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July 27, 2023 - The Unexplained - Howard Hughes

01:06:03

Edition 743 - UAP Hearing 26/07/23

A wrap-up of the astonishing Congressional Oversight Committee UAP Hearing, 26th July ,2023. In the words of of one Congressman - "We made history here" I talk with Steve Bassett , Executive Director of the Paradigm Research Group who has campaigned for three decades on this issue - Steve was at the Hearing, in Washington DC. What happens next? We get Steve's overview..

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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.
	Well, I know I've said these words before, but this is going to be a very unusual and very special edition in the light of the July 26th, 2023 UAP hearing, the Washington Congressional Oversight Committee got stuck into this issue and demanded some answers and also had credible presentations from three very important witnesses right at the heart of this, leading them, of course, David Grush, the former intelligence official.
	Two people involved in flying for the U.S. military, Ryan Graves and Commander David Fraver, who was right at the heart of the Tic-Tac events that were widely reported in 2017, years after they happened, and which were surrounded in secrecy, and many would argue, a cover-up.
	These things were discussed in detail in a hearing that lasted a remarkable, I timed it at two hours, eight minutes or thereabouts.
	I might not have got quite all of it.
	But I was utterly blown away by the quality of the contributions, the quality of the questioning, and the quality and honesty of the responses.
	I think we have to be asking ourselves whether we're at a moment in history now, and I think we probably are.
	I can remember speaking with Steve Bassett from the Paradigm Research Group years ago in Liverpool, in the bombed-out church there, St. Nicholas, which stands as a reminder to what war does and how it scars communities.
	And it seemed on that Sunday morning, warm Sunday morning, I think in June, that we might be staring at a new era, a new era perhaps moving towards disclosure.
	But I remember coming away from that conversation thinking, if this happens, and if Steve is right about all of this, it's going to be decades.
	Things have moved more quickly, haven't they?
	So what I'm going to do is try and summarize some of the main points of the hearing, and then we'll take it from there.
	This is what I wrote afterwards on Facebook.
	I felt I had to write something.
	I didn't know what.
	So I just sat down in front of the computer and wrote these words, and I'll read them to you now.
	Like many people, I watched today's Washington Congressional Oversight Committee on UAPs.
	A lot of what was said, we've already read.
	But to see and hear some of the principal players in this actually saying it takes it all to another level.
	Does this mean a big secret is about to be revealed?
	Possibly.
	Will that be soon?
	Maybe.
	Can things ever go back to the way they were?
	No.
	And the big question to think on is this.
	Why would qualified and respected people put themselves on the line if there wasn't something really big, serious, and important to say and to know?
	Watch this space.
	If the truth is out there and getting closer, are we ready to hear it?
	Now, those were my thoughts in the hours after the hearing, when I was putting together my thoughts and ideas not only for this podcast, but also for the upcoming TV show.
	And of course, I do all of this not on the resources of the mainstream media, who have at last woken up to some of it.
	But I don't think they've done it in the way that I would have liked to have seen it done.
	And I don't really blame them for that, because they're not specialists.
	And they're dealing with stories about Kevin Spacey, Prince Harry, the government.
	There are enough of those stories.
	The energy companies, one of them announcing huge profits today.
	And why is that?
	So there are lots of other things in the United Kingdom and in the United States and other countries to be talking about.
	But if this all transpires in the way that I now think it might, it's going to be the biggest story ever told.
	And we've said this before, but I think it's often hard, hard really to grasp a reality here.
	I've always half seen it in the abstract.
	I've always partly thought, well, maybe this is never going to happen, and we're always going to be talking about it.
	And the can will always be kicked down the road.
	But now I'm genuinely thinking, maybe that's not the case.
	Maybe something big is about to happen.
	You probably know that I was born in the space age.
	You know, I saw some of the 1960s, certainly saw all of the 1970s and every year up to now.
	And I realize that, you know, my time here is definitely, you know, on the meter.
	It's limited.
	All of our time is.
	But I'm realizing that time is running out in many ways.
	I didn't think that in my lifetime we would see the resolution to this issue.
	I kind of thought to myself, well, maybe I'm going to have to wait till the next time round, if next time round there is.
	That's another debate, but maybe it's all happening now.
	So let's try and pick apart now some of the main points of this hearing.
	The one thing to say before we do anything is it was cross-party, Republicans and Democrats, both pursuing this issue and the questioning with the same fervor and interest, which was marvelous to see in this world, whichever country, including mine you're in, of division and infighting.
	So that was good to hear, I think.
	Even before the hearing, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna from Florida told journalists this was time for clarity, no more secrecy.
	If the Department of the Air Force, if the Pentagon thinks that they're above Congress, they have something else coming to them.
	We told them we were going to do this if they continued to hide information.
	And ultimately, the American people deserve the facts.
	In other words, Congresswoman Anna Paulina Luna saying, we are not going to be kept in the dark anymore.
	I think that was a big message from this hearing.
	During it, remember two hours and eight minutes or so of it, we heard of craft that defied physics in spectacular ways, non-human biological retrievals, that's important, a craft retrieved and then back engineered.
	And just amazing for me, to finally hear, under oath, in front of millions of people watching, people like former Navy pilot Ryan Graves say this.
	These sightings are not rare or isolated.
	They are routine.
	Military air crew and commercial pilots, trained observers whose lives depend on Accurate identification are frequently witnessing these phenomena.
	Ryan Graves also speaking was David Fraver, the squadron leader during the infamous Tic-Tac incident off California.
	He talked about the amazing and disturbing characteristics of the craft that he encountered and said that we, that's the U.S. and by implication the rest of us in the West, have nothing like that.
	And it would be a very, very long time before we developed anything even approaching it, he thought.
	We also heard about radar jamming, an undersea object, a USO, and the failure consistently to properly investigate.
	And also the propensity, I would say, to cover up in most cases, every case, really.
	Congressman Tim Burchett has been on this show many times, hasn't he?
	He led the questioning very impressively.
	Here are two items from him that I want you to hear.
	And remember that you can find the entire hearing.
	I recommend it.
	It is completely gripping.
	You find it online in many places.
	So I'm just cherry-picking some pieces here.
	So this is one of Tim Burchett's questions to David Grush and the reply to it.
	It was very brutal and very unfortunate.
	Some of the tactics they used hurt me both professionally and personally, to be quite frank.
	It's very unfortunate, as they say, when you're over the target.
	That's when they do the most firing at you.
	Do you have any personal knowledge of people who have been harmed or injured in efforts to cover up or conceal these extraterrestrial technology?
	Yes, personally.
	Anyone been murdered that you know of or have heard of, I guess?
	I have to be careful asking that question.
	I directed people with that knowledge to the appropriate authorities.
	That's Tim Burchett asking David Grush the question that we would all like to have asked David Grush.
	And the answer there, this is going to be something that will have to come out in secret.
	But tantalizing and intriguing, and we can all think hard about that.
	And then Tim Burchett entered this arena.
	Mr. Grush, I might have asked this before, but I want to make sure.
	Do you have any personal knowledge of someone who's possibly been injured working on legacy UAP reverse engineering?
	Yes.
	Okay.
	How were they injured?
	Is it something like a radioactive type situation or something we didn't understand?
	I've heard people talk about Havana syndrome type incidences.
	What was your recollection of that?
	I can't get in the specifics, but you can imagine assessing an unknown unknown, there's a lot of potentialities you can't fully prepare for.
	So the fact is that Congress people now have the bit between their teeth, it seems to me.
	And I personally think that this particular horse is out of the traps and running and cannot be stopped.
	Where this goes now, I think it's impossible to predict.
	The next, I guess, will be the Intelligence Committee.
	That'll be interesting to hear.
	But this was an impressive start.
	And I honestly didn't think this year of 2023 would bring us this.
	And so it's mainstream news now, but it is going to disappear from the headlines, I would predict, pretty soon.
	So I will keep on doing my job, as will others.
	And we'll just see how this goes.
	Let's get into it a little more now and get his thoughts from a man, as I said, I spoke with first in 2008 in Liverpool, face to face.
	And then he appeared in person on my radio show, and we've had many conversations online and by phone.
	Steve Bassett from the Paradigm Research Group, a man who has worked in and out of Washington on this for decades.
	Steve, thank you very much for doing this.
	24 hours on from this major hearing.
	How are you feeling?
	Well, I'm exhausted.
	I had to get up at 5 a.m. in order to be down at the House Office building in order to get in line and make sure to get into the hearing room.
	As it was, about maybe a third of us got in.
	The rest had to go upstairs and watch from a TV monitor.
	The energy was extremely high there in the hallway at the Rayburn building.
	Lots of media and press.
	It was the real deal.
	It was like we had arrived and it felt very good.
	And the committee chairman said at the very beginning of it that people had come from all over the world, not just all over the U.S. for this.
	Yeah, there were people, I'm sure, from a lot of places.
	This was the previous get-togethers on Capitol Hill were simply briefings.
	Some staff people coming up to talk to a senator or a member of the House.
	They did not take an oath.
	Those were not hearings.
	This was a hearing with witnesses with testimony of importance given by law under oath.
	First one in 55 years.
	The last one was 68.
	It really accomplished nothing.
	It had no intention at the time to take the issue anywhere.
	And in fact, very shortly after that 68 hearing is when they closed down Project Blue Book and basically said, there's just nothing to see here.
	Let's all go home.
	So this is a milestone historic moment.
	It ended up landing in the lap of the Republican Party and the House, James Comer being the chairman, Tim Bursett being the kind of the leader of this particular hearing, the one that was asked to set it up along with Anna Paulina Luna, a new congresswoman.
	And so they will get the historical, I think, credit and glory for this.
	Tim said at the end of it, Steve, we made history today.
	Do you think you did?
	Oh, yeah, absolutely.
	History was made today.
	It's going to take more for the truth embargo to end, but the stage is now set.
	This was the opening act to the Big Act, which will be, has to be, in early September, when the Congress of the United States comes back into session, the Senate Intel Committee, which has been the principal driving force in the legislation, will call a hearing.
	They have many witnesses lined up, not just three, and these witnesses will have testimony perhaps even more astounding than what we heard yesterday.
	And that run of hearings, maybe a week, that's all it would take, frankly, will be sufficient to allow the president to step in and say, clearly, we're dealing with non-human technology.
	That would be the disclosure event.
	So, with any luck, the disclosure could be just a little bit more than 30 days away.
	But in the event yesterday, the one thing that they made sure to get out, most of those questions were scripted, is they asked Rush repeatedly, do we have non-human technology?
	In other words, that we have captured, that we have gotten from crashes, do we have bodies?
	And the answer was always yes.
	And then they would then immediately ask details, and he would have to say, no, I cannot go into details in public, but I will in private, a meeting inside what we call a SCIF, a secure and compartmentalized information facility.
	And they would say, fine.
	This happened repeatedly.
	Then, after the hearing was over, we learned that Grush, possibly all three of the witnesses and some others, were in fact interviewed in a secure facility taking the classified information.
	So they got a lot of information that was not in the public hearing.
	And so essentially, what happened there is it was confirmed under oath, we have crashed vehicles, which, of course, the researchers in this field have been saying for 50, 60 years, okay.
	But they weren't under oath in front of a congressional committee.
	And then we have bodies.
	This confirms Roswell.
	It confirms we're not alone.
	And now it's just a matter of getting the rest of the details and getting the president to confirm all this.
	Do you think those who supported keeping this under reps and keeping it secret will have been shaken by what they heard and saw yesterday?
	I don't, no.
	I don't think so.
	My understanding is it was a very large meeting the night before.
	It might have been over in Crystal City.
	I'm not sure.
	But quite a few Intel individuals, people from CIA, people from NSA, were getting together discussing this.
	So the people inside our intelligence community know what's coming.
	They're already discussing amongst themselves how they're going to handle it, how they're going to deal with it, what will be their role, and so forth.
	This is not a surprise to them.
	They've been watching the truth embargo slowly unravel now for some time.
	So I don't think they're panicked.
	The truth embargo began in the late 1940s, early 1950s.
	Almost all of the architects are dead, if not all.
	The rest were doing their job as years went by to maintain a policy that was started before they even came on board.
	And so I don't think they're panicked.
	I think they know that there's going to be some uncomfortable questions that the government is going to have to answer at some point after a confirmation from the president has come in what I call the post-disclosure world and what will certainly be many more hearings.
	But all of this process they're going through now, which is not about discovering what this phenomena is, they know what the phenomena is.
	It is to effectuate a disclosure process that is going to be constructive and open and the people will participate.
	And then they're trying to make this transition from this profound policy of lying about something that is evident worldwide to a world where all the nations have all confirmed, yeah, it is in fact not us.
	They're trying to make this transition as comfortable as possible.
	They're trying to make it positive so that there'll be a minimum amount of, how would you say, oh, disdain and upset by the public, who will then be graceful in saying, look, it was a national security matter.
	Now you've told us, let's move on.
	Yeah, because that is the big question.
	We've talked about it before.
	We've said, if we ever get disclosure of a kind, the next thing will be, why did you lie?
	And the explanations for that could be it's national security.
	We wanted to protect you.
	We wanted to protect the nation.
	Or there could be the issue, since there was a lot of back engineering going on.
	And according to Dave Grush, some people were injured in that back engineering.
	That back engineering is still going on, apparently.
	Was some of that for money?
	No, the policy of truth embargo was legal.
	That's why I changed the term from cover-up to truth embargo.
	And it was for national security.
	And so the people that did it were not criminals.
	And that has been the case the entire time.
	Now, the government is now not in high regard, particularly the U.S. government.
	Great deal of anger and frustration with the government in general.
	And a lot of that is about not being able to trust it, lies, and so forth.
	All right, I get that.
	So there's a lot of cynicism with respect to the U.S. government's policy of truth embargo.
	I get that too.
	Over the decades, I'm sure there's some very large contracts involving ET tech, re-engineering, and so forth, reverse engineering, were given to some companies, like Lockheed, for sure.
	And so money was made.
	But that's not perfectly normal.
	We do that all the time.
	Our defense industry is giving contracts all the time to manufacture weapons and what have you and protect the country.
	So it's not a greed thing.
	It is a national security matter.
	Pretty much is a national security matter.
	This has been my position all along, and some have criticized it because they just are too angry at the government to accept that this policy, right or wrong, was in the interest of the nation.
	It was formulated right after World War II when the U.S. government knew that the Soviet Union was going to soon test an atomic bomb and a hydrogen bomb.
	They had missiles they were going to be building, and that we were headed towards what could easily be the third world war that would be nuclear.
	And so I'm ready to forgive and forget.
	And I think most people are.
	That brings me to this question then.
	You say that people will be, including yourself, ready to forgive and forget.
	But Dave Grush said, and the others hinted, that there are things that are difficult to forgive and forget.
	For example, Dave Grush said that there had been those who'd subjected him to brutal administrative attack.
	Administrative terrorism was the phrase that was used.
	Some people threatened with effects or consequences to their career progression.
	He himself, intimidated, not to put too fine a point on it.
	He didn't respond, couldn't respond to a question from Tim Burchard about, was anybody murdered over this?
	You know, there's going to be a lot to forgive, isn't there?
	Look, with respect to our national security, there have been plenty of instances where people suffered significant pain when they get in crosswise with the U.S. government on its national security policies.
	Whistleblowers have come out on other things.
	Daniel Ellsberg did not have a fun time and he revealed the Pentagon Papers.
	There are those that have gone to jail like Reality Winner because they have put some secrets out there.
	This is part of the activist creed.
	Should be at least.
	If you are going to break the law because you feel it is the just thing to do in service to a higher purpose, that is fine.
	That's what activists do.
	You have to be prepared to accept the penalty, though.
	In other words, if you're going to go to jail, you go to jail.
	This is the way it's supposed to be in activism, particularly nonviolent activism.
	So over the years, plenty of people have been harmed because they've gotten crosswise with our national security policies.
	This is no different.
	Right.
	Well, it's different in this regard.
	Of all the things that have been in play, whether it's our nuclear secrets, whether it's war policy, or just the classified world in general, which is overly classified to the max.
	And so there's so many things, it's very easy to have a problem.
	The ET issue is the most important.
	More important, in my view, than nuclear secrets, frankly.
	So we're demonstrating a certain appreciation for that.
	As the idea of people getting harmed doing back engineering, people over the decades, lots of people have got harmed doing advanced research and weapon systems and what have you.
	There's nothing unusual about that.
	In terms of being murdered, interesting point.
	These are all scripted questions that were designed to try to hit certain points, raise certain issues, because this committee is trying to establish its territory on this issue.
	And by committee, I mean a Republican-led committee.
	And by that, I also mean a committee in the House, which is a Republican-led House.
	They've become, I think, but dissatisfied that the issue for now several years is virtually dominated by the Democrat-held Senate and Democrat-chaired Senate Intel Committee, which is a relatively bipartisan committee.
	But still, and that's the big gun.
	That's where this thing will be resolved.
	That's where the major hearings will be held.
	But they're feeling, hey, we're here too.
	We're important.
	And that's exactly what Ana Paulina Luna said.
	Even before the hearing, she said, effectively, you guys need to know we're not going to put up with the secrecy anymore.
	Again, a broad statement, but an important statement.
	The tide has completely turned here, Howard.
	They're competing.
	People are competing to see who goes further in terms of their statements.
	They're competing for which House of Government is going to be involved.
	It's going to be both and so forth.
	I mean, if you're a truth advocate, if you're a disclosure advocate like I am, a political activist, you couldn't ask for more.
	I mean, this is it.
	The truth embargo is literally collapsing underneath us like one of those buildings that gets brought down through controlled demolition.
	But just to finish that point, it's possible that in the earlier days there might have been what we'll call executive action on somebody.
	These things are not talked about much at all.
	As countries go, believe me, we're not that bad.
	When you talk about executive action, you go to an authoritarian country, pick one, and murdering people that are causing discomfort to the ruling party or the leader is common.
	But it may have happened.
	I hope not.
	But that would have been, I think, some time ago.
	And yeah, there needs to be things to apologize for and what have you.
	And I think that by going through this process the way they are and doing the right thing, I think people are going to look forward.
	They're going to say, okay, and they're going to say, okay, what next?
	And that's what's important.
	We have to move on.
	And that's good, and that's right.
	But in the past, there have been, I mean, for example, I have a lot of knowledge of South Africa, and I was fortunate enough to be there and training journalists around the time that, in fact, at exactly the time apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela took control.
	And they were very big on reconciliation.
	There is no way that that country could have transitioned without reconciliation.
	I wonder, in the light of this, since it is the greatest story ever told and the biggest thing to affect all of us, whether there will eventually be some kind of reconciliation commission or committee to finally put it to bed.
	I will support that.
	And I've talked about that before.
	And I'll support amnesty.
	I think that the awful things that were done in service to apartheid are far exceed, what we'll say, abuses of power with respect to this issue.
	Will there be more whistleblowers?
	I'm sorry, here I am jumping in.
	I want to make the most of every second, but forgive me for that.
	Do you think that in the light of what happened at the hearing, this will be the comfort zone indication, the starting pistol, really, for more whistleblowers to come forward and say, well, they've been able to do it.
	I'm coming out now.
	Okay, well, let me be clear.
	There were three witnesses there.
	Only one was a whistleblower, and that was Grush.
	He has assigned that to himself because he believes the policy is illegal, and he's publicly said so.
	And he has had some problems, and he's been harassed.
	And so he feels and is a whistleblower.
	That is not the case with Graves.
	It's not the case with Schraver.
	There are virtually no other witnesses right now that I think are in play that would be considered whistleblowers.
	This is a very important distinction.
	A whistleblower is a very specific thing, and whistleblowers have problems, and they can be further harassed by the general public.
	And so unless somebody is not a witnessblower, if they're simply a witness who has information to testify to in front of a hearing, that's fine.
	But that's to make them a whistleblower.
	They're not trying to, quote, bring to the attention outside the normal channels, chains of command, illegal activity by the government.
	To call somebody a whistleblower who isn't is to perhaps cause a lot of problems for them and their family.
	No, that's an important thing.
	Important thing.
	Yeah, one whistleblower yesterday.
	And there will be, what's happening, of course, is more witnesses are coming forward without question.
	More cooperation is taking place.
	And it's easy to forget, I say we don't want to forget that something else extremely significant happened just prior to this hearing, which he knew was coming.
	So whether there's a connection in timing, and that is that our very powerful Senate majority leader, one of the most powerful member in our government, and that is Chuck Schumer, Charles Schumer, who had been staying in the background, not getting involved in these processes being generated in the Senate Intel Committee and the legislation that was being formed,
	deliberately stepped in and said, I am putting some legislation in the next act, the Senate version of it, meaning it's going to go up on the site as pending legislation in the Intelligence Authorization Act of the National Defense Authorization Act.
	And it was a bombshell.
	He says, we're going to put language in the bill that says that any non-human technology, again, this is the current safe phrase for crashed extraterrestrial vehicles, any non-human technology in the possession of American citizens or corporations anywhere is the property of the United States government.
	And in 300 days after the bill is signed, the timing is irrelevant, just the statement.
	We want an accounting of all that, and then we're going to want it.
	So to put that in stark terms, if a Lockheed Martin has got technology that has been assigned and been working on under contract with the government or got some in some other way, whatever, if Lockheed Martin's got that tech, we own it, and we're probably going to want it back, and we're going to want an accounting of it.
	So it doesn't matter whether that language makes it into the final bill at all.
	What matters is that that language has been put out publicly and is sitting up probably, I think, now on the Senate, a website where they describe pending legislation.
	So he has just sent a message to the world, sent a message to all the members of the Senate and those committees that I am perfectly fine with what you were doing and the legislation and what you were asking for.
	Go ahead, do your thing.
	I'm perfectly fine with it.
	So he has now said, I'm on board.
	So that's just as a message.
	That legislative proposal was very, very significant.
	So when you combine all that together, the barrier for almost anybody approaching any one of the committees or the Department of Defense even, and saying, look, this is what I know, this is where I've been, is now dropping to practically zero.
	And so you're looking at a flood of potential information building up behind a dam that ultimately doesn't break until, completely break, until the president can be in a position to publicly come forward and say, we're not alone.
	We have company.
	It's non-human.
	And we certainly have much more to tell you about that.
	And what about the notion that's been talked about a lot, and we've discussed it before, too, in outline, that those people who had signed over the years non-disclosure agreements, as we call them here, you know, they basically signed their lives away.
	I will not talk about what I've been involved in.
	The notion that because those projects in some cases could be deemed to be illegal, then the non-disclosure agreements are null and void.
	What do you think?
	That's legal technicalities that I tell you.
	You don't want to get into if you don't want to tie yourself up in a lot of ways, eight ways to Sunday.
	This is high-end stuff.
	Nondisclosure agreements are signed and they're legal and there's plenty of them and there's nothing unusual about it at all.
	And if you break one, depending upon the circumstances and the law, you are subject to significant penalties.
	And so the people who deliberately break nondisclosure agreements without going through the proper channel or without doing it under any protections that might have been provided in the UAP-related legislation, in a sense, they are breaking the law, and one would assume they're doing so because they believe the law is unjust, in which case they are a whistleblower.
	Again, this process is designed to avoid this.
	They understand that it's a controversial policy, this truth embargo, and it's plenty of people that are done with it and they hate it and they think it's a mistake.
	They're trying to get out from under it.
	I call it a public relations-driven extrication project.
	And so they put legislation in there protecting people who come forward within channels with respect to information, protecting them from harassment and so forth.
	And so in some cases, some people may be stepping outside of non-disclosure agreements, but they won't have any problem.
	And so, it's now that it's shift, now that it has shifted in the right direction and the tide has turned, I think it's going to be less and less concerns about somebody saying the wrong thing.
	But I still believe that after disclosure takes place, truth and reconciliation policy is important.
	And whether the things that are revealed under a reconciliation program are even approaching the awfulness of what occurred in South Africa, it's important for no other reason that we want to make it as easy as possible for people to really bring out information.
	This is history.
	This is the most profound history in our history, as far as I'm concerned.
	There's nothing that touches this.
	This is incredible.
	And so we want a full accounting of it.
	We want our future generations to know what happened in as much detail as possible.
	And so if we can make it easier for people to come forward with information that's particularly difficult, then that is going to help build the historical record.
	And so with respect to the truth embargo, the policy that I will certainly support and others I think will support is if you did a significant thing, if you had to commit what would be under normal circumstances considered a criminal act, and you come forward and you give that complete explanation of it, the what, the where, the high, the who, and the how, you will not be penalized.
	You will not be charged with crimes.
	You can live your life.
	That's an amnesty.
	No, that's truth and reconciliation.
	Amnesty is a little different.
	Amnesty is basically saying, look, if there's information that you need to come forward with and you're concerned because there's so many laws and so many things you may not even know, and you're just providing information that you're not sure if it's going to be a violation of some classification protocol or not, you have amnesty with respect to this issue.
	You're going to be okay.
	That's not the same thing as truth or reconciliation.
	Truth and reconciliation is you did something, you were forced, you either did it or you were forced to do something really bad that clearly would be considered criminal in any other context.
	And if you come forward with that, you will not be prosecuted.
	It's not a trivial distinction.
	Amnesty and truth and reconciliation are not the same thing.
	We're going to need both to ensure as much compliance with getting information out as possible.
	And let me be clear, in the post-disclosure era, going forward as far as you want to go, some things will probably remain classified for a good while.
	It's just that the amount of that will diminish dramatically and slowly shrink.
	But there will be some things because we're still in a Cold War with the Soviet Union and to some degree China.
	We're still under the threat of a nuclear war at any time.
	So there'll be some of that.
	But overall, particularly given this issue is very nonpartisan, the public is finally going to learn a huge amount about the history of this issue in the modern era, what the government has done with respect to it,
	what it knows about these craft, about these ETs, and that will include, I assure you, and it won't take long because this truth embargo has lasted so long, the issue of contact, of abductions, all of that will be addressed.
	And that's uncomfortable and awkward and a definite public relations problem.
	And the government should better handle it well, which is why I am encouraging the government, and I'm going to be doing a lot of this publicly, to don't forget all the people that have carried the water here for 70 years.
	Don't forget the people that have been dealing with the contactees and researching and so forth.
	Don't try to just go forward as if these people don't exist anymore.
	You need them.
	You need what they know and their information.
	You need their cooperation so that this will hopefully be as positive and constructive as it can be.
	But certainly contact is going to be a very tough one.
	And we can speculate about a host of what we'll call public relations problems.
	But one possible one, which is a butte and could very well fall into the truth and reconciliation zone, is if the government formally cut an arrangement, a treaty, whatever you want to call it, with one or more of these species,
	that in return from some technology that we might be able to use in our defense programs or whatever, we're just not going to interfere or attempt to interfere with your direct contact with human beings and the abduction events.
	People are not going to like that at all.
	And with respect to that and people coming forward, that's where truth and reconciliation, that is one example of where it might be needed.
	We'll see.
	Do I think they have such a treaty or deal?
	I don't, but I can't rule it out.
	And there are other areas we can go.
	I mean, the post-disclosure world, Howard, is not going to be slow.
	It's going to be pretty intense.
	Bunch of reasons, loads of stuff.
	I mean, for example, my country, we're experts in secrecy.
	I think we invented some of it.
	You know, we're very good at covering things up and keeping them quiet.
	That's what we do.
	But there's France and there's South America, there's Russia, there's the whole world.
	And, you know, they need to be joining this process too.
	And I assume that that is going to be happening.
	But it's going to be a very, very interesting time that we're going to go through.
	And this issue that wasn't answered yesterday, we couldn't have expected it to be, of has there been contact, that's going to be at the very core of where we go moving forward on this.
	You mean formal contact or just the contact like abduction?
	No, I mean contact like formal contact.
	That was raised, wasn't it, in the session?
	It's going to be on the table very quickly.
	It may be a question that will come up in the Senate hearings.
	If I'm running the Senate hearings, I probably avoid that.
	I don't know if you want to go there in that hearing.
	Again, the purpose of these hearings is not part of a process where the government is suddenly trying to understand this phenomena, which somehow they didn't notice the last 70 years.
	It has nothing to do with that.
	They already know it.
	It's about going through a process which will lead to disclosure, allow it to be nonpartisan from the president, and then we can really move forward.
	That's the purpose of the process.
	And so it's not about how much can you get out the door.
	In other words, people are not going to get all the goodies through this hearing process.
	What they're going to get is enough testimony to allow confirmation from the president.
	And so there's a long list of things that I doubt that they want to even get into and are not going to get into.
	Now, that doesn't mean a member of a committee can't ask about it.
	The way our government works, if a hearing is underway and you're on the committee, you can ask any question you want.
	Now, you may pay a price.
	In other words, if you go off script too far, you may have some of your colleagues giving you a hard time, but you haven't broken the law.
	And so some of these members may get more aggressive as these hearings go forward, wanting to get some, how would you say, attention and a bit of glory for revealing some special thing by asking a special question or a certain question.
	But in most cases, anything that gets really to some really tough areas, the witnesses are going to say exactly what the witnesses yesterday said repeatedly.
	I can discuss that in private session with you, Senator, and we can talk about it then.
	And one question like that would be, do we have a...
	And you saw it yesterday.
	I say a game.
	It's a process, and the people that understand our government know it fairly well.
	They may ask a question in the Senate hearings to come of a high-level individual.
	Does the United States government have a treaty with any ET group?
	And if the response is, I cannot discuss that in public, then we just got the answer, yes, we do.
	Or the response is, I would not know that.
	And it may be, I don't know that.
	But that would be destabilizing for the public, won't it?
	And that brings us to the question of whether people, they might wish to hear this information, but, you know, sometimes be careful what you wish for, you might get it.
	You know, an answer like that is going to cause people, I would think, a certain amount of heartache and instability, isn't it?
	Well, welcome to the modern world.
	Welcome to the world.
	I mean, this has always been the case in the history of the human condition.
	Look, anything that happens, some people get really upset by it, but that's some people.
	There's 8 billion people on this planet, and every government is going to address this issue, pretty much every government.
	There are some that it's just not appropriate.
	They're not going to need to do that.
	But all the major governments, all the major developed nations are going to approach this.
	They all have information.
	They're all going to be revealing to their citizens.
	And the world will get a collective flow of information, not just from the United States, but from multiple countries.
	And so something will come out in a particular country, and there'll be some people in that country that will be upset.
	And there'll be some people that will think it's great.
	The fact that everybody has to somehow be ready or comfortable with what's going to happen next in this world, I'm afraid that's not the way the world works.
	If some people are uncomfortable, that's unfortunate.
	I think this process, which is this public relations process by doing that right thing right now, is designed to minimize the number of people that will really be upset.
	But there will be some people really upset, and there's already plenty of that right now.
	And hopefully they won't do anything stupid or harm anybody.
	There are things in this world going on now that are even more dangerous, certainly, than the revelations about the ET presence that are now starting to flow.
	There are awful things happening in a number of parts of the world.
	Ukraine is not the only one.
	Awful, awful things.
	And so there's plenty to be upset about in this world.
	This will just be one more thing.
	But unlike just about any other challenge we're facing on this planet, this particular transition is just filled with opportunity, filled with great possibilities.
	There is a lot of positive here, a lot of excitement.
	And so any upset associated with ending the truth embargo is, as compared to almost any other issue that we're worried about right now, is balanced out by a huge amount of future promise.
	And so I'm not worried about the upset that may take place, Howard.
	It would be manageable.
	But I guess as part of the PR drive that will accompany this, we have to keep telling people, don't we?
	You know, look, there may be a power greater than ourselves there that has amazing technology, but it hasn't caused us any actual harm as far as we know.
	I mean, there have been abductions where people have been experimented upon and that kind of thing, but it hasn't caused us any palpable harm.
	And they probably would have done that well before now if that was their intention.
	So I guess we have to cling on to that hope, don't we?
	I don't see it as even a hope.
	It is true.
	There has been discomfort and there has been activity on the part of these ETs for reasons we don't fully understand, but I believe it is in service to something they need.
	And individuals, some individuals have suffered some serious trauma.
	Of course, I could point out that if Truman had made the decision not to reverse, not to tell Roger Ramey to hold another press conference and deny the initial explanation and just get out from under it, we would have had disclosure in 1948.
	And we would have been in the post-disclosure world dealing with all of this in the open.
	And it's possible that contact of the type we're talking about wouldn't have happened.
	It wouldn't have been necessary or might have been under some sort of voluntary arrangement.
	But we chose to embargo this issue.
	And so what they were doing and needed to do, they had to do in, I guess you say, clandestine fashion.
	Now, I'm speculating here, but there is something going on there.
	And certain individuals have been harmed.
	Serious PTSD has happened to people who have been abducted, who have suppressed subconscious recollection that is affecting them deeply, or have conscious recollections.
	We're accepting them deeply.
	But guess what?
	The number of people walking this planet right now with post-traumatic stress syndrome because of things the government had them do is a very big number.
	We have hundreds of vets killing themselves every week because they cannot deal with the trauma of the last war they had to go fight.
	And there's more of that happening all the time.
	PTSD from the trauma because of bad policing in the United States where there's abuse by authority.
	And so this will just be another example of some individuals have had to suffer because of what's going on in the world.
	And it's part of the process of history.
	It is.
	It is such a fascinating time, and we've discussed it so many times, there is no going back from this.
	Of all of the things that were said, a lot of them, we'd heard them, we'd read about them, but to hear the people saying them, we were told about the dark grey cube inside a clear sphere, this enormous great red thing that was the size of a football field, technology that could go from 80,000 feet down to 20 or 10,000 feet in a heartbeat, things that have contact with the ocean.
	Did any of it surprise you?
	Because a lot of it we had heard before.
	No, no, it didn't surprise me at all.
	This is the power of process.
	This is why the activists move it to try to get disclosure, formal disclosure, why I tried to change the language from cover-up to truth embargo, from UFO to UAP.
	This is what this process is about, is getting this formally done.
	In other words, it is one thing to read about some fascinating aspect of the UAP reality in a book or at a conference somewhere.
	It is another thing to have a former member of the government with high classification status raise their hand, take an oath, and deliver that information under oath in a public process within the capital of the United States.
	This formalization is essential to us being able to move forward.
	And so for many people in the field, they're not hearing anything new at all.
	Now, that doesn't mean that that won't happen.
	I'm sure that something probably in the Senate hearings that are going to come, somebody's going to probably say something, and my attitude is going to go, whoa, I didn't know that.
	That's interesting.
	So we may learn some things that even the best researchers in the field, even Richard Dolan, may be surprised by.
	But this truth embargo is in a 76-year, and the citizen science activist movement has been ongoing the entire time.
	Thousands of books and tapes and docs and thousands of articles, hundreds of thousands of pieces of information and so forth have been gone through by the citizen science researchers, and we know a great deal.
	And the only reason why there's a problem is the government has said, no, you don't.
	In other words, we're deliberately stepping into the truth process and saying, whatever you found, it's not true.
	Whatever you're seeing, it's not there.
	This, again, and this policy itself is unacceptable.
	In a democratic society, you need some secrecy.
	You need to have your defense.
	But a policy like this, in which you are forcing the entire public to deny what they're seeing with their own eyes, is a demeaning, destructive policy, which undermines confidence in government and damages the body politic.
	And I will be saying this until the day I die, once disclosure has happened.
	Let's never do that again.
	Don't justify it in any way.
	Don't ever do that again.
	You cannot suppress information of that type.
	Because it will always come out.
	It's only a question of when.
	Do you feel vindicated, Steve?
	Vindication is somewhat of an ego-based term.
	Look, I am starting to feel emotional about this, yes.
	But I will not have done my job, my fundamental job, what I chose to do to serve in 96 until the president makes that statement from the president's mouth.
	And if it's Joe Biden or somebody else, it could be Xi Jinping.
	Fine.
	But if Xi Jinping does it, our president will follow.
	And so I'll kind of be focusing on that.
	In other words, okay, Xi Jinping, fine, that's great.
	But I want to hear it from our president.
	When that statement comes out of the president's mouth, what I set out to do that help will have happened.
	And I will feel a tremendous sense of satisfaction in terms of having done something with my life of importance.
	However, what I'm really looking forward to, if not that moment, it's okay.
	Now the post-disclosure world begins.
	What can we do now?
	And that's when the range of possibilities just explode.
	And I'll be wishing I was 20, 30, 40 years younger.
	But I have colleagues like Danny Sheehan.
	He's putting together a major think tank right now called the New Paradigm Institute, which is going to be bringing people together devoted specifically to impacting the post-disclosure world.
	I'm going to convert PRG into a think tank, a small one, but it'll be based in Washington.
	Danny will be based in his big think tank.
	We'll be based in California, but also have an office in Washington.
	I think there's other people that are putting think tanks together right now.
	In other words, the real work, the fun work, is going to be when the world's people, hopefully in cooperation with their own government and governments in cooperation with each other, make the decision that in the light of this paradigm shift of unprecedented proportions,
	that, okay, let us get together, fix this mess, stop our behavior, this way that we behave with each other, and fix this situation and try to create a world that's livable, not only for us, but for everybody else.
	We cannot continue to treat each other in the world this way.
	We are an 8 billion force, massive impact, still unbelievably destructive.
	And we are going to have an opportunity to rethink all of that because of the truth embargo's end.
	And that is what's really important.
	Can we fix this?
	And I'm going to have a few years of being part of that.
	And that will be more than just vindication.
	That will be just a pleasure and a joy and a gift that I probably didn't deserve, but I will be happy to accept.
	Well, I want to be there with you and those of us of our sort of generation.
	We've got some more years to see what transpires here.
	Of course, the question that wasn't answered, maybe it can't be answered right now, maybe it may never be answered.
	Who knows?
	Is whether this stuff is coming from space, whether it's coming from another dimension, whether it's coming from underneath the ocean, or where it's coming from.
	We didn't answer that, did we?
	No, that is not.
	I believe we have that answer.
	I believe that that is, again, that's too down the menu.
	There's other things to get done first.
	But right now, it is appropriate to say we don't know, and that's fine.
	And there's various reasons for that.
	In other words, they will not say the term extraterrestrial, though it did come up.
	They prefer to use non-human intelligence.
	In other words, again, they're following some protocols and rules that are trying to make this process as comfortable for everyone having to go through it as possible.
	Some don't care.
	I mean, they're just stepping right up, like Burchett, and saying, look, there's ETs here.
	We got technology, and I don't care who knows it.
	Okay, that's fine.
	But there are others, it's not so easy.
	But the contact, this is where, yeah, this is a significant point.
	The contact information, which we have huge amounts of, hundreds of thousands of accounts have been written up and provided, and mostly privately, to researchers by people that have gone through this and they want to share it.
	And based on those accounts, we know a great deal.
	But that evidence is not in the queue yet.
	We will get to that evidence, but it will be post-disclosure.
	And when we do get to the post-disclosure world, and the contactees are being interviewed all over the world, and they're starting to come forward, and their written accounts are starting to be reviewed, because the amount of money it would take to review hundreds of thousands of these is millions of dollars, but the money will be there, I assure you.
	We will learn that in many, many, many cases, the ETs tell the contactee where they're from.
	And it's not from another dimension.
	They tell them they are from other star systems.
	And the ancients, as we have tried to understand the ancient history, which that's the history channel, that's the entity doing it, and they're doing a pretty good job by and large.
	If you go back in the ancient evidence, they tell them they're from another planet.
	Occam's razor is pretty clear here.
	We're a planet.
	We have life.
	And soon we will have star travel.
	We're closing in on the physics, for those that are paying attention.
	And so, yeah, you're able to go from star to star.
	And so I'm willing to put down my entire life savings, which I think is something in the range of $43.80, on the fact that they are from another planet.
	Now, could there also be interdimensional?
	Could there also be time travel?
	Yeah, could they also be spirit forms that come from a realm?
	All of this is possible.
	Because there may be a unified theory of all of it in the end.
	Yeah, who knows?
	But I'm telling you, you put your money on time travel or inner Earth or anything, you're going to lose your money.
	The galaxy is political.
	There is interstellar travel capability amongst the advanced species.
	They move around.
	They go from planet to planet, star to star without time dilation.
	This is what we're going to find out.
	I'm more than prepared to put all of my money on that bet.
	That is the bet that's going to win.
	But because of the truth embargo, we're unable to truly resolve any thread in this history and this phenomena.
	We're not allowed to.
	There is no phenomena, so what can you resolve?
	And so it has allowed all of these possibilities to hang there.
	Well, that's not good science.
	Science, well, this is not all science.
	This is more than just science.
	But science is not about keeping 43 different possibilities in play indefinitely.
	It's about resolving all the ones that don't apply and getting down to the absolute correct truthful theory that explains the phenomena and then moving forward and learning more.
	The truth embargo thrives on the fact that nothing is resolvable.
	There's all kinds of possibilities.
	There's 80 different explanations.
	And so why do you even bother?
	I'm not buying that game.
	So put your money on interstellar travel.
	Put your money on Star Trek, only hopefully without the proton torpedoes.
	We can travel the galaxy.
	And one of the reasons why this whole thing is maturing and the ETs are part of that, they've been more aggressive and insistent in terms of their behavior over the last 50 years.
	One of the reasons this thing is happening at all is because we're not the Egyptians of 2,000 years ago.
	We are an advanced civilization sending probes outside the solar system, closing in on the solution to interstellar travel, the workaround to our theory of relativity, which means that soon we can be hanging out with them.
	And they're not viewing us as a particularly attractive companion.
	They're not ready for us to be cruising the galaxy in any way and turning up anywhere naturally with a bunch of nuclear weapons on board simply because, well, you can never be too safe.
	We become a threat to them finally.
	And I assure you, we have never been up until now.
	We become a threat to them the moment we can take a ship and leave the solar system and go to another star.
	And that is why this whole thing is a force majeure process leading to disclosure and open contact.
	They have to intervene now.
	It didn't matter what they did in the past.
	They could be gods.
	It didn't matter.
	Now they have to intervene.
	And if we discovered the same thing in, say, a planet in the Alpha Centauri system, we would have the same exact problem.
	And this is advanced thinking and this is advanced theory.
	But I'm struggling to get on CNN and MSNBC because I want to be talking about this.
	This is something that needs to be discussed.
	Somebody's got to.
	Last question.
	Do you think That yourself and the members of that committee and other interested parties will ever get what was hinted in the hearing yesterday, and that is a trip to the facilities where the bodies, the non-biological or non-human biological material, the craft, the other stuff.
	Do you think that the day will dawn when those people, including yourself, will get a tour of those facilities?
	Tour.
	The number of people who will actually get tours of our high-level facilities will be limited.
	However, we will not have to wait long to get confirmation, photographs, and other documents confirming all of this.
	So we may not be able to tour the facility, but we'll probably see this stuff.
	We will see photos of these bodies.
	We will see documentary evidence of this.
	That won't be that far down the line.
	To the extent that any facilities could be opened up, that might take longer.
	But active facilities working on the highest classified stuff in the government, no.
	But we're going to learn about these things and seek confirmation of it, particularly photographic, soon.
	That won't take long.
	The public will demand it and they should get it.
	Once you confirm you've got the bodies, okay, let's see the photos.
	And we don't want to hear, oh, it's just too gruesome.
	It'll upset you.
	No, we want to see the photos and we will see that.
	And they'll come out.
	Very last question, Steve, because you and I have known each other for a very long time.
	We've been speaking on radio and in person for years.
	I've known you at times when you've been very down about all of this, when stuff that you expected to happen didn't happen, when we've had setbacks and delays and all sorts of other stuff.
	Yeah.
	Are you happy?
	I am happy, but I am tired.
	I've got a lot of things that I'm wanting to do.
	I'm going to need to raise money for PRG.
	There's a project in LA that's a media project, which is struggling.
	Everything still remains difficult.
	That doesn't change.
	But I am not going to have any regrets in the end now.
	I'm pretty sure I'm going to be quite content there.
	Now it's just how much can I accomplish and how much can I contribute in my final years.
	So yeah, I am perfectly fine.
	But I'm still eager to do more, and I'm hoping that the things that we're seeing happen right now will make it easier not only for myself, but all of my colleagues, to get funding, to get support, to get more media access, and so forth.
	And I think we're lucky here, because if it wasn't for the internet, which has not been around that long, it would have been much easier for authority, for government, for the officials to just sort of push all of my friends and colleagues into the past and move on without them.
	And that's the way it's usually been as you go back in history.
	Thanks goodness to social media, the internet, the fact that everything lasts forever, pretty much the work of all of these people is fully documented and available online.
	And so you can't just push them away.
	And so I think we're going to have a real example of, I say, an important example in which the people that are still alive that have done this work are going to be dealt with.
	They're going to be talked with.
	They're going to be brought forward.
	They're going to be acknowledged.
	They're going to be rewarded.
	They're going to get the credit they deserve so that the new people that are turning up and now involved in this work or suddenly are coming forward and saying, yeah, it's true, don't just march on alone, leaving the rest of us behind.
	Thank you for your service, but we're moving on now.
	No, the internet is going to make that impossible.
	And so I'm going to be very much involved in helping that happen to highlight and bring forward and feature, particularly in the extensive media, the people that have done this work so that the world knows who they are and so the officials continue to engage them, bring them involved.
	I want them to be interviewed.
	They should be brought into government.
	They should be given positions.
	They should be working side by side with the latest people because there's a huge body of knowledge.
	One of the things that happens, whether people realize it or not, the day the president confirms the extraterrestrial presence is that at that point, if you're smart, if you're fair and smart, you will instantly know in that moment that the vast, vast majority of all of the research, books, writings, and effort by citizen scientists going back to Roswell is true.
	In other words, they were right, and it's true.
	Not all of it, but a vast majority of it is in fact the truth.
	And all of that work needs to be assiduously reviewed and studied by the top people at all the top colleges who have all these years been going, ah, there's nothing to this, right?
	They need to turn right around and go, oh, there is something to this.
	And now we're going to embrace that work.
	We're going to bring it forward, deal with it.
	The vast majority is absolutely true.
	And this is the best way that these people can be honored, many of which are dead, right?
	They didn't make it to the mountaintop.
	They saw the mountaintop, but they didn't make it there with us.
	Their work will be acknowledged.
	This must happen.
	Why?
	Because we need to send a message out there to people, like, you know, look, don't give up.
	If you know something and you want to work on something, you will be acknowledged.
	You're going to be treated properly.
	We don't want to discourage people from doing the work that governments won't do for whatever reason.
	We want to show them the appreciation.
	And this will be very helpful in our society going forward.
	We must never repeat in the modern world.
	I don't know about the past world.
	All kinds of terrible things happen.
	We must never repeat in the modern world what just happened.
	A truth embargo of this magnitude, of this scope on something of this important that lasts for 76 years.
	It must never happen again.
	Steve Bassett, thank you very much, Steve.
	I know you're tired.
	It was a momentous day yesterday.
	Glad we've had this conversation.
	Hope we have many more as we go forward into what may well be a new reality.
	Thank you, Steve.
	You're welcome.
	Steve Bassett, there is much more to say, and I think we'll be hearing more quite soon.
	The next hearing, I think, may not be for a couple of months, though, because we're into the summertime hiatus.
	But we live in interesting times, don't we?
	More great guests in the pipeline here at the Home of the Unexplained Online.
	So until we meet again, my name is Howard Hughes.
	This has been The Unexplained, and please, whatever you do, stay safe, stay calm, and above all, please stay in touch.
	Thank you very much.
	Take care.

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