, three weeks ago. | |
This is the Daily Express here. | |
I've got it in front of me. | |
It says a previously unseen interview with a U.S. Colonel. | |
This is Colonel Holt, the deputy base commander. | |
You will know him well. | |
Has revealed that he thought it possible two U.S. airmen, you were one of them, were abducted by aliens during the alleged Rendleton UFO encounter. | |
I mean, that's from a newspaper here in the UK, so that's their spin on this. | |
Do you think there is any possibility that you might have been abducted? | |
Since you achieved something that you said couldn't be achieved, in other words, you went on a journey that you couldn't complete in the time that it was completed, you're a little hazy on some of the details which have been subsequently, you say, revealed by hypnosis. | |
Has there been any doubt about that matter in your head over these 30 years? | |
Well, here's the interesting thing, okay? | |
A lot of people, to me, and that's not just on our incident, but in general, they put blinders on. | |
And what they do is they come to an assumption or they read some stuff and then they go, aha, that's what it has to be. | |
I don't know. | |
I really don't know. | |
There was, and I think, I mean, obviously, you know, a lot of times I do interviews with American stations, but you're from over there. | |
You're well aware of the technology that they worked on over in the UK and in that particular area. | |
Well, what do you think they're working on in that particular area? | |
Well, there's been a lot of research done on it. | |
They were working on SDI. | |
They were working on lasers. | |
They were working on drones. | |
They were working on EM frequencies and stuff like that. | |
There was plenty of technology at Maarlstrom Heath and Bowsy. | |
They were working on that particular type of technology with lasers and a lot of other things and EMP frequencies and stuff. | |
That area of the world or the United Kingdom itself was high-end in radars and technology and everything else. | |
Well, the East of England has a number of sites. | |
I mean, there's one that I can think of. | |
I think is it Orford Ness that has a ray of further antennas, strange antennas pointed out towards the sea. | |
So all sorts of stuff that is classified was going on there. | |
And how aware of those particular things you've just talked about were you around the time? | |
Or are these things that you have subsequently discovered as you've been trying to get to the bottom of what the hell happened to you? | |
Well, none. | |
None at all. | |
You've got to remember, I don't think I said my rank. | |
You asked me to do that. | |
I'm sorry I didn't. | |
I was an E3. | |
I was a law enforcement specialist E3. | |
Which is, what's that equivalent to? | |
Is that like a sergeant? | |
What is that? | |
No, sergeant's an E4, E4 and above. | |
And back then, E3 was senior airman, and then you put on, about a year later, you put on your sergeant star. | |
So if it was the British Army, for example, your rank would be just above private and before sergeant, yeah? | |
Right, I guess. | |
And the thing is, I was my first base, and I hadn't even been there two years. | |
So I was not privy to any of that stuff. | |
And people that claim they were, maybe that were working flight and stuff. | |
I don't know how Because all this stuff was being done outside the wire. | |
Now, we did have a facility on the base, which a lot of people we weren't really didn't have access to. | |
But research again, there was a Cobra Mist that was there that got shut down, I think, about 73. | |
But the interesting thing was that it was interfered with. | |
The reason why it didn't work right was interfered with inland, and they never really could figure it out. | |
But what was funny was right before they shut it down, they brought in Stanford Research Institute. | |
Those people came in, they did their testing, they shut it down, and this was a huge project back then with a lot of money. | |
And just for people who don't know the acronyms, what exactly is that? | |
Cobra Mist? | |
It was over Horizon Radar. | |
Right. | |
Okay, yeah, exactly. | |
And it got shut down, which was a lot of money. | |
And it never went operational totally because they couldn't get it to work right. | |
But all those people stayed. | |
And they moved to Marlstrom Heath and they moved on base at Belwaters. | |
So they were still working on a project, you know, involving all this. | |
So if you do your history, you'll notice a lot of encounters and weird things happen when there's particular radar systems and different things around and our equipment. | |
Now, some people speculate it's because whatever we're dealing with is attracted to it, or we're creating this. | |
But there's one more thing to add to that area. | |
Like you talk about, there's also a natural phenomenon there. | |
They're aware of it. | |
And what we didn't know about at the time, but it became prevalent years later, was an individual by Andrew Pike was working on this UAP phenomenon that was already identified in the area. | |
So not only did you have technology that was being worked on, but you had some kind of energy field or phenomenon that was in that area to top it all off, you know, with the fact that there was incidents going back as far as in the 40s and 50s with stuff that couldn't be identified flying over the area. | |
So maybe there might be, and people have said this before, a natural explanation for the irradiated ground in that area. | |
And it wasn't something that was perhaps deposited, left behind by some kind of craft. | |
As you say, we simply don't know. | |
Right. | |
And not only that, but one of the speculations, and I see speculation is not like a broad speculation, but he kind of hinted about it in his book was, and to me personally at one point, they were testing this phenomenon to see what it was capable of and what it could be and how it could react. | |
And if you go back into this phenomenon in the radiation frequencies and stuff, one of the things that was identified, which ended up injuring me, well, ended up being identified as what injured me was terahertz radiation. | |
And at that point, terahertz radiation had been around for a while, but it hadn't been studied, but it hadn't been being... | |
You have the theoretical part, and then you have the part where they start doing R ⁇ D research and development of it. | |
And terahertz was in the R ⁇ D stage pretty much then, not only in the UK, but in the United States. | |
And if you think that if you stand in front of a dish that's putting out powerful radiation frequencies in the gigahertz, that's going to do you harm. | |
That's like a microwave oven. | |
But if you're talking about terahertz, then that's even higher than that. | |
Well, I don't want to mess that up. | |
We've had experts on our radio show and stuff that explain the differences. | |
But yes, what's clear is my injuries could have come from, or actually, I should say still could have because I'm not the doctor. | |
But once that was identified, my treatment was taken care of pretty quickly. | |
They kept me alive, and I'm still alive today. | |
Which, you know, I'm very, very pleased about. | |
And we can get to this now because you were awarded compensation, weren't you, because of the effects of radiation upon the mitral valve of your heart. | |
Right. | |
I'll sum it up for other people. | |
There's been a lot of people. | |
It's just strange how people react. | |
I mean, basically, I'll make it quick because this show doesn't last very long. | |
I kept getting sicker and sicker. | |
And that happened early in 2011. | |
I started having really bad heart symptoms and problems, worse than before. | |
But immediately after the incident, back in 1980, I started, I didn't feel well. | |
And it wasn't more than a few months later when I went in not feeling well. | |
They found a heart murmur. | |
Now, what it was was I didn't have this coming in. | |
I've got the entry physical. | |
I've got all the proof that I needed that fortunately I still had and I was able to get my hands on again pretty quickly when I started having these issues and I was going for disability. | |
But what happened was I started feeling worse again. | |
The doctor I had ended up with AFib and congestive heart failure. | |
My civilian doctor, the symptoms were there, but he couldn't figure out what was triggering the symptoms. | |
And what I mean by that was even though I had a mitral valve problem, the symptoms were not, what was taking place, the mitral valve shouldn't have been causing, in his opinion. | |
And let's just say it for our listeners here. | |
Mitral valve problems. | |
I think you were 50 then, were you thereabouts? | |
They tend to affect people who are older than that. | |
Usually, yes. | |
But mine was identified right after the incident. | |
I had a mitral valve prolapse regurgitation. | |
You had decades of that then. | |
Yes. | |
But all of a sudden, when it went bad. | |
So long story short, the doctor wanted some information on when it first started and wanted to see the initial echo. | |
So, okay, all right. | |
I tried the military because that's where my records were. | |
I got denied. | |
Went to a senator. | |
He started making inquiries. | |
And what he came back with, and people, I don't know in your country how it works, but in the States, we have senators, but basically the staff is what does all the work. | |
This staffer had been around for a long time. | |
She'd worked on military incidents and cases. | |
And when she started digging on my case, she came back to me right away and said, it looks like your records are classified. | |
We're not sure why. | |
And she said that based on some stuff she'd done with Agent Orange and other stuff. | |
So what she said was I had to go put in for disability. | |
So I did. | |
And they would have more access because they'd have to review my records and they'd have to be allowed to see them because of the fact that I made the claim. | |
Well, they still lock all my records down. | |
Okay. | |
So when all my records were locked down, I went in for the evaluation, and the initial guy that helped me, Senator Kyle, had retired, and they couldn't get anything. | |
So Senator McCain took over. | |
So he finally got me in for evaluation. | |
When I saw the doctor, the doctor looked at me strange and said, well, it's funny, but what you claimed happened couldn't have happened because you weren't even in the Air Force then. | |
I was kind of taken aback. | |
But eventually I got a denial letter from the VA saying that I couldn't have had happen what happened because I wasn't even in the Air Force, let alone there's no medical records or any proof. | |
So McCain's office kind of went, what? | |
He's got proof. | |
We've got proof. | |
We've got an entry physical from 79. | |
No heart problems. | |
We've got pay records. | |
Well, we've got his DD Form 214 and it says he wasn't in. | |
They alter my DD4. | |
So somebody changed your record. | |
And that must have made you think, well, why would somebody want to do that? | |
I mean, we know there was a lot of classified stuff going on there, even if it wasn't anything to do with UFOs, which it might have been. | |
But why would they mess with my record? | |
Well, here's what my lawyer got a phone call anonymously, obviously, from somebody in D.C. when it started making some headway in some news. | |
Because one of the things that we did was not only did we have McCain involved, but we sent it to the Senate, the person in charge of the Senate for the VA. | |
You know, McCain wasn't on the head of the committee. | |
And we got this strange phone call back. | |
And basically what they told my lawyer was that, yes, my record was altered, but all the stuff having to do with Bentwaters and stuff was all classified. | |
It was all pulled from my file. | |
Because one of the things that Kyle did finally get when they first came back, the first time it said none of my medical records or personnel files were where they belonged. | |
But when they did give some of it, there was nothing in there about Bent Waters. | |
There was nothing in there about me being at Bent Waters or anything else. | |
So basically what they did was they took all my records from the UK when I was involved over there and they classified them. | |
Why do you think that they would want to do that? | |
I can tell you honestly that after, because I'll have to go a little bit forward to come back to explain this. | |
What happened was when all this was going on and we got proof that my records were classified, this was going on and everything, there was a conference, a UFO conference or a hearing, they called it a citizens hearing, and they mocked a real hearing in front of Congress. | |
And what they did was they had ex-members of Congress come up and we went ahead and testified in front of them. | |
And they were taken aback because the aide for Kyle had told me that most people didn't even know about the classified record section within the military for classified operations. | |
And a lot of them didn't know. | |
And at the break, they went in and they made some phone calls. | |
They came back and they were just floored that some of this was going on. | |
But it drew attention of somebody that had been, had been in, at the time, had been in an intelligence agency inside the United States government and still worked that day as a contractor. | |
But the reason being is whatever I contacted was involved with had to do with a couple of things, special access programs, which are highly classified programs inside the American government as far as military. | |
And that whatever the technology was, it was classified. | |
And within my medical records and stuff, it would show some things on what it could have been and what we were dealing with. | |
And it all goes back to that old thing that they're always looking to weaponize whatever we learn about, whatever we encounter, whatever we work on, whatever they find. | |
And most every technology they ever come with, they always look at it to see if they can use it as a weapon. | |
So there may have been some technology there, and that is why this was classified. | |
So are you leaning towards then the thought that this is nothing to do with UFOs, and this is to do with whatever was being worked on there, and that incidentally affected your health in some way? | |
Well, like I said, I don't have blinders on. | |
What I'm at this stage right now, doing a lot of my own research, working with some other people that are, these are what's in front of us, okay? | |
There clearly was technology being worked on in the area, including research on terahertz radiation. | |
They're working on plasma technology. | |
Plasma technology goes into all kinds of applications to include it can be used as stealth and hidden from radars. | |
There clearly was an unknown phenomenon, and what I mean by unknown, unknown to the public as far as what its capabilities and what it is. | |
I mean, it's going to amaze some people hearing this now, John, that this kind of stuff was being worked on 37 odd years ago. | |
You know, a lot of people would think that that kind of stuff is only a reality for research now. | |
But to think that those things were being worked on 37 years ago is pretty mind-bending. | |
The funny thing is, Howard, is this. | |
Usually whatever you hear about has probably been in operation most of the time, 10 to 15 years. | |
You've got to go back another 15 to 20 years in R ⁇ D and then, you know, even farther on the drawing board. | |
But the craziest thing of all when you talk about technology is that that area clearly had and has been some of the state-of-the-art technology, number one. | |
But number two, there is where I was going with this, there is a phenomenon there. | |
It's still there. | |
It's still active. | |
There's still stuff going on in that area. | |
When you say stuff, what sort of stuff? | |
You mean stuff that is natural but unexplained? | |
People still see strange activity and strange things in the sky and on the ground. | |
Give me an example. | |
When I came back in 2010 for the 30th, one of the things that we did was set up infrared cameras at night. | |
And we picked up blue, red orbs in the area floating around and doing strange things on the cameras. | |
What about those people who say that everything that happened there, and this was one of the official explanations of the thing, was to do With light from the lighthouse, that it was all to do with misinterpretation of light from the lighthouse. | |
That's not radiation. | |
Well, funny you bring that up. | |
Some of the research that's been uncovered is the lighthouse itself was being used to broadcast EM free frequencies both inland and outland, and it was part of the testing process. | |
How do we know that? | |
There's documents, declassified documents that show the technology they were working on. | |
Okay. | |
There is also something else here. | |
And we're just, if you don't mind, I'm just going to dive off into this little corner for a second or two. | |
I came across a BBC piece that's archived on the internet from 2003. | |
So what? | |
It's nearly 15 years ago. | |
And it says that all of this might have been a hoax. | |
That it might have been some kind of hoax. | |
And I'll read this to you anyway. | |
from BBC 2003 from a program called, I think, Inside Out. | |
Former USAF security policeman Kevin Code has exclusively revealed that the lights were the result... | |
Kevin Condy, sorry, yeah, yeah. | |
I'm misreading. | |
I'll clearly take care of this real fast. | |
Okay, well, let me just read the sentence. | |
It has exclusively revealed It's an archived BBC piece. | |
The lights were the result of a practical joke that he played on the gullible airman. | |
Well, let's put this to bed really fast. | |
Because I challenged Condi when he came out on that, and he got mad at the end and just told me I shouldn't even have been out there, and I was speaking out of turn. | |
Basically, Condi wasn't on duty at all during our events. | |
He wasn't on duty. | |
He wasn't on flight. | |
Our night in particular, there were only two law enforcement patrolmen on Woodbridge, and that was Sergeant Steffens and I. So it's real hard for Sergeant Condi to have been involved in our incident. | |
And on the other midnight shift, Sergeant Condi wasn't on that flight or wasn't involved. | |
Matter of fact, all the patrols were accounted for as far as involvement in the incident. | |
So that's the interesting thing that's happened over the years. | |
Certain people have come forward to try to discredit it, but it's simple. | |
A lot of people say, well, okay, that's what it was. | |
But in reality, he wasn't involved. | |
So that's what adds something to this case. | |
Well, yeah, I mean, there are so many elements like that. | |
I mean, the final sentence of this paragraph from the BBC is the bottom line is that it was not a UFO. | |
It was a 1979 Plymouth Valari. | |
No, and he wasn't on duty, but nobody takes the time to really pay attention to that. | |
It's just like the lighthouse. | |
Where we were at at the gate when we saw it and stuff, the lighthouse, it wouldn't have been what we saw. | |
And even in my statement, because they make a big deal about that, how we got up, went forward, then we saw a beacon and we went towards the coast and we eventually identified that beacon as the lighthouse. | |
I identified the beacon as a beacon and then eventually the lighthouse. | |
But that isn't what we saw in the forest and went down and dropped in front of us and stuff and what Command Sack described and what Pennyson described. | |
So there you have it. | |
And it's real easy for people, again, I call blinder syndrome. | |
Oh, well, they were just fooled by the lighthouse. | |
Well, for three nights. | |
And one of the things I'll say about Colonel Hall, which people don't know, when he was in Vietnam, he was a combat controller. | |
And combat controllers direct flights in and out. | |
So you're going to tell me the colonel was out in the field and recorded this on his cassette tape describing what he saw was the lights above him coming at him and beaming lights down at his feet is going to be fooled. | |
And it was a lighthouse doing that. | |
What about the radio traffic that was going on during this? | |
I heard a recording that purported to be the radio traffic from that night. | |
And some of it sounded borderline panicked. | |
It sounded like people who were really bemused by what was going on. | |
What do you recall of that? | |
Which night? | |
Well, I don't know which night this recording that I heard was from. | |
You can hear when he said, here it comes from the south. | |
Now it's beaming all right. | |
This is unreal. | |
You can hear the quiver in his voice. | |
And I interviewed him quite recently. | |
And he's convinced that something went on there. | |
That's absolutely for sure. | |
I've got a paragraph in front of me here from Jim Penniston. | |
And we know there are differences in the stories that you both have. | |
But it says here, this is from the Daily Telegraph, which is a very respected newspaper. | |
It's a journal of record here in the UK. | |
So it's not a sensationalist paper, as you know. | |
Jim Penniston, who accompanied Burroughs into Rendlesham Forest December 26th, claimed to have encountered a craft covered in hieroglyphic-like characters. | |
I estimated it to be about almost three meters tall and about three meters wide at the base. | |
Penniston later explained no landing gear was apparent, but it seemed like she was on fixed legs. | |
I moved a little closer. | |
I'd already taken all 36 pictures on my roll of film. | |
I walked around the craft and finally I walked right up to the craft. | |
I noticed the fabric of the shell was like smooth, opaque black glass. | |
After that, when you all got back to the base and you tried to resume some kind of semblance of normality, you know, how did you all get on together? | |
Did you discuss it? | |
Were you told not to discuss it? | |
What happened? | |
Well, it's pretty simple. | |
Pennyson and I actually rove back and forth to work together. | |
I rented an apartment below my landlord. | |
He rented a house from my landlord. | |
I rented an apartment that they had a huge house underneath it and they had a smaller house that he rented. | |
So we drove back and forth. | |
But right after the incident happened, Penniston got pulled from flight and put in the back office. | |
So we didn't have much interaction after that. | |
We didn't ride to work anymore. | |
And he was separate. | |
He was on security. | |
I was on law enforcement. | |
That always gets mixed up. | |
He was security. | |
I was law enforcement. | |
So we really didn't talk a lot about it right after the incident. | |
Were you shell-shocked? | |
Was he shell-shocked for a period after this? | |
I can't speak for Jim. | |
For me, I was young, and I went out there, and I couldn't explain what I saw. | |
I do remember what little I did try to talk about it to him or anybody else was, what the hell was it? | |
I don't know. | |
They seemed to be looking Into it, we were brought in and asked some questions of what I remember, not the interrogation and stuff. | |
We had to go see the, we started with a halt, then we went to the base commander and the wing commander, and we wrote some statements on it. | |
But they didn't seem to want to offer us any information, and I couldn't explain it. | |
And being in the fact that I was young, and it seemed like you kind of, when you're young and you're in the Air Force, you kind of get the impression when people above you are letting you know, we'll take care of it, keep your mouth shut, move on. | |
At one point, when we were interviewed by the base and wing commander, we were kind of, we were told, and I was told indirectly, but Jim was told directly because he was doing most of the talking that this is being handled, it's being looked into, and to keep your mouth shut and we'll let you know if we need anything more from you and stuff. | |
So basically, I was an E3 airman. | |
I couldn't explain it. | |
And people have to understand in 1980, there's a lot different reactions to somebody talking about UFOs and stuff like that than there are today. | |
So my idea was, I'll let it go. | |
I can't explain it. | |
Nobody seems to want to offer me any information. | |
So I just moved on. | |
And did it have any effects on your subsequent life? | |
Did you have dreams? | |
There's been, yeah, I've had some interesting dreams that I'm not going to go into. | |
But the biggest effect on me was I got sick afterwards and it affected my health where now I've had to have open heart surgery and everything else. | |
And there is a desire for me to understand what we dealt with. | |
I mean, it goes past the case itself. | |
It goes into what are we dealing with? | |
What's really going on? | |
You know, and I'm trying still to this day to understand it. | |
But for the most part, from other than my health issues, which really got bad, you know, when I turned right around 50, was my life went on. | |
I mean, you know, there would be, you'd read stories about it at first and everything else. | |
And the only other factor that annoyed me about it was simply the fact that, you know, you had all these opinions about what went on. | |
And right before the 30th, I was, I did my best to try to get as many people together where we could talk about it and even get together over there. | |
And I've always felt that if we all sat down that had some information to put together, we'd have a better understanding. | |
But it doesn't seem like that's what they want. | |
And I say that Colonel Hall does not want us to get together. | |
Who is they? | |
Colonel Hawt's the biggest one. | |
He just does not want us to all get together and talk about him. | |
Yeah, I got a sense when I spoke with him. | |
And of course, he's not here to speak for himself right now. | |
But when I spoke with him, I got a sense that he was doing a few interviews at that time, and he really just wants to get on with the rest of his retirement and put this away in the box where it belongs. | |
I don't agree because I'll give you an example real fast. | |
Okay, the wing commander was Colonel Williams. | |
He had a lot to do with helping me get my settlement, which we were talking about, and we kind of drifted off of. | |
Ultimately, what happened was my VA settlement came down to this. | |
I claimed I was injured in line of duty in the forest at Bentwaters, okay, at Woodbury's, outside Reynolds and Forest. | |
United States government agreed. | |
Based on documents, some of them that will never see the light of day, and Condine itself and some other things, they came to the conclusion, yes, I was injured in the line of duty. | |
Yes, I was injured by whatever it was in the forest. | |
General Williams was involved in it. | |
He has done some small interviews. | |
He never says much. | |
Colonel Halt set out from the very beginning when this case broke, which wasn't his fault, but the memo got leaked, to discredit certain parts of the incident and certain people involved. | |
And the problem with it is he's never really stepped forward and tried to help people as far as get together and figure it out, number one. | |
Number two, he's never really provided any research on what it could be or anything else other than to answer questions that some people, some research has been done, and mostly to deny whatever the research is or deflect from it. | |
So, and number three, the part about being critical about the third night and my involvement with Adrian Vestenza and lying about us, what happened and everything else, and finally through evidence uncovered, it's been proven it took place. | |
I don't believe for one minute he wants, he wants it to go away. | |
He just does want it to go away, but he's not just trying to move on through retirement, and he's not been very supportive of the people involved. | |
As a matter of fact, every chance he gets, he's critical of us. | |
Okay, well, I hear what you say now. | |
There were those in the newspapers, and I read a couple of pieces before we did this, who say that the fact that you got a payout on the basis of classified documents is proof that aliens and UFOs exist, and you got your payout because they do. | |
What do you make to that? | |
Proof of is if you read, I think I said you did a press release, it said de facto. | |
Okay, what it means is evidence shows that I went out into the forest on duty and was injured by something that we encountered. | |
The government's never admitted to what it is. | |
Our government's really never admitted to anything as far as what it was. | |
Everything involving my case is classified, even my medical records. | |
I don't have access to my medical records to this day. | |
My medical records are tied up inside the VA and only a certain amount of doctors, a small percentage to include by Hart, the chief of cardiology, can even access any of my records or allowed to deal with how to treat them. | |
So what do you think of newspapers that extrapolated that? | |
Because that's what I'm talking about. | |
I was looking at some newspaper coverage and they were saying, aha, well, you know, this shows us that probably there are UFOs because this man got a payout. | |
Well, there are UFOs. | |
It's unidentified. | |
That's the problem we have. | |
I do not know for sure what that was, okay number one, whether it was us, something else, or both. | |
And I don't know anything about, let's say, the something else, which is clearly there in that area. | |
What is it? | |
What exactly is its capabilities? | |
It condine clearly identifies as being studied for military applications. | |
So the bottom line is, what I could tell you is I did get a settlement. | |
I was injured in the line of duty. | |
I was injured in the encounter that we had. | |
But all this other stuff is still classified and kept secret. | |
So yeah, people could say, well, yeah, it was UFOs. | |
Yes, it was. | |
It's unidentified what we encountered. | |
It's never been explained by the British or the American government. | |
In fact, I did FOIA with the British government and got caught up in a lie that they still were holding files, even though they said that they had released them all. | |
They quietly released 15 of the 18 and they made them almost unaccessible to review or look at unless you go down to your archives to look at them. | |
And three files are still classified. | |
So they're keeping this all secret. | |
And that's the problem. | |
Now, you get broad speculation from the debunkers at one end to the believers in the other. | |
But in between, there's people that have had these experiences that want to know what the hell we're dealing with and what's going on. | |
Because there's nothing worse in life than what they call unfinished business, questions that hang over you. | |
Even if you don't think they're bugging you, I'm sure you would be the first to say, you know, on some level they are. | |
Right. | |
And the thing is, is it not only did it affect me physically, but there's more to this story. | |
And if you go back into To The Stars, they're actually doing testing on the effects of the people that have had these encounters, going as far as to say that there's a good possibility that the people that have had some of these encounters, there may be a reason why, and they haven't totally disclosed out yet why. | |
So there is so much unknown on this, but ultimately you go back to the people. | |
There's millions of people out there in the world that have had a weird experience that don't understand it. | |
And the bottom line is it's being kept secret. | |
Boy, talk to me. | |
You made reference to night three, and we didn't really talk about that. | |
Talk to me about the third night. | |
The third night was after our incident, I went on break, and I went home, and I woke up early on Saturday morning, which would have been the 27th. | |
But on the night of the 26th into the morning of the 27th, the flight that took over midnight shifts had some stuff happen. | |
They had an interaction. | |
And I went up to the desk and found out about it. | |
So I decided that I wanted to go back out into the forest that night, the 27th, and see if we could figure it out. | |
And a couple of guys that I worked with and I went out in the forest. | |
When we got out there, there was a team out there. | |
There was stuff going on. | |
And that was the night Colonel Halt was involved. | |
Eventually, I was able to work myself forward. | |
And it's on the tape that Hall had, my name's on there, that I was able to meet up with Halt's party. | |
And whatever they were doing with, they described it, both I remember a little of it and my hypnosis, but something appeared in the distance and came down and started working its way towards us again. | |
And Colonel Hall asked me if that's what we saw the first night. | |
And I told him I wasn't sure. | |
I wanted to get a closer look. | |
So he let me and a guy by the name of Sergeant Vestenza go forward. | |
When we ran towards it, this is what I remembered. | |
We ran towards it. | |
Vestenza went to the ground. | |
He was on my right. | |
I got close to it, and then I don't remember anything else. | |
Adrian's story is he saw me go into it and I phased out and I disappeared. | |
He saw you go into it and you phased out. | |
Yeah, I phased out. | |
You know how they describe it. | |
The best way you can describe it, you know, in Star Trek, when they used to move people from point A to point B? | |
The transported. | |
Yes, I phased out like that and was gone for a while and then I reappeared and then the object was gone. | |
Dear God. | |
And you have no recollection of that. | |
I remember getting close to it, just like on the first night, getting close to it, then it was gone. | |
That night, getting close to it, then it was gone. | |
Now, the interesting thing was that particular part of that haul flat out said we weren't involved. | |
And then we proved that we were. | |
And now, finally, in his book, 37 years later, he finally admits that Adrian and I went forward and got close to it. | |
No, I hear what you say. | |
I mean, I've got a pretty, I mean, my career is as long as your career, I think. | |
When I think back to stuff that I did at the beginning of my career, I can't remember the names of the people who were in newsrooms with me when I started, if you know what I'm saying. | |
That's a very trivial example. | |
So what we say about all of this is it is 37 years ago. | |
And as you say. | |
This was at the beginning, Howard. | |
All right. | |
At the beginning, he denied that we were involved. | |
And it's evolved to the point now where he's admitted that Adrian and I did go in front of his group. | |
That's what I'm trying to say. | |
And then there was also another interview where he slipped up and said, I went forward. | |
So there's more than enough proof to show that he denied that we were involved at all. | |
And it's evolved to now we went forward. | |
So he's clearly not wanted that third night and what happened at the end. | |
Plus, there's a gap in the tape between 3.30 and 4 when everything happened, Adrian and I took place. | |
And there's a document that shows that Bentwaters called Eastern Radar and said they had a UFO incident taking place. | |
And did Eastern Radar have anything on radar showing that at that same time frame? | |
Did you know Larry Warren? | |
I didn't know him at the time, but I know him now, yes. | |
And you know that there's tremendous controversy around all of this. | |
And, you know, there's tremendous controversy with Larry Warren because he's involved in a civil war, it seems to me, with some other people who are discounting his claims and his character and everything else. | |
So we don't want to talk about specifically him. | |
But why do we think, after so many years, there is so much acrimony around this whole event, series of events? | |
Why it's become so toxic? | |
Well, that's the word Warren uses. | |
And it's not really toxic to me. | |
It's getting to the truth. | |
And sometimes you have to cut what, separate the chaff from the wheat, and you have to go through everything. | |
And bottom line, and I'm going to just say this about Warren, his own book shows that he couldn't, and his own word shows that he couldn't have been out there on the night the Hall incident took place simply because he was returning from Germany. | |
Those are his words and his testimony. | |
So early on, again, go back to Colonel Hall. | |
He was the one that challenged Warren and his story and his events. | |
And there's been sides drawn in the sand. | |
I mean, as far as different groups believe different people and stuff. | |
And what I've tried to do is stay focused on true information, basically interviews, documents, and everything else. | |
And as you do that, and Ronnie Dugdale's done a good job of working on that, as you do all that, you start to see a clearer picture on the events and what could and couldn't have taken place and the testimony some of the people have done. | |
But ultimately, the truth of the matter is there's a lot of people that have smaller parts in this that either remain silent or barely said a few things and have gotten shut down that all should come together. | |
And I think we get a better answer to all this. | |
But I also do believe that that's not really the intentions of the United States government and criminal. | |
So it's kind of divide and rule then. | |
As long as you people don't get together, all of you, and get your story straight in some kind of public arena, as long as that doesn't happen, then this is forever going to be shrouded in mystery. | |
And there will always be— | |
One of the things that came out in these latest MOD files that was briefly talked about but kind of never was expanded on, and I'm coming over in May, just so you know, I'm coming over in May to go to the archives because I can't get at, I can't ask any more FOIA questions because they restricted me from that to all the files are released, which they're still holding three back, but to review the files because I can't really look at them or know for sure what's in them until I do that. | |
And I'm also going to be speaking at a small conference, or I shouldn't say small conference in May, I believe it's May 19th, but at Woodbridge, but along with Ronnie, who's going to introduce the timeline. | |
But the fact of the matter is, when you look at the documents, in these documents, they admit there's a memo, an internal memo inside the MOD that said a UAP incident took place at Bentwaters. | |
So you're going to see some documents. | |
There are some documents to support that something happened to us. | |
And these are the kind of documents that I know that you can go there yourself and you can see these, but I don't think you can't take pictures of them. | |
You can't write anything down. | |
You have to read them. | |
They've restricted that. | |
And they've never done that before. | |
Not only that, but the 18 files were given to the archives, pulled back. | |
Then 15 of them were given back to them. | |
They released them quietly last summer, but you have to go there to do all that, like you said. | |
And three files are still being held back. | |
Now, I got them to admit in 2013, and they said they were going to release them within six months. | |
And we're still, what, 2018? | |
And they still haven't released all of them to this day. | |
What's hiding in these documents? | |
And not even that, people have to understand one other thing that's important about this. | |
It always gets smoothed over. | |
Even when they release documents, a lot of it is still classified within the documents. | |
It's redacted. | |
So they'll say, well, we've given you everything we've got. | |
No, they haven't. | |
What they've done is they've released what they feel they can declassify, but even some of those files are still classified. | |
So what are you hoping to be able to get to see in person when you come in May? | |
Well, I'm going to take a look and see if there's anything else in there because within the Condine report, I was able to get them to admit they were still holding 18 files. | |
Boy, so for you, 37.3 years on, I'm trying to work out the math here. | |
This is by no means over. | |
This is not done. | |
When will it be done for you? | |
Well, again, I think I'll go back to what I said before. | |
I can't answer that 100% other than all I'm trying to do is understand. | |
Ultimately, I've gotten taken care of now health-wise. | |
But honestly, for me, this isn't just about Bentwaters itself. | |
And what I mean by that is I had, that's where my experience was. | |
I just want to understand what we're dealing with. | |
And there's so many people out there that have had incidents, you know, besides Bentwaters that are the same way. | |
And if you really look at it, so many of those people still want to know. | |
Some of them are like, what, you know, they're quiet. | |
They're not even talking about it because they're afraid of the ridicule. | |
But they want to know too. | |
Well, I can't imagine how that affects them because, you know, we're human beings. | |
And if we don't know the answer to something, then I think for some of us, a lot of us, it would gnaw away inside of you. | |
Right. | |
And they're always being teased with, is it aliens? | |
You know, and is it from some other planet? | |
And then people come back and say, well, if it was, we'd already know they were here. | |
They would have identified themselves. | |
And I think most human beings at some point in their lives want to know why are we here? | |
Where are we from? | |
And how were we created? | |
And, you know, and a lot of people say, you know, God created us, and I'm not against that at all. | |
I believe, you know, I'm a Christian. | |
I believe in religion. | |
But there's just so much out there that's unknown. | |
And that's the factor that drives people, you know, they want to know. | |
So, it seems to me that you want the answer to three questions. | |
Number one, was this some kind of very secret ongoing military research that you were not a party to and they don't want anyone to know about? | |
Is there some kind of natural phenomenon that chimes into all of this in that area that people are not told about too much? | |
Were UFOs involved? | |
Point number three. | |
So that seem to be that those are the three UFOs stroke aliens. | |
Those are the three areas that you need closure on. | |
Well, it goes deeper than that, though. | |
I mean, what I'm saying is that what are we dealing with? | |
You know, I mean, this is one of the most highly kept secrets. | |
I mean, most things eventually get leaked. | |
Yet, to this day, this has been kept secret. | |
Are we alone? | |
I mean, now they're coming out with more and more articles saying it's almost impossible to say we weren't. | |
But ultimately, where are we from? | |
And who created us? | |
And I don't mean, it sounds like I don't believe in God, and I do, but there's so much to this within who we are and how we've evolved and everything else that's unknown. | |
And does all that tie into what we're dealing with? | |
And I think it's not fair to, there's not a lot of proof that we've been visited as far as what I mean is, or I should say, there's proof that we could have been visited, but where are they from and how do they play into our existence? | |
So, in your mind, there is very much still, after all of these years, the thought that you and others there may have come into contact with some kind of superior intelligence, perhaps from somewhere else. | |
But you need some of those blanks filled in because it's impossible to go through an entire life with that degree of uncertainty about what really happened. | |
And you've had to go through enough over the years with people saying, you know, laughing at you and questioning the story. | |
You know, you want to get some closure, it seems to me. | |
No, I would love to have some closure. | |
I would love to know. | |
Condine says we did, we and what you just described. | |
You know, there's some kind of intelligence to these UAPs and what they're capable of doing and what they're, you know, and where they're leading this to. | |
And our government's clearly studying them. | |
So the bottom line is, but there's something inside of me because realistically, I should be willing to walk away from this, but there's something inside of me that I had some kind of experience that I can't explain. | |
And it's deeper than just human nature. | |
There's something inside of me driving to try to put this together for myself, you know, what we're dealing with. | |
And somehow I can't help but feel that whatever we dealt with has something to do, is a bigger effect, will have an effect on mankind, you know, as far as what we're dealing with and what's going on. | |
Well, I have to say that I would be, if I'd been through something like that and I haven't, I would be exactly the same as you. | |
So I totally understand, John, where you're coming from. | |
And I wish you well. | |
And when you come over in May, it would be nice to perhaps see you. | |
If you can, you know, you're going to be in London. | |
If you can make that happen, that would be great. | |
Yeah, I'll give you the dates and stuff. | |
So yes, I would be happy to sit down and talk with you because my son's coming over. | |
He's in college and he goes on summer break and he's always wanted to come back over there. | |
So he's going to come over with me too. | |
All right. | |
Well, I mean, London's fabulous in the springtime, so you're going to love it. | |
And thank you very much for giving me your time, John. | |
Thanks, Howard. | |
Thanks for having me on. | |
John Burroughs, we've been talking about Rendlesham Forest, and when he comes here, we'll try and talk some more about that too. | |
He's at a conference in May. | |
Just search it, and I will try and put some details of it too on my website, theunexplained.tv. | |
More great guests in the pipeline here, as we will and truly get stuck into 2018. | |
So until next, we meet here on The Unexplained. | |
My name is Howard Hughes. | |
I am in London. | |
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. |