[tense music]
♪ ♪
[Duchovny] Tonight on "Secrets Declassified,"
government cases and programs so strange,
they cross into the supernatural,
like when the U.S. resorts to ancient magic
to win a modern conflict...
- They're on the front lines of a war,
deploying 16th century witchcraft.
- Or the time the FBI went hunting for monsters...
[Sami] It's one of the most advanced forensic labs
in the world, and it's testing for Bigfoot.
- And the most mysterious UFO sighting of them all.
[Hakeem] He sees a gleaming metallic object.
It looks like a big egg.
♪ ♪
- These are some of the strangest things
done throughout history by governments
and the people who work for them.
It's time to bring them to light.
[dramatic music]
♪ ♪
In the Vietnam War, the U.S. military is desperate
to locate the Viet Cong's jungle hideouts.
They try aerial reconnaissance, tracker dogs,
even deadly chemicals to strip the jungle bare.
When none of that works,
desperate times call for desperate measures,
and they turn to something far stranger--
two bent wires and some witchcraft.
[tense music]
[Sami] By 1967, the conflict in Vietnam
is a brutal deadlock.
American troops had massive firepower
and cutting-edge gear, yet they're getting worn down.
- Their enemy, the Viet Cong, is determined and innovative.
And one of their most effective ways
of combating U.S. troops is by using
a massive network of underground tunnels.
- The Viet Cong have dug and expanded
200 miles of these underground tunnels
that stretch under the jungle.
[Hakeem] For the American GIs,
these tunnels are a nightmare.
The VC can pop up, ambush a patrol,
and then just disappear back underground.
[Duchovny] One reason the VC tunnels are so effective
is because they're almost impossible to find.
- Traditional aerial reconnaissance doesn't work,
because the jungle canopy is just too thick.
And on the ground, they're so well camouflaged
that the soldiers can't find them
unless they just get lucky.
[Duchovny] To find their invisible enemy,
one U.S. official pleads for help.
- In November 1966, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara
screens a film for military consultants
that demonstrates some of the problems they're facing
in Vietnam, and it includes this appeal for new ideas
to detect and wipe out tunnels used by the enemy.
- The film catches the eye
of a professional land surveyor from Virginia.
His name is Louis Matacia.
When he sees the film showing these American troops
searching helplessly for these underground tunnels,
he thinks, I know exactly how to fix that problem.
[Duchovny] Matacia's answer is
a form of witchcraft: divination.
[Dan] Divination is this centuries-old
mystical practice where people claim they can pinpoint
underground water or minerals with just a forked stick
or with metal rods.
[Martin] Divination is used by people
who believe that, by balancing a rod,
someone can notice a subtle movement in it,
which is its magnetic attraction to a variation
in the magnetism below the soil.
[Dan] Mystics and mineral prospectors
have used this throughout Europe.
And some frontier settlers used it to help them find water
when they were pushing West.
There's just one catch, and that is that
there is no scientific evidence that it works--
for water or for minerals or for anything.
- Louis Matacia uses divining
as a part of his regular job as a surveyor.
And he is convinced divination can be used
to pinpoint the location
of Viet Cong tunnels in Vietnam.
[Duchovny] Matacia volunteers
his skills to the military.
With nothing to lose, the Marine Corps decides
to put his idea to the test.
- A group of Marine Corps engineers
bring Matacia to a basement location
where he can demonstrate his technique firsthand.
- During this demonstration, he walks beneath
exposed water pipes on the ceiling
holding two L-shaped metal rods,
one in each hand.
- Every time he passes directly
under a pipe, the rods swing out.
[Hakeem] Some officers think that this is just
a total waste of time, but others buy it.
- They view this as a potential way
to see underground and locate the Viet Cong.
- Matacia's demonstration is enough to inspire
a stunning leap of faith.
The U.S. Military gives their troops
a crash course in witchcraft.
[Dan] In May of 1968,
Matacia leads a training session
for Marines in North Carolina.
He shows them how to make divination tools
from simple coat hangers.
And he promises they can learn to find anything,
from booby traps to hidden weapons.
- They create a simulated Vietnam trail
with ammunition stored underground.
They have a couple of tunnels.
And the results are reliable enough
that it's worth the effort
to roll it out in combat theater in Vietnam.
- Did they set up the experiments properly?
We don't really know, but what we do know
is that the military fast-tracked divination
to the front lines in Vietnam.
[Duchovny] Now American troops in Vietnam
carry a weapon into combat-- bent coat hangers.
[Hakeem] You have Marines walking through the jungle
holding their M16 in one hand and forked rods in the other.
- The crazy thing is, the commander in chief
of U.S. forces in Vietnam reports back
that Marines are getting marked success.
He claims divination is enabling his troops
to find tunnels as well as hidden weapons stores,
supplies, and even buried documents.
[Duchovny] But not everyone in the military
is a believer.
[Catherine] Many think this is
a textbook case of confirmation bias.
The troops are desperate for any edge they can get.
[Sami] When they do locate a tunnel,
whether through intelligence or luck,
they're holding these rods in their hand.
And naturally, the divining gets the credit.
[Duchovny] Witchcraft or chance?
The military never truly discovers
what is behind divination's alleged hit rate.
And as the war winds down,
so does the interest in divining.
- Without any clear evidence of effectiveness,
that any of this works to begin with,
backing for the program slowly fades.
And by 1971, the Marine Corps
quietly shuts the whole thing down.
[Duchovny] Though few journalists had glimpsed
troops wandering the jungle with coat hangers,
the full story stays classified for several years.
- In May of 1977, a detailed 79-page report
on cheap and unconventional innovations
from the Vietnam era gets quietly declassified
and released.
- Buried in that document is the bizarre tale
of how the military embraced divination.
[Hakeem] In the end, for Marines
walking through a booby-trapped jungle,
a bent coat hanger offering even
a slight edge over pure luck was worth a shot.
Science be damned.
- Four years after the Marines turn to divination,
the Army attempts to harness its own supernatural power,
a secret weapon that can slip past any guard
and penetrate any vault--
the out-of-body experience.
[tense music]
[Sami] In the spring of 1972,
inside the Defense Intelligence Agency, or DIA,
a secret report suddenly lands like a shockwave.
[Dan] This document contains unconfirmed reports
that the Soviets are creating spies
whose consciousness can detach from their bodies.
[Sami] They're attempting to project their minds
thousands of miles to spy on classified meetings
or read restricted files,
while their physical bodies are
safely back in Moscow.
[Duchovny] At the height of Cold War paranoia,
any report that the Soviets have an edge is investigated,
even one claiming the enemy is training psychic spies.
- In the 1970s, both superpowers
locked in the Cold War are basically terrified
that the other is gonna come up with
some technological development
that's gonna instantly win the conflict.
[Andrew] In this high-stakes environment,
a report that says that the Soviets might have
found a way to harness psychic abilities,
it's taken seriously.
[Duchovny] To close the psychic gap,
the DIA doesn't look to a high-tech lab
or research installation.
It heads to a mystical retreat in Virginia's
Blue Ridge Mountains,
the Monroe Institute for Applied Sciences.
- This Institute is run by Robert Monroe,
a former radio executive who has turned into
a best-selling author.
Word has reached the military that Monroe claims
to have unlocked the same power as the Soviets.
- After years of experimenting, he says he can trigger
an out-of-body experience at will
and allow his mind to separate from his body
and travel anywhere.
[Duchovny] The military immediately dispatches
one man to discover if it's true.
[Sami] Lieutenant Colonel McDonnell is an officer
working for the Army Intelligence
and Security Command.
He's sent to immerse himself
into Monroe's curious institute.
And when he arrives, he does a real deep dive.
Over time, he discovers what Monroe claims
is the secret of the out-of-body experience.
[Duchovny] Monroe calls this system
the Gateway Process,
and he says he can teach it to anyone.
[Greg] According to Monroe,
the process uses audio frequencies
to manipulate the brain.
Monroe plays one tone
in the left ear, and another in the right.
The brain tries to reconcile the difference
and, in doing so, creates a third frequency.
This can then "click" the subject out of space-time,
and now the subject's mind can travel anywhere.
[Duchovny] After fully immersing in the institute,
McDonnell returns to his bosses.
On June 9, 1983, he drops his classified report
of Monroe's work on his superior's desk.
It's not what anyone expects.
- McDonnell drinks the Kool-Aid big time.
His 29-page analysis reveals that
he's become a true believer.
It argues that there is a rational, scientific basis
for the Gateway Process.
- He believes that this process will allow agents
to transcend space-time,
which means spies could theoretically eliminate
sinister plots before they're even hatched.
[Duchovny] Despite his convictions in Gateway,
McDonnell issues a chilling warning.
A supernatural spy mission brings supernatural risks.
- McDonnell claims agents traveling out of body
might encounter intelligent energy forms.
- He's talking entities, beings, things in the void,
and they might not be friendly.
- Despite what dangers might lurk in the abyss,
McDonnell convinces the army to green-light
a top-secret initiative to train up a battalion
of psychic spies for the U.S. government.
First, they need to find their potential mind travelers.
[Andrew] Recruits are pulled
from the intelligence services themselves,
and they are heavily vetted.
They're looking for people who aren't too skeptical
but also aren't cult fanatics.
They want believers, not extremists.
[Duchovny] Over a range of ambitious,
mind-expanding projects,
the early results seem promising.
[Dan] In one session, this one agent says
he sent his mind soaring to Mars--
and not just Mars, but Mars a million years ago.
He traveled through space and time.
Oh, and by the way, there were pyramids there too.
[Amy] He talks about giant pyramids,
swirling dust storms,
and an entire civilization of colossal figures.
[Duchovny] The problem is,
when subjects' supernatural abilities
are tested more rigorously,
the results are dangerously unreliable.
- In a more controlled experiment
at the Monroe Institute, subjects on the East Coast
are asked to project their minds
all the way to the West Coast, where there is
a computer screen projecting random numbers.
[Andrew] Their job is to read the numbers on the screen
and then report back to their East Coast handlers
what they actually see.
- And guess what-- it doesn't work.
They do no better than you would if you just guessed.
[Duchovny] McDonnell himself acknowledges this problem.
He calls it information distortion.
- Nevertheless, the government continues
to push research forward into the 1980s,
oftentimes under classified projects,
but the experimental results are still wildly inconsistent
and unreliable.
- In 1984, it's all shut down,
because the military was not getting
any real return on investment.
Go figure.
[Duchovny] For two decades,
McDonnell's Gateway report remains locked away.
Then, in 2003, it's finally released,
but some details remain classified.
[Amy] What we do know is,
for a brief period in American history,
the government was actually trying to use
out-of-body experiences as the new era of espionage.
- In the 1950s and '60s, a top-secret government project
named Blue Book investigates 12,000 UFO cases.
Of those, one file stands apart as the most credible of all--
this one.
[tense music]
[Hakeem] On one spring afternoon,
Sergeant Lonnie Zamora is in the middle
of a high-speed pursuit.
Suddenly, a massive boom echoes across the desert,
and Zamora sees a column of flames and smoke
rising up from a distant ravine.
His first instinct is that
a dynamite shack out there has exploded.
Zamora abandons the chase and tears off road to go help.
[Duchovny] Zamora drives his cruiser closer
but struggles to make out what he sees.
[Paul] Initially, he thinks it's actually
an overturned car, but it doesn't have any windows.
It doesn't appear to have any doors.
- He sees a gleaming, white, oval-shaped metallic object.
It just looks like a big egg.
- According to Zamora, standing beside the craft
are two figures dressed in white overalls,
too small to be adults, yet too large to be children.
- He calls it in to the sheriff's dispatcher
and says he's going to check out what looks like
it might be some kind of wreck.
And when he looks back up, suddenly,
the two figures are gone.
[Duchovny] Zamora's heart rate goes up a notch.
He drives 50 yards closer
and cautiously gets out to approach on foot.
[Hakeem] As he gets nearer,
he notices what looks like landing gear.
The craft has two metal legs that are angled outward.
On the side, there's a red insignia.
It's an arrow design that he's never seen before.
[Duchovny] Suddenly, the silence shatters.
- A deafening roar erupts, the ground shakes,
and a blue-orange flame spews from beneath the craft.
- Zamora panics.
He thinks the thing's about to detonate.
He turns and sprints away, dives behind the hill,
and covers his head.
[Duchovny] But no explosion comes.
- The roar cuts out.
And so Zamora peeks out.
And he says that he sees the craft now,
slowly lifting up.
- It pauses, hangs about 15 feet in the air,
then picks up speed and blasts across the sky,
vanishing beyond the distant peaks.
[Duchovny] When Lonnie Zamora radios in
to report what he's seen,
an FBI agent is listening in on the frequency.
For him, this sighting isn't just a mystery--
it's a threat to a top-secret U.S. base.
- Zamora's sighting takes place about a hundred miles outside
of White Sands Missile Range,
very near Holloman Air Force Base,
which is ground zero for classified
military aerospace programs.
Anything strange that happens here
could very easily be considered a threat,
possibly even from the Soviets.
[Duchovny] The FBI agent alerts the Army.
Soon, military police arrive to secure the location.
[Don] The military finds Zamora shaken,
but crystal clear about what he saw.
- Lonnie Zamora is a very special kind of witness.
He's a no-nonsense cop who carried out
everything by the book.
[Don] They also find something else--
physical proof of the craft's existence.
[Andrew] There are indentations in the ground
that look like landing gear as well as scorched brush
in the area from flames.
[Duchovny] To investigate, the military sent in
the Air Force's top-secret UFO program,
Project Blue Book.
[Hakeem] Project Blue Book started
back in the 1940s to track
unidentified flying objects across the United States.
Its job is to assess every unexplained sighting
and determine if they pose a threat to national security.
[Duchovny] Project Blue Book is led by
Major Hector Quintanilla,
a professional skeptic whose team has debunked
thousands of sightings.
While the press clamors for answers,
he quietly launches a forensic investigation.
- Quintanilla brings in teams with Geiger counters
to sweep the area for radiation.
They take soil samples and send them
to the Air Force Materials Lab
to see if they can find traces of propellants.
All tests are negative.
No foreign materials are identified.
[Don] His team scours the flight logs
of every military base
and civilian airport in the region.
They contact weather stations across the state,
but there were no experimental flights that day
and no balloons sent up.
- At one point, he actually even approaches the White House
and tries to discover whether there's anything going on
at the highest levels of the government,
and that also does not bear any fruit.
There's no doubt that something happened,
but the FBI can't point to anything
as being abnormal or alien.
[tense music]
- After a thorough investigation,
Quintanilla stamps the file "unidentified."
For years, the Zamora case sits in a Blue Book filing cabinet.
Then, in 1976, the project's findings on UFOs go public.
[Andrew] In part to quell public speculation
that the government is trying to cover up
proof of alien existence,
Project Blue Book is publicly declassified.
- Of its 12,000-plus files, the government claims
that all of them can be either explained or debunked.
But a small number, around 700 or so,
remain unsolved,
including Zamora's.
[Duchovny] It's not just unidentified--
it's one of a kind.
In private memoirs released after his death,
Quintanilla, the skeptic who spent his life debunking UFOs,
makes an astonishing admission.
The Zamora sighting was
the best documented case on record.
- The Zamora incident was the one
that bothered him the most
because he could never figure out what happened.
There's no proof that the Zamora incident involves
any form of alien life, but there's also
no definitive evidence of what it was.
♪ ♪
- In the 1970s, the Federal Bureau of Investigation
hunts infamous fugitives like Ted Bundy,
John Wayne Gacy, and Patty Hearst.
But for a brief period, its world-leading forensic lab
also attempts to find a much more outlandish monster:
Bigfoot.
[ominous music]
[Sami] Deep in the Pacific Northwest,
tales have spread since the 1800s of an enormous,
ape-like creature, sometimes over 8 feet tall,
covered head to toe in hair,
walking upright through remote forests.
They call it Sasquatch or Bigfoot.
[Duchovny] In 1967, 59.5 seconds of grainy film
make the folktales seem shockingly real.
[Don] A single shaky piece of footage
is captured by two hikers,
Roger Patterson and Bob Gimlin,
that shows an ape-like figure glancing back at the camera.
[Kavitha] This eerie snippet
ignites a frenzy of Bigfoot pursuit nationwide.
- Amateur hunters flood into the forests.
And Washington State now leads the nation
with more than 650 reported sightings.
That's about 9 for every 100,000 residents.
[Kavitha] It becomes a widespread obsession.
Everyone is seeing something in the woods.
[Duchovny] While Bigfoot fever sweeps the nation,
one organization refuses to get involved: the FBI.
- The FBI is asked repeatedly to investigate these sightings,
but it constantly gives the same answer.
"We investigate terrorism and fugitives.
We don't do myths."
[Duchovny] That policy holds firm for a decade,
until a compelling new Bigfoot encounter
inspires a bizarre exception.
[tense music]
[Sami] In the summer of 1976,
two biologists from the U.S. Forest Service
claim that they saw a massive creature
lumbering through the trees and disappearing.
Now, this isn't some vague campfire story.
These are credible witnesses, trained observers,
guys who know the woods.
- They immediately contact the world's most dedicated
Bigfoot researcher, Peter Byrne.
[Amy] Peter Byrne is a former big game hunter
who has dedicated his life to wildlife conservation
and also Sasquatch hunting.
He operates the Bigfoot Information Center
in The Dalles, Oregon, in what's thought to be
deep Sasquatch country.
[Duchovny] Byrne rushes to the site to investigate.
- Peter Byrne interviews the biologists
and then goes to the area where they spotted the creature.
And Byrne notices that the path the creature
supposedly took cuts between two trees that are
really close together.
And that gap is too narrow
for anything with broad shoulders
to pass through without making contact.
- Byrne examines the trees carefully,
and right there, about 5 feet up,
snagged on rough bark,
he spots a small clump of hair
and a fragment of skin tissue.
[Amy] For Peter Byrne, this isn't just
another footprint in the mud.
This is biological material that can actually be tested.
- Could Byrne be holding in his hands
the proof that Bigfoot exists?
He thinks so, but wants it tested
by an authority no one can question,
so he reaches out to the FBI.
[Don] Byrne drafts a letter to the Bureau,
offering to send in his Bigfoot sample
and pleading for them to analyze it,
stressing the seriousness of his research.
[Duchovny] Luckily for Byrne, the FBI's forensic team
has never been better equipped to help.
- Just the previous year,
the FBI has moved their central lab
to a brand-new headquarters in D.C.
And this is now one of the largest
crime labs on the planet.
[Amy] It's filled with cutting-edge technology
and can do more than a million tests in a year.
[Dan] Chemical analyses, toxicology reports,
ballistics-- basically any scientific
test you can think of.
[Duchovny] But it's never tested
for legendary monsters until now.
Byrne's letter lands on the desk
of Assistant Director Jay Cochran, Jr.
[Dan] Cochran, Jr. is
a career law enforcement officer.
He is a by-the-book kind of guy.
- The FBI has a strict policy
on what cases they examine in their lab,
and that doesn't include Bigfoot.
- Cochran is not the type of guy
you would expect to deviate from the rules.
[Duchovny] For reasons that remain a mystery
to this day, Cochran makes an exception.
[Dan] Maybe Cochran's curious.
Maybe he figures, if there is
a 7-foot humanoid running around,
the government should probably know about it.
Or maybe he just wants to put
all this wild speculation to rest.
But whatever his motive, he replies to Byrne,
and he agrees to test that sample if Byrne sends it in.
[Duchovny] Byrne meticulously wraps up
the 15 strands of hair and the skin fragment
and ships them off to the FBI lab.
Then nothing.
- Weeks, months, and then years go by,
and he never hears anything.
[Don] Byrne continues his work,
always searching for Bigfoot.
But the question is always there--
what did the FBI find?
[Duchovny] The results remain unknown for four decades.
Then when Byrne is in his 90s, he finally gets an answer.
[Kavitha] In 2019, the FBI releases
a 22-page Bigfoot file
after a Freedom of Information Act request.
And inside, there's only one investigation reference,
Peter Byrne's.
[Duchovny] The file reveals that Cochran did
write back in 1977,
but Byrne never received the letter,
and no one knows why.
- The document explains that the FBI lab scientists
had subjected Byrne's Bigfoot sample to a rigorous analysis.
[Amy] This was before DNA testing,
so they tried to use different microscopies
to figure out as much as they could.
They looked at root structure, cuticle thickness,
and scale cast, and the results were pretty clear.
- Not an unknown primate, not a new species,
but a deer.
- It was a deer.
[Dan] It's not proof of Bigfoot,
but it is proof that, for a brief moment at least,
the U.S. government took the Sasquatch story
seriously enough to forensically test it.
- Most countries fight wars with spies and soldiers.
But in the darkest hour of World War II,
Britain turns to someone with an unexpected set of skills,
an astrologer who claims he can defeat Germany
by reading the stars.
[tense music]
[Greg] It's 1940.
Hitler's Nazi machine has
blitzkrieged its way across Europe.
Britain remains essentially alone
in its stand against Hitler.
[Sami] Britain realizes that its best shot
at surviving is to draw the wealth
and military power of the United States
into the war on their side.
[Greg] The problem is,
America is neutral and isolationist.
And public opinion is deeply set against
what is seen as a European war.
[Duchovny] With conventional diplomacy
failing to lure America into the fight,
Winston Churchill needs a new plan.
Instead of sending in one of his spies,
Churchill turns to an astrologer for help.
- Louis de Wohl is a flamboyant 37-year-old
Hungarian-Jewish immigrant
who fled Nazi Germany five years earlier.
- In London, he casts himself as this celebrity stargazer.
He charges high-profile clientele
more than $1,000 in today's money
for one horoscope reading.
- Louis de Wohl is very good at convincing people
to part with their money and change their ideas.
[Duchovny] He's recently been recruited
by British intelligence to feed them information
on his high-profile clients.
Now he pitches them a wild idea of his own.
[Sasha] De Wohl claims that,
by studying planetary alignments
and the birth charts of Nazi leaders,
he can predict Hitler's military strategy.
[Greg] He insists that every major German offensive
is timed to astrological calculations.
- There is some evidence to show that several
of the members of the German High Command, including Hitler,
really are motivated by astrological phenomena.
So de Wohl claims that if you have the time and place
of their birth, you can actually predict
their future actions.
- He's offering a sort of celestial intelligence.
♪ ♪
- It's then that British intelligence
gets an ingenious idea.
De Wohl's prophesizing is so powerful,
they wonder if they can use this wacky mystic
not to predict the war,
but to spook the U.S. into joining it.
[tense music]
[Sasha] British intelligence sees
that astrology is becoming more and more
popular in the United States.
Millions of Americans are reading their horoscopes
in daily newspapers.
[Greg] British intelligence reasons that,
if the United States can't be convinced
to join the war for political reasons,
perhaps they can be coaxed into it
through astrological warnings.
[Sami] They decide to send de Wohl to America
to masquerade as a freelance astrologer
not linked to any British authority.
Here, he'll embark on a lecture tour
aiming to sway public opinion into joining the war
by convincing the American public
Hitler is coming for them.
[Paul] They're going to use him
because he's a charismatic individual
who's very good in front of crowds.
♪ ♪
[Duchovny] On August 5, 1941,
de Wohl delivers his first major address
to the American Federation of Scientific Astrologers
in Cleveland, Ohio.
- De Wohl tells 500 delegates that the stars are aligning
for a Nazi invasion of the United States.
He even claims to know the date.
Next spring, Hitler will strike.
[Paul] When Saturn and Uranus cross over
the constellation Gemini, that will be the moment
at which the Nazi attack occurs.
[Hakeem] The only way to prevent this cosmic destiny
is for America to abandon neutrality
and enter the war immediately before it's too late.
[Duchovny] The American press eats up
these apocalyptic celestial warnings.
[Sasha] Newspaper headlines explode,
from New York to California.
- The "Los Angeles Times" even puts his prediction
on their front page, saying that Hitler plans
to invade the United States via Brazil.
[Duchovny] De Wohl's secret mission is working perfectly
until it's blindsided by a shocking event
that neither the U.S. nor de Wohl predicted:
Pearl Harbor.
[Greg] On December 7, 1941,
Japan attacked Pearl Harbor.
It's this attack,
not mystical signs from the stars,
that draws the United States into the war.
- Despite Pearl Harbor, the SOE considers
de Wohl's operation an enormous success.
He generated a lot of publicity
and helped shift American opinion
at a critical moment.
[Duchovny] Britain's stargazing agent returns
from his U.S. tour, but now his love of the spotlight
threatens to undo all his secret work.
[Hakeem] De Wohl has always loved attention,
so he struts about in uniform,
and he calls himself Britain's state seer.
And he boasts of the work that he's done
during the war for British intelligence,
but British intelligence see an egotistical charlatan
with a love of the limelight.
- Essentially, he's gone from being
kind of a useful idiot
to being a danger to state secrets.
[Hakeem] They don't want the U.S.
to know that they've been playing their public.
[Duchovny] De Wohl needs to stop talking, permanently.
[Sami] Intelligence officials draft a memo
with three options to dispose of him.
Now, one is exile to a remote village.
The other two options,
those are still completely redacted.
[Duchovny] Perhaps sensing his peril,
de Wohl takes the hint.
- He quiets down about a lot of his grandiose claims.
He stops engaging in his astrological profession,
and he reinvents himself as a novelist.
[Duchovny] De Wohl dies in 1961,
and for over 60 years, this bizarre chapter
of British spy history is locked away.
Only in 2008 are de Wohl's intelligence files
declassified by the National Archives,
and the full fantastical story emerges.
[Greg] De Wohl may have been seen
as vain and eccentric--
and in fact, perhaps was.
Nonetheless, de Wohl had his 15 minutes of fame,
exercising celestial influence, if you will,
on the highest levels of British intelligence.
- In 1977, a new movie called "Star Wars"
becomes a global phenomenon.
The same year, behind closed doors,
the Pentagon investigates if it can train
Jedi warriors of its own.
But these men aren't after Darth Vader.
They'll take on goats.
[tense music]
[Sami] It's the late 1970s,
and the U.S. Army is recovering
from the Vietnam War.
They're desperate to ensure a conflict
as brutal and intractable as that never happens again.
- The U.S. Army brass is looking for new
and unconventional ways to fight future wars.
[Sami] The usually conservative military
turns its attention to a very unconservative counterculture
sweeping from California right across America,
the New Age Movement.
[O'Keefe] The New Age Movement in the 1970s
is starting to look at the world
and life in a different way.
They're experimenting with transcendental meditation,
clairvoyancy--everything.
[Catherine] The movement's led by
a number of spiritual gurus
who boldly claim that they can access
incredible powers simply by using the power of the mind.
[Sami] Some in the military start to wonder,
could these discoveries be weaponized to create soldiers
with new psychic powers?
[Duchovny] One Vietnam combat veteran
decides to find out:
Lieutenant Colonel Jim Channon.
[Catherine] Channon witnessed some horrors while serving.
And after the war, he turned to the New Age Movement
to cope with his trauma, and it leads him
to encounter some of its most advanced ideas.
- Channon approaches the Pentagon,
and he suggests he might be able to infiltrate
into these New Age communities,
soak up as much intelligence as he can,
and then bring it back.
The Pentagon is quite receptive to all this.
They end up funding him and sending him in.
[Duchovny] Channon heads to California
and begins his research.
- It is the ultimate mind-expanding road trip.
- Over months, Channon visits workshops,
retreats, spiritual centers--
150 different organizations.
You name it, Channon goes there.
- And he tries everything, from firewalking
and spoon-bending to primal arm wrestling--
which is arm wrestling combined with just, like,
guttural screaming--
and naked hot tub therapy sessions.
[Kavitha] One thing he becomes obsessed with
is an idea called the Human Potential Movement.
This believes that collective meditation
can alter brainwaves and heart rate
and give humans untapped power.
[Duchovny] After two years of immersing
in this strange world, Channon distills
everything he's learned into a 125-page manifesto.
He argues the Human Potential Movement
can be tapped to create a new kind of soldier,
a warrior monk.
[Sami] He envisions divisions of elite soldiers
trained in psychic combat, soldiers who can turn invisible
through sheer mental focus or stop an enemy's heart
just by concentrating on it.
[Duchovny] In 1979, Channon delivers this dossier,
named "The First Earth Battalion Operations Manual"
to the Army brass.
Enter Albert Stubblebine,
a major general of U.S. Army intelligence
who buys it wholesale.
[Greg] Major General Stubblebine
is another Vietnam veteran.
He's a true patriot, and at this point has
16,000 men who answer to him.
- He believes that the United States of America
needs the best soldiers possible.
- Stubblebine reads Channon's manual
and becomes convinced that this means psychic soldiers.
[Duchovny] With Stubblebine's backing,
the First Earth Battalion transitions from madcap theory
into a real-life psychic school for soldiers.
[tense music]
[Greg] The story goes that Stubblebine sets up
a special unit in Maryland to create
soldiers of the future using Channon's techniques.
[O'Keefe] Soldiers are trying to become invisible,
trying to walk through walls,
all with just the power of the mind.
- The First Earth Battalion talks a big game,
but the results don't match the hype.
By the end of 1983, the program was on the chopping block.
Stubblebine needs proof it works.
Then special forces sets up a make-or-break test.
[tense music]
[Catherine] Inside Fort Bragg,
which is the home of the U.S. Special Forces,
is what's called the Goat Lab.
It houses 100 goats, and here,
U.S. soldiers can practice
treating gunshot wounds on the livestock.
[Duchovny] Now these crack troops get
a much more unnatural mission.
- The story goes the special forces bring in a goat,
and selected men are tasked with one order.
- With the power of the mind,
make the heart of the goat stop beating.
[Catherine] The soldiers meditate
and channel their thoughts into what they believe
is a focused lethal force.
[Duchovny] And the goats?
- Just stand there, staring back, chewing.
[Duchovny] There's no evidence
a single goat is killed by psychic energy.
The test is a complete failure,
and in 1984,
the First Earth Battalion is quietly dissolved.
- General Stubblebine's credibility is shattered.
[O'Keefe] He ends up going into early retirement,
but he's still sure that there was promise to this program.
The military was not ready to accept it.
[Duchovny] Anything associated with the project
is classified, but secrets like this
don't stay buried forever.
After 20 years, one journalist unveils
the entire surreal experiment.
[Sami] A British reporter named Jon Ronson
hears rumors about the story and chases it down.
He interviews former members of the First Earth Battalion unit,
including Stubblebine and Channon.
In 2004, he tells the whole barely believable tale
in a book that becomes a Hollywood film.
He calls it "The Men Who Stare at Goats."
- Las Vegas is full of the bizarre--
an indoor Eiffel tower,
a water slide through a shark tank.
In 2017, one journalist gets a lead
on something even stranger--
a secret warehouse packed with UFO artifacts.
[tense music]
[Hakeem] It's October 2017,
and an investigative reporter named Leslie Kean
gets a tip from a trusted source.
A high-level intelligence officer
wants to blow the whistle on a government program
he claims is investigating UFOs.
[Kavitha] This is the break that Leslie Kean has been
waiting her entire career for.
She's built her reputation on asking
serious questions about UFOs.
She's been fighting the government hard,
often through the courts,
for transparency on the subject.
[Duchovny] This could be big.
If Kean can prove that the U.S. government is
secretly researching UFOs, it would expose
the first official probe into the subject
since the close of its Project Blue Book in 1970.
- To bring the story to the widest audience possible,
Kean teams up with Ralph Blumenthal,
a veteran reporter who spent 45 years
at "The New York Times."
Together, they set up a meeting with the whistleblower
in a hotel room in Philadelphia.
[Duchovny] In an intense, hours-long session,
the 37-year-old intelligence officer from Texas
lays out his story.
His name is Luis Elizondo.
[Dan] Luis Elizondo claims
he has just resigned from the Pentagon
in protest at the cover-ups
of a top-secret UFO research program.
[Amy] He says he was the director
of a covert program called the Advanced Aerospace
Threat Identification Program, or AATIP.
[Dan] It was set up quietly in 2007 with a mission
to analyze tracking data, witness statements,
and military encounters
with unidentified aerial phenomena or UFOs.
[Duchovny] At first, the facts about AATIP
seemed hard to believe.
[Hakeem] He claims that it was funded with $22 million,
largely from the Pentagon's black budget,
which means that it doesn't show up on any public ledger.
- This undercover operation assembled what could be
the most advanced and extensive collection
of UFO data in existence.
- Over 200,000 reported incidents.
[Duchovny] Elizondo's exposé is potentially huge.
But for Kean, the word of one whistleblower isn't enough.
[Greg] The journalist can't run a story this incredible
without bulletproof evidence.
[Amy] Kean has spent her career
trying to get people to take UFOs seriously.
So if this story flops, everything's just gonna get
pushed back into the fringes.
They need this to land.
[Duchovny] To corroborate Elizondo's UFO claims,
the journalists go after two of the key players he's named.
First up, a former senator named Harry Reid,
who Elizondo says green-lit the hidden funds.
- Kean and Blumenthal track down Harry Reid
and ask him point blank,
"Did you authorize a secret Pentagon UFO program?"
- You'd expect a politician to distance himself
from little green men, but incredibly,
Reid doubles down.
He tells them on the record
that this program was vital to national security.
He even says, "I'm not embarrassed
or sorry that I got this thing going."
[Duchovny] Next, Kean chases down
the strangest player connected to the program,
a billionaire real-estate magnate
and UFO truth seeker named Robert Bigelow.
- Robert Bigelow says he had a paranormal encounter
when he was a child, which made him a true believer.
And so, in his adulthood, he's poured money
into the study of space and UFOs.
[Kavitha] He runs a company called Bigelow Aerospace,
which ostensibly builds modules for space stations.
But the journalists uncover that Bigelow Aerospace has
a secret side contract with AATIP that nobody knows about.
- Bigelow tells the journalist that his aerospace company
is paid by the program to manage a specialized
storage facility in Las Vegas.
- According to Bigelow, it houses files,
but also physical materials,
pieces from downed UFOs,
mysterious fragments recovered from crash sites.
- Essentially, says Bigelow, the U.S. government
has an entire warehouse of alien technology.
- As the journalists prepare to take
this incredible revelation to the public,
they're missing just one thing--
a comment from the Pentagon.
[Hakeem] The team reaches out for an official response,
and on December 16th,
just hours from going to press, it arrives.
- The Pentagon knows the story is about to break.
There's no stopping it.
So instead of denying it,
the Pentagon acknowledges that AATIP existed.
♪ ♪
[Dan] This is the first time since 1970
that the United States government has admitted,
on the record, that they have been running
a program to study UFOs.
♪ ♪
The article hits the front page.
It goes global instantly.
The public demands answers,
and Congress wants transparency.
[Duchovny] It's a watershed moment.
Almost overnight,
U.S. authorities remove the stigma on UFOs.
- After Kean's exposé,
the military changes its stance on UFOs.
Pilots are told, if you see something, say something.
And they even declassify videos
of previous unexplained phenomena.
- In 2022, the government establishes
a new public-facing task force
to investigate reports of unidentified aerial phenomena,
and they call it
the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.
Everybody knows what it really is.
it's the Pentagon's UFO program.
♪ ♪
- From witchcraft
supposed to give troops an edge in battle
to out-of-body espionage,
all governments secretly embrace the unconventional,
mystical, and outright unexplained.
But what they do or don't discover
will always find its way into the light.