{"id":3534,"date":"2020-03-11T06:00:42","date_gmt":"2020-03-11T11:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.basedonatruestorypodcast.com\/?p=3534"},"modified":"2024-02-06T15:51:43","modified_gmt":"2024-02-06T21:51:43","slug":"152-project-blue-book-with-rob-kristoffersen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.basedonatruestorypodcast.com\/152-project-blue-book-with-rob-kristoffersen\/","title":{"rendered":"152: Project Blue Book Season 1 with Rob Kristoffersen"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t<div data-elementor-type=\"wp-post\" data-elementor-id=\"3534\" class=\"elementor elementor-3534\" data-elementor-post-type=\"post\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<section class=\"elementor-section elementor-top-section elementor-element elementor-element-8d97e68 elementor-section-boxed elementor-section-height-default elementor-section-height-default\" data-id=\"8d97e68\" data-element_type=\"section\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-container elementor-column-gap-default\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<div 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class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>Disclaimer: Dan LeFebvre and\/or Based on a True Story may earn commissions from qualifying purchases through our links on this page.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-42b7aa1 elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"42b7aa1\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default\">Did you enjoy this episode? Help support the next one!<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-c3c49aa elementor-widget elementor-widget-html\" data-id=\"c3c49aa\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"html.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a class=\"bmc-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.buymeacoffee.com\/basedonatruestorypodcast\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/cdn.buymeacoffee.com\/buttons\/bmc-new-btn-logo.svg\" alt=\"Buy me a coffee\" \/><span style=\"margin-left: 15px; font-size: 19px !important;\">Buy me a coffee<\/span><\/a><\/p>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-2b31af5 elementor-widget elementor-widget-heading\" data-id=\"2b31af5\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"heading.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t<h2 class=\"elementor-heading-title elementor-size-default\">Transcript<\/h2>\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-2ba3e98 elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"2ba3e98\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p><em>Note: This transcript is automatically generated. There will be mistakes, so please don&#8217;t use them for quotes. It is provided for reference use to find things better in the audio.<\/em><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-5ef228b elementor-widget elementor-widget-text-editor\" data-id=\"5ef228b\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"text-editor.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<p>\u00a0<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:02:39] I&#8217;d like to start by setting the stage for Dr. J Allen Allen Hynek and his work on project blue book.<\/p><p>According to the TV show, Dr Hynek was an astrophysics teacher at Ohio state before he&#8217;s recruited by the U S air force to investigate flying saucers, what they called the project blue book. Now there&#8217;s one little bit of dialogue in the show where they give.<\/p><p>A very vague reason as to why they picked dr Hynek. And it&#8217;s when journal James Harding tells captain Michael Quinn, that neck quote did some things for us in the war and quote. So not a lot of details there about that. but they do give some details about why they started project blue book itself.<\/p><p>Now the reason that the show gives for that was because there are Hollywood movies about aliens coming out and the public. No, something&#8217;s going on, but no one knows exactly what, including the government according to the show. So they want to find out, but they also want to cover it up. We get the sense from the show that the military picked Hynek because of his scientific background, because he&#8217;s not in the military.<\/p><p>They&#8217;re hoping they can give a little bit of some scientific proof to the public for flying saucers that&#8217;s outside of the military. Now in the show, dr Hynek agrees to join project blue book on three conditions. One is that he stays on staff at Ohio state. Two is he gets a paycheck from the government, some extra money for his family, and the three is that he gets recognition for whatever he finds.<\/p><p>So that is according to the TV show, it kind of setting all of this up. How well do you think the show did depicting the way that dr Hynek got involved in project blue book?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:04:26] Dr Hynek joining project blue book was kind of a matter of convenience almost. So when project blue book comes into being in late 1951 this is essentially the government&#8217;s third attempt to study the UFO phenomenon.<\/p><p>And dr J L and Harnick was part of the government&#8217;s first UFO study, which was called project sign. Sign a commenced in January of 1948 and was shuttered later that year. He joined the project in the spring of 48 for a few different reasons. he was at the time, the director of the observatory at Ohio state university.<\/p><p>All of the government&#8217;s\u00a0 projects were run out of Wright Patterson air force base, which was about 60 miles away from him, and Hynek already had a high security clearance from his work on the proximity fuse during world war II. Which is what they kind of allude to him doing things for us during the war.<\/p><p>And when you factor in all of these things, Hynek was kind of the guy they needed an astronomer too. Rule out any kind of astronomical explanation that there could be for the sightings. And, he was a perfect guy to do it. So as our good friends, Sam&#8217;s stated on the not alone podcast, right place, right time, Wright Patterson Air Force Base.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:05:50] I love that.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:05:53] So when Hynek took the job, he believed that this would be a quick one. He was pretty sure that what the UFO phenomenon was at the time was just cold war nerves. World war II, latent nerves, you know, stuff left over. So one of the most important cases that Hynek worked on, and that will come full circle for his involvement in project blue book.<\/p><p>Is a case involving a pilot by the name of Thomas F Montel, who died while in pursuit of a UFO in January of 1948 mantle and a few other pilots were taxiing planes from Marietta, Georgia to stand a Ford field. And Kentucky. And while they were doing that Godman air force base, which was located near Fort Knox, had received a few unidentified blips on the radar and ask Montel and his crew of a few other pilots to go investigate it.<\/p><p>Well, mantle pursued the object, but unfortunately he didn&#8217;t have oxygen on board. So when his plane climbed too high, he suffered from hypoxia. Which basically caused him to crash his plane. Hi. Nick was the one that kind of made his determination on this case, and he claimed that he was chasing the planet Venus.<\/p><p>So really just kind of debunking mentality. And that was at the start of project sign. That was the mentality that a jail and Hynek had. Project sign was basically shuttered largely because of a document called the estimate of the situation, which basically said that these crafts were extraterrestrial in origin.<\/p><p>No surviving copy of this document exists though. Like the generals that this report went to basically said you have to destroy every single one of these documents. There&#8217;s no way that we&#8217;re going to the president or anybody with this kind of information. So. No surviving copy has ever been found, but there have been people who have attested to it, including dr Hynek himself signed, was shuttered and was reactivated as project Raj.<\/p><p>No grudge was strictly a debunking campaign. They downplayed reports and at times just threw them out, didn&#8217;t even bother to investigate them. Grudge officially lasted for about a year, but they. Kinda kept somebody on staff so that if somebody did want to report UFO sightings to there, there would be somebody there.<\/p><p>And that guy&#8217;s name was Lieutenant Jerry Cummings. And in 1951 there was a siting at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, and air force personnel witnessed a dish shaped object and a report was flawed, filed, but was ultimately dismissed by Cummings under the directive that he had been working with. And this report made its name to a general by the name of CP Kabel who requested to see the report and didn&#8217;t really like the looks of it.<\/p><p>He didn&#8217;t feel like people were being honest with them. And Cummings basically told him how the project had been handled up to this point that it was there just to debunk reports. And at that point\u00a0 got pretty angry. He ordered that project, Drudge be reactivated in full force. Unfortunately, Cummings was on his way out back to a civilian life.<\/p><p>So he got a gentleman by the name of captain Edward rupell, who was the first project Bluebook head to spearhead this project. So captain rupell was essentially the backup pilot for the crew of the Enola gay. So if any of the pilots that were involved in that flight couldn&#8217;t somehow make it for whatever reason, he was the guy that was going to fly that plane.<\/p><p>He had worked with dr Hynek before on project sign. He quickly got in there. He whipped this project into shape, and as soon it would be relabeled project blue book. But one of the things that he did was he went back into the old reports just to see what was there, to see how things were ruled. And RuPaul was the kind of guy who was going to give you his objective opinion.<\/p><p>He wanted this to be as an objective study as possible. So if you lean. Either one way to one side or the other. You were kicked off the team. One case report that he looked at was the Thomas F Montel case, and he saw that Hynek was the one that made the determination on that one. So he basically called them up and said, I need you to come back in here.<\/p><p>We need to re-examine this case. They determine that what Montel was chasing was a project Vogel balloon. This was a newly declassified project as if 1951. That essentially set up weather balloons with audio equipment attached to them and they were basically there to detect Soviet atomic bomb tests, and that&#8217;s basically how Nick made his way onto project blue book.<\/p><p>He stayed after that through the entirety of the project.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:11:10] Just to make sure I&#8217;m understanding, there was a captain in the show, there&#8217;s captain queen. And we also meet a couple of generals. General Harding in general, Valentine are the character names where they also, were they based on those, those generals and the captain that you were referring to, or are they just completely fictional?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:11:27] They&#8217;re inspired. For instance, captain Quinn is kind of based on too project blue book heads. Edward rupell like I mentioned, and a another one by the name of Colonel Robert friend who was a Tuskegee airman and he served, I think for about a year, but. He had had that Edward root pelt mentality, which was, they were skeptical, but they wouldn&#8217;t let their skeptical beliefs really shutter any kind of a reports or anything like that or you know, lead them down a road.<\/p><p>They didn&#8217;t think they should be going. And general Valentine I do believe is based on general Nathan twining, who was the general that actually created project sign and he was kind of a figure in the background. During the government UFO research projects. So he was always kind of there in the background.<\/p><p>Always kinda got Intel and he&#8217;s, you know, made some interesting statements on UFOs and such a, there&#8217;s some fun interviews with them. There&#8217;s one in which he alludes to UFO is kind of forwarding us forces in Vietnam and stuff like that. It&#8217;s a, there&#8217;s a lot of fun stuff out there.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:12:41] Huh? Interesting. Well, yeah.<\/p><p>Okay. I was just curious, cause obviously dr Hynek being real, I was just curious who on the military side of it would have been real, but it sounds like they&#8217;re more just. Composite characters, which is very common that we get for movies and TV shows.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:12:55] Yeah. For the most part, the only real to life characters on the show are are dr J Allen Hynek and his wife Mimi Hynek.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:13:03] Okay. You mentioned the highlight there, and that leads right into the next question that I have because in episode one, it kicks off with something that they call the fuller incident. Now. I&#8217;m going to assume that&#8217;s not necessarily the same incident that you&#8217;re referring to because this in the show at least happens in Fargo, North Dakota, and it&#8217;s named after Lieutenant Henry Fuller, who is the pilot who gets into this dog fight with a flying saucer according to the show.<\/p><p>That was essentially the reason why they started project blue book, and then after the investigation of the incident, dr Hynek concludes that the object the Lieutenant was chasing. Was nothing more than a weather balloon. And you mentioned something similar to that. So was the fuller incident that we see in the show, that event that you were referring to, is that something else?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:13:51] No, that&#8217;s a little bit different. It, it has some of the hallmarks of the Thomas F Montel case, but the fuller incident is based directly on an incident called the Gorman dog fight. This evolved a man by the name of George F Gorman, who was an air national guard pilot out of Fargo, North Dakota. And on October 1st, 1948 his squadron was returning from a flight at night.<\/p><p>Gorman decided he wanted to stay up in the air for a little bit longer for some night flying practice. And after circling around a football stadium, and this was around 9:00 PM that night, he was approaching Hector airport and was notified by the tower that there was a Piper Cub plane below him. He was forced to circle the airport for a short period of time.<\/p><p>And on one pass he saw what he believed to be the tail light of another craft past the Piper Cub plane on his right, it was white and color blinking in intervals and approximately six to eight inches in diameter. This object was not registering on radar in any way, but a, he went into an investigate it and when Gorman made his approach, the light stopped blinking and basically just took off.<\/p><p>Gorman engage with the object. He pursued it. He found himself out, maneuvered basically at every turn, but was able to get behind it. At one point when he did the object turned around and flew straight in his direction, it passed right over his canopy and turned around to do it again, but before it seemingly was supposed to make impact.<\/p><p>The light abruptly turned upward and shot straight up into the air. Gorman attempted to pursue the object, but it was such a steep climb that his plane stalled out at 14,000 feet. He was able to restart it though and landed. So, it&#8217;s not like it is, it&#8217;s depicted in the show. He doesn&#8217;t crash the plane or anything.<\/p><p>What makes the sighting so powerful is that there were numerous eye witnesses to it. The two men Manning the tower that night, Lloyd D Jensen and H G Johnson attested to the objects fast speed and maneuverability and the Piper Cub plane, the pilot of it, dr AEE cannon also saw the light and testified to basically the same thing.<\/p><p>Here&#8217;s a fun quote from a mr Gorman quote. I am convinced that there was definite thought behind its maneuvering. I am further convinced that the object was governed by the laws of inertia because its acceleration was rapid but not immediate. And although it was able to turn fairly tight at considerable speed, it&#8217;s still followed a natural curve and quote.<\/p><p>So this case was one of the landmark project sign cases. The other being the death of Thomas F Montel. Another account known as the child&#8217;s winded account, which involved two civilian pilots that witness basically a long cigar shaped object fly alongside their plane at night. So that&#8217;s really what that incident and what that episode was based on.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:17:05] Well, something that happened after this in the show was when doctor Hynek used the term UFO for the first time. I thought this was funny because when he used it, the captain queen character, he kind of looks at him. I was like, Oh, what? And he, then he goes on to explain, well, I&#8217;m kind of trying to coin this term to explain what we&#8217;re investigating.<\/p><p>Was he the one that actually coined the term UFO and was it after that incident?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:17:29] No. Actually the, the person that coined the term is one of the people that coin is based on, Edward rupell. He actually coined the term in early 52. He was looking for a different term because flying saucer had such a negative connotation associated with it.<\/p><p>So he wanted a fresh term to go in with an unidentified flying object is what he came up with.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:17:54] I guess it makes sense too, cause it&#8217;s, you mentioned earlier, you know, a cigar shaped crap. They&#8217;re not always saucer shaped.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:18:01] No.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:18:02] Now in episode two of the show, dr Hynek and captain queen go to investigate a case in West Virginia where a mother and her children see something strange.<\/p><p>This is the case, according to the show called the flat woods monster. Because it&#8217;s not a flying saucer this time or UFO when we use that term, but it&#8217;s also involving a creature of some sort, maybe an alien creature. Well, that&#8217;s what dr Heineken, captain queen are there to find out. Ultimately, dr Hynek, once again, gives a rational explanation for the strange things that we&#8217;re seeing.<\/p><p>He stands up in front of the town and gives this speech. A captain Quinn and dr Hynek explained that the spaceship they saw was just a media. The creature that they saw was a great horned owl, and dr Hynek goes on to give a scientific explanation about hot air and cold air causing light to refract in different directions.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s why stars, twinkle and mirages are formed in the desert according to his explanation. And it&#8217;s also how you can see an owl in a burning forest and think it&#8217;s a monster. So that&#8217;s how the movie, or I&#8217;m sorry, now movie, the TV show sets up the flatwood monster haze. Was that a real investigation and how well did the show do explaining those events that<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:19:23] happened?<\/p><p>The flatwoods monster case was a real case that it took place in September of 1952 and it really is almost something out of a horror movie, especially when you look online at the images that were created. Once the eyewitnesses describe what they were seeing. A group of kids, Eddie and Fred Mae and Tommy Heyer witnessed this fireball in the sky in September of 1952 and they saw it go down in the forest.<\/p><p>So they gathered a small group that included the May&#8217;s brother and gene lemon, who was a 17 year old national guard member. Lemon led the charge into the forest, and they at first see what they believe is just two lights. But the more that they stare at them, the more that they realize that they look more like eyes and then they see this large metallic looking creature.<\/p><p>They described it like a spade behind its head, but it was completely red. Apparently everyone in this group, which consisted of seven, seven people witnessed this creature. The town was kind of on edge a little bit, but not as bad as they depict it in the show. Project blue book really didn&#8217;t play much of a part in this case.<\/p><p>This was really more investigative by civilian UFO groups and independent investigators. One of the most prominent was a, an investigator named grey Barker, who\u00a0 investigated a number of cases, including the famed moth man flap in West Virginia in 1966 and 1967. But basically all project blue book did, was looked at the citing of the object in the sky and just basically determine that it was a meteor.<\/p><p>They didn&#8217;t seem to acknowledge the creature at all in there in their files. So yeah, they didn&#8217;t really play much of a part, but, I did enjoy the depiction of the way that they did things. The skeptics have pointed to an owl in a tree as being the culprit of this. But, I don&#8217;t necessarily pie that,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:21:35] but it&#8217;s, but it&#8217;s just, you know, the hot air and the call there.<\/p><p>And,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:21:38] well, the cool thing is when Hynix talking about how stars twinkle. He was the astronomer that discovered how stars twinkle. So it&#8217;s kind of fitting for him, you know?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:21:50] Oh, okay. I&#8217;m sure they pull that in as a, as a little little nugget there to, for somebody to find. That&#8217;s cool.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:21:56] The cool thing about the show is that his children, Paul, and I think another one of his children actually consult for the show.<\/p><p>So it&#8217;s, it has its, you know, dramatic elements, but it&#8217;s pretty accurate. As best as they have been able to contribute. The, there are some mannerisms that Aiden Gillen will do that apparently are the same ones that dr Hynek would do. And, and, they&#8217;ve actually used personal items that JL and Hynek and Mimi Hina CAD for the characters in the show.<\/p><p>So, you know, it&#8217;s a cool, it&#8217;s a cool nod and a I,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:22:32] the<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:22:32] show is very respectful of his legacy. I appreciate it for that because he is this really monumental figure in UFO research.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:22:44] Well, let&#8217;s continue on cause there&#8217;s more episodes that we need to cover after the flatwoods monster case. We see that doctor Hynek is his re.<\/p><p>He&#8217;s taking his role very seriously and he&#8217;s, he&#8217;s really trying his best to come up with some scientific rationale behind both the faller incident and the flatwoods monster. But then the next case is the Lubbock lights, and that&#8217;s when things start to change as far as the show is concerned. And this is episode number three in the series, and it&#8217;s the first time that both captain Quinn and dr Hynek experienced something themselves.<\/p><p>They&#8217;re out in the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere. Captain Quinn is inside the car and dr Hynek is outside of the car. When the car just starts going, crazy, lights are flashing, the radios, tuning frequencies, the entire car is shaking and then a massive V shaped crap with blue lights fly over and they both see it now in the show.<\/p><p>General Harding in general, Valentine in the military, give. Quinn and high neck, the explanation that what they saw was a top secret experimental craft that has a V shape wing. And they show some photos that look like they could be real from that time period. But despite this explanation, dr Hynek doesn&#8217;t believe that this is true, doesn&#8217;t really believe what the military is telling them.<\/p><p>And so he&#8217;s starting to get the sense that perhaps he&#8217;s not getting the full story. At the very end of episode three, we see him writing in his notebook and he writes, possible government coverup was the series correct. And showing that dr Hynek started to have experiences of his own, that he couldn&#8217;t explain around the time of the Lubbock lights.<\/p><p>And did he start to suspect that he wasn&#8217;t being fed the full story from the air force? Hi,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:24:37] Nick. As far as I know, never witnessed a UFO while investigating any cases during project blue book. There&#8217;s a really great biography of him called the close encounters man by Mark O&#8217;Connell. And in it he talks about a siting that he may have had while looking through a telescope.<\/p><p>He claimed he saw like a strange object fly over the face of the moon or something like that. But. He never had an overt UFO experience during his time in regards to what the air force was letting him in on Hynek was the one of the people that was on the inside, so they never really kept anything from him.<\/p><p>If anything, he do things that he couldn&#8217;t really talk about. In 1953 there was a CIA led panel called the Robertson panel, which basically. Came in. The reason why they came in will, it&#8217;ll be coming up later in the, in the line of questioning and then pertains to an episode like the last episode in season.<\/p><p>But they came in, they assess the work of project blue book, and they basically determined that\u00a0 project grudge, they had to now downplay reports in order to keep the public comms. So in order to prevent mass Asteria. They were going to have to misidentify things and essentially project blue book from 1953 onwards became project grudge all over again.<\/p><p>But Hynek was there. He was doing the best that he could. He couldn&#8217;t really come forward and say what he wanted and other, or he would be losing access to the project blue book files, which at the time were the best. Place to get UFO files from. There weren&#8217;t civilian organizations as of yet. They would pop up not long after, but essentially in 53 that was a turning point for high, where he would started to change from this total skeptic there to debunk reports to, okay, now I&#8217;m being told that I can&#8217;t do my job properly.<\/p><p>I don&#8217;t like this so. I don&#8217;t really trust the CIA at this point. He would essentially go through this metamorphosis over time where he would become a believer in the phenomenon. So the way that they kind of depict it in the show, his turn doesn&#8217;t happen that quickly, but it does happen over time.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:27:13] Okay.<\/p><p>Yeah. It sounds like they, again, we see this a lot in movies and TV shows where they simplified it. It sounds like. They just gave him an experience instead of trying to explain the CIA panel and all of these other aspects<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:27:27] perhaps. Yeah, absolutely. The Lubbock lights photographs are real photographs. I do believe the ones that they show in the actual episode are the real Lubbock light photographs, and that case took place in early 51.<\/p><p>That was during the transitionary period from when belt was coming in. But, that was the case that stumped a lot of people. There were scientists that studied it, and the individual that actually took the photographs, he was a student. I do believe that one of the universities. They took these photographs over a couple of different nights, but they essentially show a group of lights in an arrow type shape, passing over the skies of Lubbock, Texas.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s really fascinating case. Then go look up those photos online. They&#8217;re fun<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:28:17] in the, in the show, don&#8217;t they pass it off as possibly a, a flock of Berge or something like that, reflecting off lights. Was that a natural reason that was thrown around there as one of the possibilities.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:28:29] Yeah, that was an actual reason that investigators\u00a0 they did end up doing a test and taking photographs, and what happened was you could see one speck of light from one bird.<\/p><p>There wasn&#8217;t enough reflection to actually pick it up. So it&#8217;s not clear exactly what the Lubbock lights were. They actually traveled quite fast. They determined when they flew over them that they were traveling at somewhere near 1800 miles an hour. So pretty sure birds can&#8217;t do that.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:29:02] Not any birds that I&#8217;ve come across, I hope not.<\/p><p>At least that would be a, it&#8217;s a S a fast flying bird.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:29:09] That is a flat,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:29:12] well, the, the next episode, episode number four brings in operation paperclip, and this is when we&#8217;re introduced to Verna Von Braun. He is a former Nazi who built the V two rocket and post world war II. He&#8217;s heading up America&#8217;s space program.<\/p><p>So Dr. Quinn, and, or I&#8217;m sorry, dr Hynek and captain Quinn, get a firsthand look at Von Braun&#8217;s work. As they think that maybe one of the UFOs that they&#8217;re investigating is just one of his rockets. And it&#8217;s a top secret rocket.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:29:42] So<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:29:43] during this, on the show, Von Braun poles, dr Hanukah side, and offers him a job to work with him, but dr Hynek doesn&#8217;t trust the former Nazi, wonder why.<\/p><p>But then, regardless of Von Braun tells dr Hynek that he can&#8217;t explain the sightings, he knows about him, he can&#8217;t explain them. And then at the end of the episode. We see Von Braun overseeing a test within an American pilot being forced into a giant flying saucer, and as the saucer starts to take off, there&#8217;s some massive rings rotating around it.<\/p><p>Obviously, you know, we have some effects going on there, and then, you know, just poof, it just disappears. Then Von Braun simply says, it worked like he&#8217;s not. The show is implying that he&#8217;s working on a lot more than just rockets. Can you give us an overview of. Operation paperclip and did project blue book cross with paperclip and take dr Hynek to meet up with Verna Von Braun<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:30:39] for operation paper clip.<\/p><p>basically as world war II was winding down, American British and Russian forces were bracing to scour Germany for military resources, technological advances, and anything that they could get their hands on that. The Germans may have created, the Germans at the time were known for really high technological advances, especially in rocketry.<\/p><p>The allies actually discovered a list called the Oseberg list, that it contained the names of every single scientist that it had worked for. The third Reich, funny enough, they found it in a toilet. So take that for what you will. The allies essentially tracked down 1600 scientists and brought them to America.<\/p><p>The OSS expunge their records. So they were basically given a sleek, clean slate, asked to work for the government. And the most infamous individual was a Wernher Von Braun, and he is basically the father of modern rocketry. He. Designed the V two rocket and he was instrumental for us in the space race. He pretty much got us to the moon.<\/p><p>I got to say, Dan, I didn&#8217;t really expect to find anything because I didn&#8217;t think that Hynek had done anything with V two rockets or admit Wernher Von Braun. But, you brought out the best to be Dan, so I gotta thank you for that. now I discovered this a blog post. On, I think it was Ohio mu funds website, and let me tell you, this website looks like it&#8217;s from the 90s I love it.<\/p><p>Nice. It was written by J Allen Hynek secretary, a woman named Jenny Zeidman, apparently. Hi. Nick worked on V two rockets while at white sands missile range after the war. He had allegedly met Wernher Von Braun at that time, but nobody has ever come forward with this information. Like it&#8217;s not even in his biography.<\/p><p>Even Hynix closest friends do not know anything about this. So. yeah. Apparently he may have worked on the two rockets at one point. That&#8217;s new information to me, man. So good job.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:32:57] Wow. Yeah. No, I mean, there are two high profile characters. I mean, I&#8217;m, I&#8217;m not intimately familiar with Von Bron, but he&#8217;s the face of the U S after the war, getting a lot of, of Nazi scientists to work.<\/p><p>On American technology and for me, he was always kind of the face of that. So when I saw them together on the show, I knew that was something I had to ask, like did they actually meet each other? Is this just a show? Having two names that people might recognize and have using it as an excuse to put those two together.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:33:30] Apparently they did cross paths. The one point,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:33:32] speaking of crossing paths with names, I&#8217;m going to ask you a an another one here, because in the show. There&#8217;s one point where dr Hynek tells captain Quinn, as you know, he doesn&#8217;t trust Von Braun, and he&#8217;s like, you know, how do you make a Nazi look legitimate?<\/p><p>You have Walt Disney give him his own special and Beamer right into your living room. And we see this happen on the show. Did Von Braun and Walt Disney actually team up for a TV special?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:33:58] Oh yeah. A number of times. The first time was on an episode of what they call Disneyland back at that time today, you would know it as the wonderful world of Disney.<\/p><p>He appeared on screen to talk about plans for the American government to go to the moon. He would also appear in a number of Disney specials after that. So Wernher Von Braun was the face early on for the space race. So yeah, he definitely did team up with a Walt Disney and timer too.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:34:29] Okay, so moving onto the next episode.<\/p><p>This is episode number five and it&#8217;s entitled foo fighters. And in this episode we see that Lieutenant faller from the very first episode, he&#8217;s back. And this time he&#8217;s in a group of people who have. Experienced something similar to him, you know, lights in the sky, maybe not the exact same thing as him, but they&#8217;re all similar experiences.<\/p><p>And captain Quinn explains the title of the show. He explains that during world war two pilots would see lights that they couldn&#8217;t explain, and they called them foo fighters. That&#8217;s why they named the episode that, but in the episode, Lieutenant faller and his group of experiencers show dr Hynek and captain Quinn, the lights themselves, they.<\/p><p>Bring up this contraption that they&#8217;ve built and they seem to be able to call the lights, to them. But dr Hynek is quick to dismiss these as just car truck headlights bouncing off the fog in the distance. They&#8217;re not really calling them to them. And then at the end of the episode, dr Hynek runs across or at a secret hospital in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.<\/p><p>That&#8217;s now abandoned. And dr Hynek shows fall or something. And almost immediately fuller douses himself and gasoline and sets himself on fire. Now after this, the show cuts to general Harding and general Valentine. There is very stereotypical secret government. They&#8217;re just sitting around this table and you know, very dark lit room and what you would expect for a secret military government, I guess, but they talk about how somebody or something must&#8217;ve flipped, Fuller&#8217;s off switch, whatever that means.<\/p><p>Now at when I was watching this episode,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:36:13] it<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:36:13] was one of the first episodes that I was thinking, you know, maybe this really wasn&#8217;t based on something real. After all, the episode itself was climbing, that foo fighters was a term used in world war II, and this is all after world war II. And so I just assumed that maybe this was the show stretching things and, and.<\/p><p>I got the implication just watching the show that dr Hynek probably never actually investigated foo fighters cause those were during world war II and this is supposed to be happening after world war II or am I wrong there? Did he actually investigate who fires like we see in the show? He did not<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:36:50] investigate food fighters.<\/p><p>He was really busy working on the proximity fuse by that time. But. Foo fighters were a real phenomenon during the war, and it was experienced by both allied pilots and access pilots. And they both believe that this was technology from both sides being thrown at planes. But that&#8217;s kind of confusing because like, clearly it&#8217;s not, none of them, you know, claimed responsibility for it.<\/p><p>And if we&#8217;re talking about like the Germans, the Germans would totally take responsibility for that back in the day. There&#8217;s no way that they wouldn&#8217;t, hi, Nick never investigated the foo fighters. There wasn&#8217;t really a lot of resources to investigate the foo fighters at the time. There was a brief investigation done by American forces, but they couldn&#8217;t come to any definitive conclusion.<\/p><p>No. Dr high-net key was working on that proximity fuse, which. I do believe time magazine ranked it as the third best innovation to come from the second world war. Hmm.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:37:55] Well, what is the proximity fuse?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:37:57] It&#8217;s a fuse that sends out radio waves, and when the radio waves bounce off something and come back and that signal gets shorter and shorter, the bomb basically explodes.<\/p><p>Realistically, you see that same technology in like noise cancellation headphones now.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:38:16] Interesting. Oh, we have dr Heinrick to thank for that. Yeah. In the show when we see Lieutenant fuller,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:38:25] his<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:38:26] off switch flipped or whatever happens there, and he, it&#8217;s a very tragic death. It, you know, he sets himself on fire.<\/p><p>But if his experience was based on a pilot named Gorman, I believe you said, was that essentially what happened to Gorman?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:38:42] No, there&#8217;s not a lot known about Gorman, but he seemingly lived a normal life after the Gorman dog fight. You served in the, forces for a little bit longer and then went off and did his own thing.<\/p><p>Okay.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:38:55] It&#8217;s just the, the show trying to wrap everything all together then it sounds like.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:39:00] Yep.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:39:01] Okay. Well, the next investigation in the show hovers green fireballs. They&#8217;re cited over a nuclear testing ground and<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:39:09] project blue book is called in<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:39:10] to verify that these are in fact, meteors a perfectly natural explanation, but.<\/p><p>Something happens during the investigation in dr Hynek sees the fireballs in the sky himself, and they are very clearly not meteors. Now with another super secretive character on screen, a man that is simply cast. I had to look them up afterwards. He just to see if he had an actual name, but they just call him the fixer.<\/p><p>He shows up and dr Hynek theorizes out loud that perhaps the green fireballs or some sort of crap monitoring our nuclear testing sites because that&#8217;s where they were seeing. Can you give us an overview of the. The real event that this episode is based on and what dr Hynix reaction was to it.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:39:56] Sure. In November of 1948 reports started to trickle in out in the West of the phenomenon known as green fireballs.<\/p><p>They were at first quickly dismissed as green military flares. But on the night of December 5th, 1948 two separate plane crews, one military and one civilian in New Mexico, each attested to seeing a green fireball while in the air. Each of them described the object resembling a green meteor, but ruled out meteors when the object basically.<\/p><p>Abruptly, it turned up and then leveled off, which I&#8217;ve never heard of a meteor doing. But, you know, those fancy meteors, they just do what they want these days.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:40:42] Well, you&#8217;ve never heard of birds that fly that fast either, so no.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:40:47] So, three days after that sighting on the eighth to air force office of special investigations, pilots witnessed similar phenomenon while they were in the air, and they described it as resembling a military flare, but it was too big and it was a lot brighter.<\/p><p>And then four days after that, a man by the name of dr Lincoln LaPaz, he was an astronomer with the university of New Mexico, had his own siting of the green fireballs. A lot of people were seeing them in and around military bases in New Mexico mostly. He basically was able to triangulate their position over Los Alamos national laboratory.<\/p><p>And in a letter to the air force, he stated that they could not be a meteor because it was traveling too slow at the time and it didn&#8217;t have a tail coming off of it. Those sightings would continue from November of 1948 until April of 1949. Most of them were centered in New Mexico. Now, dr LaPaz was tasked by the government to study the phenomenon, so it wasn&#8217;t carried out by, this would have been project grudge at this point.<\/p><p>But the military was growing concern that this was a foreign weapon, which could, you know, would make sense for them. It seems weapon likes. So a lot of their top secret projects were also conducted in New Mexico. So it makes sense that they would be interested in it. And there were also similar objects cited over nuclear storage areas in Fort hood, Texas.<\/p><p>dr LaPaz determined that whatever these objects were. They were not natural. Most of the sightings were centered. Yeah. Really. In Los Alamos national laboratory, and many of the staff there he interviewed, and many of them claimed to see these green fireballs. Now the sightings would become more sporadic after.<\/p><p>April of 49, but they still continued on to the point where in December of 1950 the government decided to set up and instrument observation station at Holloman air force base. And it was only manned by two officers, but they, classified this project as project twinkle. So LaPaz had other ideas. He felt like this deserved a more rigorous study, and ultimately, when the government was done in 1950 they would downplay the sightings in their final report.<\/p><p>But. The sightings still continued on after that for a little while. Every witness that saw them claim that it could not have been a natural phenomenon, which is, you know, rare because you&#8217;re talking about trained observers, scientists, and the such. Another fun fact about dr LaPaz. He had an earlier UFO siting in 1947 and it was in Roswell, New Mexico.<\/p><p>So he may have witnessed the actual Roswell craft crash. Maybe. I don&#8217;t know. But, that&#8217;s just an interesting little. Tidbit there, but, ah, Hynek we&#8217;re not really sure of what Hynek thought about these. We&#8217;ve never gotten any comments from him about it. And the investigation wasn&#8217;t carried out by project signer grudge.<\/p><p>It was something that the government was trying to keep under wraps. So, yeah, not really sure what Hynek thought there. Do<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:44:14] we know if there were many other in cases like that that were outside of project sign or grudge or, or blue book? I guess I&#8217;m assuming that those projects were the official government investigation and it sounds like this one was an off the books.<\/p><p>Not really. I mean. Official, but not really official, if that makes sense. You know, in that way to kind of not throw it in with all the others where there are a lot of other cases like that that we know of.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:44:43] Not really. There isn&#8217;t a lot of declassified information that I&#8217;ve ever come across that really points to additional government studies though Hynek later.<\/p><p>In his career after really project blue book was shuttered. He would make these comments that he was like the public face of like the UFO investigations, but he always made it seem like there was something else going on behind the scenes that the public didn&#8217;t know. So there&#8217;s a possibility that there are projects that we don&#8217;t even know about.<\/p><p>Well.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:45:18] Moving onto the next episode, we&#8217;re up to episode number seven and we come across the first hoax in the series and according to the show, it&#8217;s with a boy scout troop leader who claims to see a UFO and even claims to shoot at it and hit the alien that comes out of the crap. And for some time the scout master disappears, but then he staggers back into town.<\/p><p>Just as dr Hynek is explaining that the lights that they saw were caused by swamp gas. Before long though, dr Heineken, captain Quinn, are able to figure out that the town&#8217;s sheriff sent a telegram to Hollywood about having proof about the flying saucer story. And that happened before the scout master came back into town with that proof.<\/p><p>So it would seem that the sheriff and the scout master were in on this trying to make a bunch of money on a, what clearly was a hoax trying to sell the movie rights. Did this hoax really happen the way that we see in the show?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:46:16] Oh man. This is one of my all time favorite cases. This is a really fun one.<\/p><p>This is the case of a Florida Scoutmaster by the name of Sonny. Diverge yours. On August 19th, 1952 diverters was driving a group of boy Scouts home when he saw a bright light. Flash over is a trail called military trail near West Palm beach, Florida. He thought it could have been a stranded motorist or a plane that had gone down.<\/p><p>So he pulled over onto the shoulder and basically went into investigate. He told the three boys that he was driving home to remain in the car, and he basically took a machete and a flashlight with him, and he instructed the boys to run to the farmhouse that was nearby. If he didn&#8217;t come back in 15 minutes.<\/p><p>From the car. The boys claimed that they could see like a ring of lights descending into a Grove of trees. and they could also see, the virtuous flashlight as well. And when they saw the, his flashlight had gone out, the boys ran to the farmhouse, and soon an officer arrived on scene and they were about to commence a search.<\/p><p>It had been an hour or so, but diverters emerged from the, Paul Meadows was frantically waving his machete in the air and just like raving like a mad man. But according to his testimony, he had been searching for about four minutes when he started to smell this nauseated odor. He also said that you felt like he was being watched and he next claimed to feel this really intense heat that was coming down from above him.<\/p><p>And when he looked up. He could not see the stars above him. There was this object that was just hovering over him. He described it as a dull black object in the shape of a saucer, approximately 30 feet in diameter. The Vergers moved back from the object, and he did. He claimed to hear this metallic scraping sound, and when he looked up again, there was this hatch that was opened on the side of the object.<\/p><p>He noticed a red light coming from the inside and it&#8217;s soon developed into a mist that engulfed his body. The Vergers lost consciousness not long after that, and he woke up a short time later and he was propped up against the tree, but he couldn&#8217;t really remember propping himself up against the tree.<\/p><p>And his eyes were apparently so burned that he couldn&#8217;t see out of them. Diverters underwent questioning with the local police and. They had notice that the hairs on his arms were actually singed. They also went back to the area of where it, where it occurred, and they discovered burnt patches of grass on the ground.<\/p><p>When project blue book was notified, Edward rupell went to investigate. He took samples. And then had them tested. They found that the soil had only been burnt at the top, so whatever it happened to them, it wasn&#8217;t some kind of natural raw from underneath it or anything like that. But RuPaul would come to call this entire case a hoax.<\/p><p>And in fact, he would call diverge the best hoaxer that he had ever seen. He was painted as media hungry and also an opportunist willing to sell his story. But problem was, is that they were never able to explain how we did it. They were never able to explain the burnt patches of grass, or like, they couldn&#8217;t explain anything that this guy did.<\/p><p>They just, the hoax.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:49:57] Okay. So even after the investigation, they&#8217;re just like, we&#8217;re not going to even bother to try to figure out exactly what happened here. Just assume that he&#8217;s, he&#8217;s hoaxing it. Huh?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:50:06] Those kinds of cases, and they were very rare at the time. Diverge cases is something very extreme. It&#8217;s on the level of a flatwoods monster kind of incident.<\/p><p>The government didn&#8217;t really want to get involved with cases like that. And you would see from time to time that if they were reported, they would downplay them almost immediately. So. Yeah. The government really didn&#8217;t want to talk about weird cases like that. Hmm.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:50:33] Interesting. I&#8217;m curious though, cause one of the things that we see in the show, I mentioned it very briefly, but I is when dr hinei and when he&#8217;s explaining the lights he uses, it says it was caused by swamp gas and that&#8217;s, I have to ask him about that because.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s something, and I&#8217;m familiar with from the movie men in black of course, cause they use that as an explanation of, you know, I was swamp gas. You know? That&#8217;s pretty much what the explanation for UFS. I think it&#8217;s something that&#8217;s kind of caught on in popular culture as a common explanation for UFOs.<\/p><p>Was that really an explanation that started with project blue book?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:51:07] It mostly started with Hynek. One of the most infamous investigations that he did occurred in Michigan in 1966. In the Dexter Hillsdale area for approximately a week sightings had been taking place in that area. It began on March 14th of 66 the police and Washtenaw County first witness, strange lights in the sky over Lima township, and they chase these lights for a period of time, but they were outmaneuvered every single time they tried, and throughout the week, people in Washtenaw County reported seeing similar objects in the sky.<\/p><p>Some. Went on to report them as resembling like a spinning top. But the culmination of these sightings occurred two nights later that week. On March 20th Frank Manor of Dexter township reportedly saw a strange object in the swamp behind his home. He described it resembling a pyramid with a porthole on it from which this bluish green light was emitting.<\/p><p>And then the next night at nearby Hillsdale college, over 80 female students witnessed a strange light rising and falling in a swamp near their dorm. Hi. Nick was sent to investigate that case and was basically forced to conduct a rushed investigation needed, have a lot of time, and was forced to give a press conference.<\/p><p>One of the witnesses in that case. You had mentioned that at first because they ended up witnessing what the girls did at the college dorm room in Hillsdale believed it to be at first swamp gas, which is a real phenomenon. Basically what happens in a swamp is when vegetation is dying, it will release methane into the air, and sometimes you&#8217;ll basically see like a short flash of light that it creates.<\/p><p>So. Hi. Nick. Basically was forced to say that what happened in Dexter Hillsdale was swamp gas, and he was ridiculed heavily for it, and in fact, it was his determination on that case, that really shuttered project blue book toward the end, because what happened. Was, I believe he was governor at the time, Gerald Ford.<\/p><p>He was not happy with the determination that Hynek came to and basically ordered for a panel and an independent panel of people to investigate UFO sightings. And this led to the condom committee, a group of scientists out of the university of Colorado that studied\u00a0 for a couple of years, and ultimately determine that.<\/p><p>UFOs were not a threat to national security. In fact, they couldn&#8217;t determine what they were at all. And, that was the end of project blue book. So the swamp gas thing is essentially dr hygienics probably most fumbling move during his time at project blue book.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:54:09] Well, going back to the TV show, the next investigation that we see.<\/p><p>When I was, when I was watching this, it really started to turn the entire series a little more sinister in my mind. A gave the idea that. The military is trying to cover up some psychological tests that they&#8217;re doing on their own soldiers. We see a group of army soldiers who got a UFO attack on the platoon on film, and we&#8217;re watching this.<\/p><p>Doctor Hynek is watching this and the, and the military&#8217;s watching this, and that&#8217;s what kicks off the investigation. But then in the end, we find out that the soldiers were shell shocked from experiences in world war II. And at the end of the episode, there&#8217;s a scene where the two generals, Harding and Valentine are upset that the secretary of defense has been testing chemical weapons on their own soldiers.<\/p><p>How much of that actually happened?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:55:04] This incident is based on testimony from a private first class named Francis P wall. During the Korean war. This is like one of the most harrowing tales that you will ever hear. And there&#8217;s some really messed up stories from soldiers during the war about UFOs and such.<\/p><p>And, while was stationed near chore one, which is was roughly 60 miles from Seoul, and his regiment was prepared to bombard a nearby village with artillery right before the attack was set to take place. This UFO appeared in the sky right above the village and they just started firing off artillery burst after artillery burst.<\/p><p>There were shells that exploded right next to this object, but it didn&#8217;t seem to take a hit at the time. The object was emitting an orange light and it just was hovering over the village. That&#8217;s when wall basically asked his commander for permission to fire at this thing. When permission was granted, everybody opened fire.<\/p><p>The object changed to a blue green color and it started to make these Erie arts in the sky, and then it started to shoot beans at these people. They all reported feeling a burning and tingling sensation as the beams of light were shown at them, and we&#8217;re all forced into underground bunkers. At the time, they had to take refuge from what this, whatever this thing was.<\/p><p>Most of the men were trucked out by ambulance. They were actually too weak to walk, and doctors, once they got back to a hospital, noted how all of their white blood cell counts were really high. They never explained what happened to these men. Some have pointed to like a Soviet weapons test, but even that&#8217;s kind of out of the realm of possibility.<\/p><p>Even for me. As far as we know, it wasn&#8217;t a government chemical weapons test, but I wouldn&#8217;t put it past the government to have done that at any point in history. The government has done some shady stuff in the past. If you want a a, a good example of that. There&#8217;s a book that came out last year. It&#8217;s called poisoner and chief, and it&#8217;s all about one scientist&#8217;s work during a project called MK ultra.<\/p><p>He was basically tasked with seeing what if they could use LSD as a form of mind control. It was a very, it&#8217;s a very dark project for the government, so I really wouldn&#8217;t put it past it at any point for the government to have done tests like that. There was the Tuskegee experiment, which I really don&#8217;t want to get into cause it was some pretty sick stuff, but.<\/p><p>Yeah. I really wouldn&#8217;t put it past the government to, I&#8217;ve done tests like that at some point.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[00:58:00] Wow. Well, let&#8217;s get back to the show then instead of getting an even darker. But, yeah. So in episode nine, dr Hynek and captain queen come across their first abduction case, and this is the case of someone named Thomas Mann who claims that he was abducted by aliens.<\/p><p>And there&#8217;s a few key things from that episode of the show that I want to get your insight on. First is during this episode is when we see dr Hynek hypnotize Thomas to help him remember more about the abduction experience. Now, through hypnosis, Thomas is able to remember things that he couldn&#8217;t remember otherwise, and when I saw this, it hit me that.<\/p><p>This is similar to what we talked about when we covered the movie communion, when you were a guest on the show to talk about Whitley Strieber, his experience there, and when I was watching a project blue book, I got the idea that nobody was really familiar with using hypnosis in that way when he&#8217;s using this on, on promise man.<\/p><p>So was dr Hynek using hypnosis in his investigations and was he one of the first to do that for abductees?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[00:59:11] So this episode is loosely based on the Betty and Barney Hill incident wa, which is an incident that we recently covered on a a two part episode. Essentially, this New Hampshire couple reported having a close encounter with a strange object within the white mountains.<\/p><p>At one point, Barney had this dramatic siting in a field, of this object through a pair of binoculars. He claimed to have telepathic communication with the occupants of this UFO, and they also claim to have, suffered from missing time during this encounter too. There was a period of time that they just couldn&#8217;t account for.<\/p><p>They started to conduct their own investigation almost immediately after coming home and they read books. Veracious Lee talked to experts from scientists to UFO investigators. Until they ultimately decided that they wanted to explore their experiences through hypnosis, and they ultimately found this individual named Dr.<\/p><p>Benjamin Simon. He was a Boston based hypnotherapists and it&#8217;s through their work with him uncovered and abduction narrative that involved the Hills being taken. On board a UFO subjected to medical tests and then returned to their car. Now, Dr. Benjamin Simon was a pretty heavy hitter when it came to hypnosis.<\/p><p>The set up a hospital on, I believe it was a long Island to treat soldiers coming home from world war II with all sorts of, mental problems. Basically treating soldiers with PTSD before PTSD was known as anything. And he would use hypnosis to do that. Dr. Simon was the first to hypnotize an abduction witness.<\/p><p>A Hynek didn&#8217;t really do that. He did advocate for it in a couple of cases, but he was not a trained hypnotist in any way. The, probably the most infamous person to start doing this within the UFO community was a gentleman by the name of dr Leo. Sprinkle. He used hypnosis on a number of, witnesses.<\/p><p>and then later on in the 80s, a man by the name of bud Hopkins, he was a New York based artist. He kind of put abduction cases on the map in the 80s by conducting hypnosis sessions and, working with, experiencers. So, yeah, dr Hynek never practiced hypnosis in any way.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:01:44] Okay. So it sounds like, again, they&#8217;re taking something from kind of the overall phenomenon and finding a way to fit it into the story, even if it&#8217;s not actually the way it went.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:01:53] Yeah, absolutely. Well,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:01:55] something else I want to ask you about with that episode was when we see dr Hynek talk about this, scale that he&#8217;s been working on, a, how&#8217;s it a close encounter? The first kind close encounter, the second kind, that&#8217;s what happened to Thomas, their abduction and close encounter of the third kind being even beyond that.<\/p><p>And that&#8217;s a term that I think we&#8217;re familiar with it from nothing else. The movie was at a scale that dr Hynek invented.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:02:22] Yeah. Dr Hynek did invent that scale. It&#8217;s what we call the Hynix scale these days. there were actually six classifications. The first was a nocturnal light, which is basically your mundanes siting of a UFO at night.<\/p><p>And then there is what he called the daylight disc, which is a sighting of an object during the day from more than 1000 feet away. Then there is a radar visual sighting, which, is primarily, you know, witnessed by civilians and military pilots. It&#8217;s basically when a pilot sees something and it&#8217;s confirmed by radar data, and then, we get to the heavy hitters close encounter.<\/p><p>The first kind is the sighting of an object from approximately a thousand feet away or less. Close encounter of the second kind is a sighting. A, we&#8217;re an object, leaves a physical trace of some kind. So in the Florida Scoutmaster case, there was the burnt grass, and even in the Betty and Barney Hill case, there was really strange readings that they got from their car on the back trunk.<\/p><p>They notice these semis, these circles bout a half dollar size that they don&#8217;t know where they, where it came from. They ended up testing the trunk with a compass, and they found that it was magnetized. So that was a physical trace case. and then the close encounter of the third kind is when an object is an object is seen in an occupant of that object is seen.<\/p><p>So some kind of humanoid being is seen at the same time. And the interesting thing about the film, close encounters of the third kind is that. When Steven Spielberg was working on that and he wanted to use that title, he actually had to go through J Allen Hynek because that was his copyrighted title. So J Allen Hynek ended up consulting on close encounters of the third kind, and he even has a cameo at the end.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:04:17] Nice. I&#8217;ll have to watch that again and look for him. I don&#8217;t remember. Cause I don&#8217;t know that I would be able to pick them out without finding a photo. But<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:04:24] here&#8217;s, here&#8217;s the hint that I&#8217;ll give you. Look for the man with the healthy Vandyke. You will notice him.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:04:31] Okay. Okay. Well, at the very end of episode nine in the TV show, dr Hynek gives, he&#8217;s given a head up by that mysterious fixer guy that something&#8217;s going to happen in Washington D C so he flies there just in time to see a show of lights over D C.<\/p><p>Now in the show. This happens in the middle of the day, and then later defense secretary Fairchild, he was the one who was doing the chemical testing on the soldiers that we saw in an earlier episode. He&#8217;s killed as his car burst into flame just before he&#8217;s about to reveal the truth to the world. And then meanwhile we see that lights come back.<\/p><p>Military scrambles, some F 90 fours to respond. They have trouble keeping up with the objects as they&#8217;re flying around Washington, D C and at the very end of the episode, which is the end of the season. Doctor Hynek tells captain Quinn that he&#8217;s come to the realization that the only way they&#8217;ll be able to find the truth is to keep the jobs that give them access to information and more cases, but to convince the government that they don&#8217;t believe.<\/p><p>Because that&#8217;s clearly what the higher ups wants. They&#8217;re given this cover up, so we get the sense that doctor Hynek is pretty much just going to play the game and keep trying to find the truth. So how well did the TV show explain the lights over Washington D C and what happened to dr Heineken project blue book after this?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:06:00] So 1952 was a big year for UFO sightings in the United States. Three incidents covered in the first season of the show happened in 1952 the flatwoods monster case, the Florida Scoutmaster case. And the most significant of them, which was a pair of incidents that came to be known as the Washington merry-go-round as a Edward rupell would call it in July of that year.<\/p><p>And over the course of two weekends, objects were seen by numerous eye witnesses over and kind of outside Washington D C the first major incident took place on July 21st just outside the city. Pilots and radar personnel reported objects nearby. A pilot by the name of\u00a0 Casey Peerman of flight eight Oh seven describe the object for assembling a falling star without a tail on it.<\/p><p>And then on the 28th objects were cited again over Washington D C this time the air force scrambled jets to chase them down, but the objects outmaneuvered them very easily and pelt was summoned at the time by president Harry Truman for an explanation. But rupell hadn&#8217;t been able to conduct an investigation at that point, and he didn&#8217;t have answers for them.<\/p><p>So ultimately they rushed to call a press conference and quickly quelled all the excitement. The government blamed it on weather. Yup, that&#8217;s right. Weather. But it&#8217;s basically because of this incident that. The Robertson panel, which I mentioned previously, led by the CIA, was convened and then ultimately decided that UFO reports had to be downplayed.<\/p><p>Edward brew pelt would leave a project blue book by the end of 1953 because of it. He ended up retiring. He wrote the first. Really landmark book about his time on project sign and project blue book. It was called the report on unidentified flying objects. He actually died very young at the age of, I believe, 37 of a heart attack.<\/p><p>So I think they did a good job of playing up the hysteria aspect that the government was generally operating under. The nature of cover ups when it comes to this phenomenon, and when it comes to the UFO history, it&#8217;s this question of, you know, you&#8217;re tackling this question of whether they downplayed reports to keep the public calm or because the government was hiding something that they had.<\/p><p>And it&#8217;s never really ever been cleared up, but I&#8217;ve always leaned towards the government was just trying to keep the public calm. I don&#8217;t think the government really has any definitive information about this stuff, but you never know. I could be wrong. The government could come out and say, you know, we got aliens hanging out at area 51 I don&#8217;t know.<\/p><p>You never know.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:09:00] You never know. Yeah. Well, in that episode, which is episode 10. When we see in the show, his name is secretary Fairchild, the defense secretary, when he dies of very suspicious circumstances. That led me to think that maybe there was, it was based on somebody that might have died in similar circumstances that they showed that so plainly there was that based on something that actually happened.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:09:25] Secretary Fairchild is based on the first secretary of defense, James V Forrest stall. Forestall died in 1949 well before the Washington merry-go-round, but he died under very mysterious circumstances. He was receiving treatment at the Bethesda military hospital in Maryland for a mental breakdown, and his body was found having fallen from a great height from his hospital room.<\/p><p>It&#8217;s unclear if he committed suicide or if he was actually just thrown from the window. But his death has been lumped into conspiracies involving a group that most likely didn&#8217;t investigate UFOs, but was an actual group within the government. And, they were called majestic 12, most point to majestic 12.<\/p><p>As a group. That essentially we&#8217;re studying the effects of radiation after bomb tests, but many have lumped them into this government conspiracy where they were essentially trying to keep the proof of extraterrestrial life from the public and many believe that and forestall was killed. because he wanted to come forward and tell the public about extra trust, real life being real and having visited us.<\/p><p>So kind of darker, a little darker in the, in the real sense of, what happened to forest all here.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:10:53] Yeah. It sounds like it. Well, one thing that we didn&#8217;t get to cover that I just want to ask you about real quick is a storyline that goes throughout the entire show. And that&#8217;s. The character of Susie Miller and in the show, while dr Hynek is off on his investigations, it cuts back to home life with Mimi, his wife a lot.<\/p><p>And we get this sense that the character of Susie is a Russian spy of some sort. We hear some, her speaking in Russian over the radio to someone with her. Quote unquote husband, which we know is not really her husband. We get the feeling that it&#8217;s not really her husband, but that&#8217;s what she introduces him as.<\/p><p>When we get the overall idea that they&#8217;re probably Russian spies trying to infiltrate project blue book through dr Hynix wife. Was there any truth to that side of the whole show?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:11:49] Not really. There was no real indications that the Russians were trying to infiltrate project blue book. But interestingly enough, Andy Jacobson, who wrote a book about area 51 has this theory that the Roswell crash, it was a Russian craft designed to basically cause massive Steria.<\/p><p>What she points to is that her source claims that. Joseph Stalin really got a kick out of the Orson Welles war, the worlds broadcast. So he has said her theory is that he essentially wanted to cause massive Steria in that kind of way. Of course, it didn&#8217;t pan out that way. A Roswell was the case that was shuttered for over 30 years.<\/p><p>So before anybody really started to know. That anything had crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. So yeah, not, not really there. There was no real attempt by the Russians to infiltrate this program. Hmm.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:12:58] Interesting. I never heard that, that possible theory about Stalin there. Well, thank you so much for coming on a chai about project blue book.<\/p><p>I know we didn&#8217;t cover season two that much on this episode as we&#8217;re recording this, the season is still ongoing, but you&#8217;ll have to come back on once that season is over and chat about whatever the events are that we see there.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:13:17] Oh, absolutely, man. I&#8217;d love to,<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:13:19] in the meantime, if you&#8217;re listening to this, Rob has an awesome podcast that covers a lot of UFO related events in history.<\/p><p>Go open up the app that you&#8217;re listening to this on and subscribe to Rob&#8217;s podcast called our strange skies. Can you give us a little bit of an overview of your podcast and some of the great stories that you cover over there?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:13:39] Sure. So for a long time I had the impetus to cover singular UFO stories, and I had seen that nobody really did it.<\/p><p>And. A lot of podcasts are just kept coming to me for like content. They just like, Hey, what&#8217;s a good UFO case to cover? And I&#8217;m like, I&#8217;d usually give them something, but I&#8217;m like, why don&#8217;t I just make a podcast of my own. I created the\u00a0 strange guys podcast, and we&#8217;ve been through a couple of transformations.<\/p><p>But right now what we do is we devote singular episodes, or if some require multi-part episodes too, UFO stories throughout history, from the United States. We&#8217;ve covered stories from Brazil. And a few other places, but, we just covered the Betty and Barney Hill incident, the Lonnie Sabura incident, which is another famous New Mexico UFO sighting.<\/p><p>We covered the first abduction case, which was occurred in 1957 in Brazil. And there&#8217;s a lot of great episodes over there. So, yeah, if you want to know more about UFOs. Come on over to the hour. Strange guys podcast. We got plenty for you.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:14:50] And you started a new show recently too, right?<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:14:52] Yes. A, it&#8217;s called the Coda, a music podcast.<\/p><p>And every other week I&#8217;m joined by my buddy Brian hasty of the double density podcast, and we&#8217;d discuss music news, and we generally have a main feature, a main topic where we discuss something from music. We&#8217;ve talked about our favorite opening tracks to an album. We&#8217;ve talked about. Our best albums of 2019 and we recently had a couple of guests on to talk about the new album that they dropped.<\/p><p>So, if you&#8217;re interested in music, talk, check out the Coda, music podcast.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Dan LeFebvre:\u00a0<\/span>[01:15:26] Awesome. Thanks again so much for your time, Rob.<\/p><p><span style=\"font-weight: bolder;\">Rob Kristoffersen:\u00a0<\/span>[01:15:28] Well, thank you.<\/p><p><style>.bmc-button img{width: 35px !important;margin-bottom: 1px !important;box-shadow: none !important;border: none !important;vertical-align: middle !important;}.bmc-button{padding: 7px 10px 7px 10px !important;line-height: 35px !important;height:51px !important;min-width:217px !important;text-decoration: none !important;display:inline-flex !important;color:#ffffff !important;background-color:#FF813F !important;border-radius: 5px !important;border: 1px solid transparent !important;padding: 7px 10px 7px 10px !important;font-size: 20px !important;letter-spacing:0.6px !important;box-shadow: 0px 1px 2px rgba(190, 190, 190, 0.5) !important;-webkit-box-shadow: 0px 1px 2px 2px rgba(190, 190, 190, 0.5) !important;margin: 0 auto !important;font-family:'Arial', cursive !important;-webkit-box-sizing: border-box !important;box-sizing: border-box !important;-o-transition: 0.3s all linear !important;-webkit-transition: 0.3s all linear !important;-moz-transition: 0.3s all linear !important;-ms-transition: 0.3s all linear !important;transition: 0.3s all linear !important;}.bmc-button:hover, .bmc-button:active, .bmc-button:focus {-webkit-box-shadow: 0px 1px 2px 2px rgba(190, 190, 190, 0.5) !important;text-decoration: none !important;box-shadow: 0px 1px 2px 2px rgba(190, 190, 190, 0.5) !important;opacity: 0.85 !important;color:#ffffff !important;}<\/style><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-element elementor-element-e5a7f8a elementor-align-center elementor-widget elementor-widget-button\" data-id=\"e5a7f8a\" data-element_type=\"widget\" data-widget_type=\"button.default\">\n\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-widget-container\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<div class=\"elementor-button-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t<a class=\"elementor-button elementor-button-link elementor-size-sm elementor-animation-grow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.basedonatruestorypodcast.com\/152-project-blue-book-with-rob-kristoffersen\/\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"elementor-button-content-wrapper\">\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<span class=\"elementor-button-text\">Listen to Season 1<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/span>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t<\/section>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Listen to Season 2 BOATS interview with PBB&#8217;s creator and showrunner Subscribe to Rob&#8217;s podcast Rob&#8217;s other podcast: The Coda Disclaimer: Dan LeFebvre and\/or Based on a True Story may earn commissions from qualifying purchases through our links on this page. Did you enjoy this episode? Help support the next one! Buy me a coffee [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[95,108],"tags":[87,152],"class_list":["post-3534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-conspiracy","category-politics","tag-interview","tag-series-tv"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>152: Project Blue Book Season 1 with Rob Kristoffersen | Based on a True Story Podcast<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How much of the History Channel&#039;s Project Blue Book is historically accurate? 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