789. Lue Elizondo Interview

0:13 Lou, thank you so much for being here.

0:15 Martin, it is truly my honor and privilege. Thank you so much for having me today. I know it's a bit of a pain in the butt for you to have to probably drive here and set up, you know, spontaneously. But certainly I appreciate you being here and asking me to come over. Right.

0:31 Well, you know, it was a spur of the moment thing. I'm on my way to South Carolina where I live part-time down there.

0:38 Beautiful state, by the way.

0:39 Yeah, thank you. You're only a half hour from Savannah. It's a really nice area. But anyway, I just threw it out there. Hey, I'm going to be going through. Any chance? And you said yes, and I do appreciate that.

0:49 Absolutely. Absolutely.

0:51 So you're here now.

0:53 I am here in the D.C. area. Yes, sir, I am permanently.

0:57 I followed a little bit of your travel. Oh, yeah. With the trailers.

1:01 Adventure. Oh, my gosh, brother. So I did some calculations for the last three months. Since June, I have driven 27,000 miles.

1:11 Oh, my God.

1:12 That's around the entire planet and then some. It is. Wow.

1:16 Wow. So what brings you back?

1:19 Yeah, well, I'm back in Washington, D.C. for two reasons. Most importantly, my wife was suffering bad from empty nest syndrome, right? We have two wonderful daughters. Mm-hmm. They're grown up, and they grew up in the D.C. area, and they decided to stay here. And after about 10 years, my wife was like, look, I really miss the girls, and especially after my motorcycle accident. But the personal reason, I have to say that's the most important reason because they're my children. Sure.

1:47 But the professional reason is that I am employed with the U.S. government. I work for the U.S.

1:52 Government.

1:53 It's been no secret that I still maintain my security clearance, and there's a reason for that. And I am supporting government efforts.

2:03 Can you get into any of the details of that?

2:07 I probably cannot right now, but I am still very much advocating for the cause, for disclosure, truth, and transparency regarding the UAP topic. And, you know, there's people here in Washington, D.C. that are very receptive to that. And then, of course, anything else they may need help with. Look, the world right now is not necessarily the most copacetic that it's been, right? We have issues in Iran and we have midterm elections coming up and we have issues in Ukraine. And then of course, we've got inflation issues here and domestic issues and a whole lot of different, I think, both social and national security issues. And some of my background in the government and the military and former special agent can also be useful from an advisory perspective.

2:59 So I know everybody is wanting to know what official role I'm taking. I am working very diligently behind the scenes on behalf of the American people for this topic. And I will say that. I can't go into really much more detail than that. At this point, coming back here was a big move for me. It was a lot.

3:22 I do a lot of soul searching because I swore I'd never come back to live in the D.C. area. Not that it's a bad area. It's just that I'm at a point in my life where Long commutes and traffic and, you know, cost of living, you know, at our age, right? You know, unless you are independently wealthy, you have to take these things into consideration. And so for me, it was a big decision to come back.

3:42 But I was asked to come back and I said yes. So here I am.

3:48 So I heard you say one time, and I've said it myself, when there's like an air gap, then that's when the conspiracy theories go in there. So just, and you know how people, there's so many people, like, are looking to attack you all the time. So when you say you can't say what you're doing, that's the first thing they're going to be doing is going out and typing, oh, yeah, he's doing this, you know, something nefarious, no doubt.

4:13 Sure.

4:13 That's what will come out of this. But you can assure us that whatever it is, it's something to help move this topic forward.

4:19 I can assure you it is not nefarious. I can assure you that it is not to undermine transparency and disclosure. If anything... People should look at the last 10 years and I think actions speak louder than words. I've given up a lot personally and my family has to pursue this. Almost everything, right? I don't know why people suddenly think that now I have some sort of hidden agenda. I made it very clear how I'm going to pursue disclosure.

4:45 And I set up several years ago these five pillars of emphasis. I've never deviated from that. So if anybody says he has this hidden agenda, I've always been honest and transparent about it.

4:53 Here it is.

4:54 And if anybody wants to do it, Here's a roadmap I'm using. You don't have to use it. You can do whatever you want, however you want. But this is the way I'm doing it. Even what I'm doing, I don't hold back. I've been as transparent as I possibly, possibly can, to the point where it's almost gotten me in trouble sometimes. I've been pulled into the proverbial principal's office and kind of scolded, saying, hey, man, we're not ready to quite have this part of the conversation. And I do anyways. Now, I made this perfectly clear. I will never, ever violate my security oath because this is a promise I made to the American people. And some people who've never had a security clearance just don't understand it.

5:32 And I don't expect them to understand it. But these are principles and values I hold very, very, very personal to me. And I will not violate that. It's just like marriage, right? You're either married or you're not. You're not just sometimes married and go and have an affair and then come back. Oh, I feel like being married again.

5:48 It doesn't work that way. So it's the same thing with when you're committed and you take an oath. to the American people that you're going to protect secrets, but at the same time, you're also going to do the right thing. And doing the right thing in this case, I think, is helping our government have the conversation with the American people. This never should have been about Lou Elizondo telling the American people everything. That's not my job.

6:12 It's not as much as people want it to be. It's not. My job is to help do the right thing by helping my government do what, do what it needs to do in order to turn around and then provide information to the American people. That's what I, that's, that's what I'm compelled to do. That's what drives me.

6:29 That's what motivates me. But by no mistake, am I going to sit here and circumvent the executive branch or the legislative branch or any other branch of our government or that are constitutionally codified, right? Um, Just because I want a conversation to happen. It doesn't work that way. People say, well, if you're a real patriot, you'd violate your oath. No, I wouldn't. If you're a real patriot, you'd do the right thing.

6:51 I've seen that out there. Come on, Lou, take one for the team.

6:56 How many more do you want me to take? I've taken for the last 10 years.

7:00 I know, but what they're saying is violate it. Get it out there. But what would happen to you if you did that?

7:04 Well, first of all, I'd go to jail. For the record, I do not look good in an orange jumpsuit. It's not my color. It clashes with my skin tone. And two, I come from a family of immigrants, and we take this country and the opportunity it gave us very, very seriously. And no, I didn't grow up with a silver spoon in my mouth. I grew up in a difficult situation, and it wasn't always ideal. But I'm a man of principle.

7:34 Whether you agree with it or not, whether you like it or not, it's the way I am, and nothing's going to change that. Look, I went to war because of principles, right? I fought wars that left my family behind and missed birthdays and Christmases and was willing to die for this country, for the people of America, right?

7:51 And so I think, for me personally, it's been a very fine line because how do you continue to follow the rules that you're supposed to follow regarding a security clearance and whatnot, but at the same time, when there has been an overuse of classification to deliberately deceive the American people, then we have to speak truth to power.

8:14 And that's what I was trying to do at the Pentagon for many, many years. And when that didn't work, I resigned and made it very public.

8:22 I remember that whole thing.

8:24 And decided to have a conversation publicly without having to violate my security oath. And let's face it, in the last decade, the government has really done a 180 degree turn on this topic right and now a lot of people got the wall that's because of me and i did all these great things that's bullshit excuse my language i don't like to curse during podcasts but forgive me but it's because all of us we're doing this together right okay and it just so happens that i happen to have a position that was i think of a toolbox right You don't use a screwdriver to do the work of a hammer, right? You don't use a hammer to do the work of a pair of pliers. I'm a very specific tool to do a very specific function.

9:05 And what that function is, is to tell the truth without violating my security oath and help my country succeed, help the American people succeed. What does success look like? Well, it looks like the Constitution. It looks like doing things legally, doing things above board, informing the American people of what you can inform them and when you can inform them, right?

9:27 there are real reasons to keep things classified. And we can go into those conversations if you want. But the reality is, you know, I don't make up those rules. Those rules were in place and imposed long before I ever even was in the government. They've been around for decades and decades and decades. But I saw that there were issues here. And we've seen these type of things before where you had over secrecy being applied. And then when the truth finally comes out, it hurt the credibility of our nation. And that is something that we really can't afford because the world looks at us and sometimes there are mixed views about America. And for those who have maybe been third, fourth generation American, maybe they don't

10:07 feel like I do, but I remember the stories of my father being tortured in prison. I remember these very clearly in Cuba, right? And my father fighting against a regime that was dictatorial, promised freedom, but didn't, and delivered communism and tyranny. This nation provided us opportunities that no other nation could or would provide. So I'm fiercely loyal.

10:34 And by the way, I'm also unapologetically patriotic. That's why the business that I've had and whatnot, I love my country, and I love the American people. What I don't like, which I think is problematic, There's all this crap that goes on this thing we call the community, which, by the way, is not a community. It's completely fabricated. It's fractured and in shambles.

10:55 Divisive.

10:56 Divisive, which is why I've said before the reason why I wanted to blow up ufology entirely and replace it with something better. Look, I know these are hard words. And I know people, when I say that, people kind of cringe like, oh. Look, I'm not saying get rid of the idea of what ufology is about. What I'm talking about is getting rid of the ash and trash and the drama and the BS that's out there and all the showboating and clicks and likes and glamour and I know this and I know that. Right? That's what I want to get rid of because that's what's holding back.

11:25 You have members of Congress saying the only reason I'm not getting involved is because that UFO community is a cesspool. Yeah.

11:32 Well, I have to agree. There's a lot of things if you look into it, social media is the platform for that. UFO Twitter and Facebook and all that, and I see all the comments, and it's like, what would have this been like before without social media?

11:47 Look, and it's a double-edged sword. I think social media is great for the purpose of bringing a voice to the people. I'm all about that. But when that is undermined by people who are deliberately trying to mislead and confuse, or worse, profiteer from it, Yes. Then I have a personal issue with that because you're misleading and you're not being genuine. You're being disingenuous in your approach and you are using social media to manipulate other individuals. And that's wrong.

12:17 To me, it's no different than what Russia or US or anybody else does to each other regarding information operations trying to control people's narratives. And that's why you don't see me ever attack back on social media when people attack me and like... you know what, I'm not going to play those games. And I don't really give a damn.

12:37 It's not worth the energy.

12:38 If there's a million people out there or one person that has my back, I'm doing this because of principles and the reasons why I want to do it. And if you don't like it, then go pound sand. I don't know what to tell you. You're not going to stop me unless you put a bullet in my head. I'm not going to stop. I'm never going to disparage you.

12:52 I'm never going to go out and try to hurt you. There's a lot of people that try to do that to me on a daily basis. I'm not going to do that. What I'm going to do is simply ignore you, and I'm going to move on and continue addressing the targets as I see. That's all I'm going to do. And I respect people who, by the way, have their opinion.

13:07 I'm okay with that. I respect people who have opinions different than mine. In fact, I think that's where real dialogue occurs. When two people like this can mutually respect one another and have opposite opinions on things, that's okay. Because that's how we begin to learn more about one another. Maybe even change our own opinions a little bit as we continue to become more informed and grow. But that's not what we're seeing with this social media. We're seeing a lot of venom and hate. And people who want to be part of this conversation from a productive side are being squelched. And they're being attacked. And they're being marginalized.

13:43 And then what winds up happening is that nobody wants to have a conversation anymore because it is what it is. Look at it now, right? And there's people that are fabricating things and making things up. They're not held accountable. They never come back and say, oh, I'm sorry. I apologize. Never.

13:58 Exactly. And let's talk about, in particular... Right now, when I hit YouTube, of course, everything UFO comes up for me. And I'm seeing Ross Coldheart and UFO Gurb. And I want to just address that and get it done with and out of the way. Because I know I contacted Jen right away when this happened and got the scoop.

14:20 But if you would, set the record straight. What was his agenda to say the things he did?

14:25 Yeah, so look, I'm not a mind reader. And if I am, I'm not a very good one. I don't know. what Ross was thinking. I consider Ross a friend. I will not disparage him. I don't care what anybody else does and says. That's your business. I'm not going to disparage Ross. Ross has done a lot of good stuff for disclosure. He really has. And he deserves credit for that. Now, why he decided to get information from somebody and not vet that information or at least have the courtesy to call me, I don't know. I have some suspicion why, but I don't think it's necessarily nefarious.

14:57 So you never talked to Ross since then?

14:59 That's not true.

15:00 Oh, okay. So did he address this at all with you?

15:04 You know, we communicated over text, and I'm not a kiss-and-tell kind of guy. As people know, even in 2017 when I first came out, there's a lot of things I could have said that people were trying to throw me under the bus that could have saved my skin, but I never did because they were not ready to come out yet. And I'm a man of, again, I try to be a man of principle as much as I can. Sometimes I'm not great at it, but I try.

15:26 I'm constantly struggling to be a better human being.

15:29 Mm-hmm.

15:30 You know, what Ross did was, you'd have to ask Ross why he did what he did. You know, maybe he believes with the same level of conviction that I do, that what he was putting out was accurate. It was not accurate. But that doesn't, I don't want to beat the guy over the head because of it, right? You know, it's funny because for me, I'm an intent kind of person.

16:00 I'm willing to take a lot of shots to the face if your intent is good. If you have a good heart and you're trying to do the right thing, I can overlook a lot of stuff. A lot. I'm really patient with that stuff. Unfortunately, though, some of the people that Ross associated with don't have that same level of good intent. And I think the situation was manipulated.

16:25 In fact, I'm confident of it, and I know exactly where it's coming from. It wasn't just coming from another person. It was coming from somebody else as well. And I've chosen not to out them, again, out of respect, because I'm not going to play those games. I'm not going to. Never have, never will. I think, ultimately, at the end of the day, people are smart enough to do their own research and realize proof is in the pudding.

16:50 So basically, what were his claims for the person who hasn't And we don't want them to bother walking.

16:56 Yeah, one of the claims that was made by somebody was that Jim Clapper, who was then the Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence, who then became the Director of National Intelligence under the Obama administration, that he and I had somehow colluded to try to soft-sell disclosure. And that we were in cahoots to try to bring disclosure, but in a very controlled way. That never happened. A conversation like that never occurred. He never... Whatever your opinions are of Clapper, he was a patriot. He did some great things for this country, as did Jim Mattis. Now, that's probably me coming from a military guy. I'm very protective of people who have served their country. Now, that doesn't give you

17:37 an excuse to do things illegal if illegal things are done. And I'm not saying that's the case here. But I personally won't tolerate it. And that's why I know that Clapper and I weren't colluding. For if anything, first of all, Clapper wouldn't do that, Jim Clapper. because he's not that kind of a person. But more importantly, I wouldn't do that.

17:56 I won't, I won't, I'm not going to do that. And so it's just complete and utter nonsense. And what happens is that you get somebody who's, you know, whispering into ears of other people becomes a whisper campaign. And all of a sudden, unless you address the rumors, all of a sudden now it becomes fact. But it wasn't fact.

18:13 And there were other things that were said too that were just not accurate. But again, I want to be careful here because I want to separate the claims versus the individual making the claims. Ross was simply, I suspect, doing what he believed was his job, which is take information and report that information. The problem is that information wasn't accurate. Now, is that Ross's fault for not vetting the information? Well, you know, sometimes as a reporter, you have to go off of sources. And you have to protect those sources. So I can understand if he received information, but what I think should have happened... he should have contacted me first and said, hey, I've got this information.

18:52 Let me hear your side. And then if, look, you don't like my side, fine, but at least you have it, right? And you have both sides. But that didn't occur. And again, I want to be very clear here. I'm not beating up Ross for this because we need him in disclosure. He's an outstanding human being. He does some great stuff for disclosure. But I think this could have been done better, this...

19:19 this interview he was doing. Because ultimately, it hurts the credibility of not just Ross, but disclosure itself. It hurts News Nation, which is a major media outlet. And could I have gone after them and got a bunch of lawyers involved?

19:35 Sure.

19:35 But I think people are smart enough to see what was going on. But look, I don't lose sleep over it, man. I've got bigger fish to fry. You know, people are going to say what they want to say. I've, I've been accused by some people of never even being in the army or never working at the Pentagon. It's like, all right, I don't have to, if I took the time to address all this nonsense that comes up on a daily basis, I'd never get any real work done.

20:00 So all I try to do is ignore the noise, you know, and turn down the squelch and just keep doing what I'm doing.

20:09 Now, you mentioned controlled disclosure in a way it feels like that. And with your inside knowledge, do you feel like there is gatekeepers controlling a slow trickle of this?

20:23 Sure, sure. But we also have to be careful. Look, once you say something, it's really hard to go back and unsay it. Right. So the government has to be– it doesn't like world according to Lou or world according to you or anybody else who's watching this interview– the government has an enormous responsibility to protect and defend the people of the United States, right? Here in the United States of America. So that is a prime directive. And sometimes what you say can cause a chain reaction that you don't intend. That could actually affect, for example, markets, right?

20:57 And every person's, whether you like it or not, your living standard. You know, if the Fed chair says one thing about the, about, The economy, what happens, look at the stock market the very next day.

21:08 Right.

21:08 Right. Either it dumps or it rallies. Right. This is the way we are with our society. So we have to be careful. And oh, by the way, other countries are listening to us too.

21:17 Exactly.

21:18 Right. So we have to be very careful. And it takes time. Look, the government's finally getting to the point where more and more people in the government are becoming aware of this topic and are asking the questions. When before it was just a controlled small group of people that were controlling this information. They didn't have to answer anybody's questions. Now they do. Right. So now it's up to Congress to get smart on this. And how do they get smart on it? Well, they've got to start asking questions, talking to people, reading reports, right, and talking to people in the CIA, talking to people in the FBI, talking to people in the Department of War. That takes time.

21:45 And for somebody to just come out and say, X, Y, Z, well, you better make sure that that agency and that agency and that president and that vice president and that secretary of state and that Department of Energy secretary, they're all on board with you. Because they have equity in this too. And they have to know, hey, before you say something, don't get this guy caught flat-footed because he's in charge of a billion-dollar agency. And there's consequences there. You all got to get on the same sheet of music to have a conversation. Otherwise, it looks disjointed. And it actually can be very harmful to national security if you do not get everybody to sit there in a room and understand what is the actual narrative. And it's not a

22:27 false narrative. That's not what I'm saying. Just what is the actual narrative? But you have to have conversation in order to understand what that is and identify that. And so that's what's happening.

22:39 So you mentioned other countries, and I often think of this too, and why other countries aren't more active. And also there could be, well, they could weaponize their disclosure in a way against us, jump ahead of where we're at right now.

22:57 That's right.

22:58 And, uh, You know, I mean, I'm surprised nothing is happening like that.

23:02 Let me give you an example. And let me foot stomp this, okay? Notional. I know it's going to come out when this comes out, but Lou Elizondo said XYZ. It's because I'm not paying attention to this interview. But let's say something was found on the moon, right? And let's say the United States knew about it. And all of a sudden decides to have a conversation publicly about, hey, we know this is there, but you know what? We don't have the technology yet to quite truly explore every little nook and cranny that we want to explore about this.

23:30 And now all of a sudden country exercise, you know what? I'm going to send a rocket up there next month with a probe and we're going to learn about it. And you know, we're going to plant a flag on it and this is going to be our territory. We're going to own it. We're going to control it. And whatever might be there will now be under our authority.

23:45 Cause remember how it goes when you plant a flag somewhere, right? You kind of control that. And so the conversation's going on right now. Well, Who owns the moon, right? Well, whoever can get up there and start planting flags on it, right? And it's not just one flag. Oh, no. Right, right. So that's why China and India and other countries like Russia, the United States, everybody's now looking at the moon saying, hey, wait a minute. You know, there's a lot of resources there.

24:04 Alien 3. There might be some other stuff there that we want to look at. We don't necessarily want to give that advantage to a potential adversary or a future adversary. So, you know, there's consequences for things we say. That's a very, you know, that's an over-exaggerated example, but that's an example.

24:20 Now, I believe you mentioned something about a type of monolith. Did you talk about that? I mean, I did look that up, and it almost looked like it was an impact.

24:31 Oh, no. There's a lot more stuff.

24:32 There's a lot more stuff.

24:33 Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. Oh, no. There's, look. The moon is a very interesting place. Hmm. You know. I've actually been there, Lou. No, for the record, I have not been to the moon. Okay. But there's a lot of information there and data that suggests that there may be some very interesting features on there that require further exploration and understanding. For decades, decades, Martin, you had NASA saying, for the record, we have absolutely no indication of life in our solar system other than Earth. And NASA astronauts have never encountered anything that was unique or possibly related to UAP, and that we have no photographic evidence or video of that to suggest that. What happened two and a half months ago during the first and second tranche

25:28 release of information? You had none other than NASA documents themselves, interviews with NASA astronauts of seeing strange things up there, video of NASA capturing things up there. And photographs taken from where? From the surface of the moon, the lunar surface of objects in a lunar orbit. Now, what technologies did we have in a lunar orbit back then? We only had one thing. That was a lunar orbiter waiting to rendezvous with the lander, right? And what they said for the record was, that's not what we're seeing. And it's very possible that what we're actually seeing here is something real. Now, let that sink in for a second. NASA, after, what, 60 years of denial, has come out and said, yeah,

26:13 it looks like there is stuff and we weren't completely truthful with you. That's a big step. That's a big step. And other agencies are watching to see the reaction. Are they going to sit there and be pitchforked and torched out of town? Or are people going to be a little more forgiving and say, okay, that's fine. As long as you're truthful with us now.

26:36 That's how we have to approach it.

26:37 That's how we have to approach it. Right.

26:39 Because otherwise, zip.

26:40 That's right.

26:41 And, you know, you heard rumors from way back for people that, you know, former employees that are mentioning things like, you know, touching up photographs and things like that. I've heard that, you know, for many years. And I wonder why. You know, I mean, is it just, is it, who controls that we can't see these things? Is it because we, if we saw something, it's unexplained. Are they afraid there's going to be conspiracies? It just makes you wonder why.

27:12 So let's do a little exercise here, shall we? And I've never done this before. Let's do a little exercise, you and me. Let's go down this rabbit hole for a second. You are a senior NASA administrator, right? Oh, yes. And the Department of Defense and the president, everybody's like, look, UFOs are silly. We're not going to talk about it, okay?

27:32 And by the way, we've got other issues right now. We're in the middle of a Cold War against Russia. They have nukes. We have nukes. We're kind of in this proxy effort to kind of who can have more control of the planet, you guys or us or whoever. And all of a sudden, you see these pictures coming in. And as the NASA administrator, what are you going to do?

27:53 Who's your boss, first of all? It's the president.

27:57 I would say the president.

27:58 Executive branch. It's the president. It's not the American. The president is. So what are you going to do? You're the NASA administrator?

28:03 I would go to the president.

28:05 Okay, great. That's what I would do, right? And then the president says, look, are you sure we know what we're looking at? What are you going to say?

28:16 No, we're not sure.

28:17 Okay, great. So before we say anything, what do you recommend?

28:24 Try to figure it out.

28:24 Further exploration, right? Okay, great. Let's see if anybody else here on the cabinet here is seeing the same thing. Air Force, what are you seeing? Well, sir, you know, we see something sometimes, but we don't really know what they are. Okay, how about you, Navy? Yeah, same thing. How about you, Department of Energy? Well, you know, we have these weird things that are coming over our nuclear sites on a regular basis, but we don't know what they are. They're not ours, but is it possible it's Russian before we go out and make some sort of bold claim that it's not? Yeah, you know what? I want you all to go ahead and go back and really start doing your homework on this and then come back and report to me in six months or a year. Okay.

29:06 And now issues start happening, right? Other things are happening. You have wars over here and financial issues here. You're now an asset administrator, but guess what happens? Next year, you're not. They replace you with somebody else because why? You retire. You got sick. Who knows why, right? Or guess what? Maybe I'm not the president anymore, right? So entire administrations change. Right.

29:24 No legacy.

29:24 Constantly. There is no legacy. There's no continuity there. Exactly. So that's just one example. Another could be a little bit more esoteric. So let's go back into our role play here, right? You're a NASA administrator. I'm the president, which I'm not the president, but let's just say hypothetically for this conversation. And let's go back again. You're showing me some pictures here. This is very interesting. From the surface of the moon. I'm very religious, and I... part of my platform of being elected was that I'm very, very religious. People see me that way. Right. And the religious side likes that about me. How is this going to affect the greater conversation about a us as human beings from a religious and philosophical and theological perspective that

30:19 God created man in his own image? Right. Hmm. Well, I already see a couple issues with that statement, but, uh, What if we're not necessarily the only thing out there? And then let's look at it from a governmental perspective. So we find evidence that there's a technology somewhere that's far more sophisticated than us by a lot. And this stuff has been there for years, right? How does that affect the geopolitical mindset of nations writ large, right? We are the We are the greatest nation on earth, or at least we tell ourselves that and tell other people that.

30:57 We do things because there is this presumption that we are. And then it turns out that there is something that is potentially far more advanced than us. Why do I need a government than to be involved in my life when there's this whole other opportunity out here, other thing out there that's well more advanced than us, maybe we should be looking to them for advice and assistance and guidance.

31:33 I don't need you anymore because obviously these folks are far more advanced than you. They're not necessarily conducting wars like you. People aren't dying for certain causes like you. People aren't, you're not, you know, as it is, I'm a single mother putting my kid through school, having holding down two jobs, trying to do homework, trying to go to PTA meetings, trying to go to soccer practice, right?

31:57 And I just got this monkey of responsibility on my back. And all of a sudden, there's this other thing, this realization that, hey, you know, this thing we are in, this society, maybe it's not ideal. Maybe there's a better way of doing things, more equitable way of doing things, right? So this is a philosophical conversation that... that people can have.

32:20 And there were several studies in the past done by the U.S. government, commissioned by the U.S. government, to look at what would the impact be socially on a society that comes to the realization that we're not alone. And unanimously, these studies came back saying you can't do it. You're going to disrupt everything.

32:37 I understand.

32:38 Now, personally for me, I don't agree with that. But if you are in a key position in the U.S. government and your job is to protect and defend America... All threats are threats, whether they're physical threats or implied threats. If it is a threat to us, not just from a national security perspective, but from a social structure and moral fabric perspective, that's a threat too. And so maybe it's better off to kick the can down the road a little bit longer until we learn more about it.

33:07 Because we don't know exactly what this is and where they're from and what their capabilities are. So rather than have the conversation preemptively, You know, there was a perfect example of this. People would say, well, give me evidence. Give me proof that we actually do that. Can we do it all the time? All the time. Perfect example with, let me give you one with the U-2 spy plane.

33:27 So Lockheed Martin and CIA developed the U-2 spy plane, and they were flying it over mainland Russia, even though we had a treaty saying we were not going to fly manned reconnaissance missions over mainland Russia. That's exactly what we're doing. And this plane was designed to fly so fast and so high that the Russian military Missiles couldn't, and Russian interceptors couldn't catch up with it ever. So what happened? We fly it. The first couple missions are a success. We come back. The plane's invisible. The Russians can't see it, right? It wasn't until the Russians developed the SA-2 surface-to-air missile and was able to successfully target and shoot one down and subsequently parade the wreckage of

34:05 that U-2 aircraft and Captain Powers in front of the United Nations did Russia admit they were tracking every single flight. But they didn't want to say anything until they had a way to neutralize that perceived threat. Why get people in Russia concerned about something that they have no solution for until when? Until you have a solution for that problem.

34:25 And that is not just a Russia thing. We've done that many, many times too in the United States and other countries around the world. It's normal behavior. Whether you agree with it or not, that is normal behavior.

34:37 I've said many times on the show, a lot of listeners are probably tired of hearing it. But just to get your opinion, I believe I've asked you this before, but I do feel like the government knows more than we do about this situation, but I don't think they have the full picture. And because they do not have the full picture, how can they possibly protect us?

34:57 You have to be careful because you can actually do more harm than good by coming out with half-baked information and conclusions.

35:04 That's a problem. Do you agree that they do not have the full picture? Do you believe they do not have the full picture?

35:08 No, of course we know they don't have the full picture. Because even when you think you have the full picture, there's no way to verify and validate that. Even if you say, well, they told us. I don't give a darn what they told you. That doesn't matter because you still have no way to validate and verify that. It's just like a human source. When I'm running sources over in the Middle East or Asia or anywhere else I've been, South America, there's something called asset validation. We have to validate with the source. You don't just take it. And this is one of my issues with Ross here because he took information without validating it. But again, I'm not going to beat him up. I'm sure he had his

35:43 reasons for it. I'm sure he believed it was valid. But if you don't validate that information and you put it out and it turns out not to be accurate, now what happens? Well, now you've got to go back and try to undo something that could have been prevented all along. And so I totally get it. I totally understand.

36:02 I'm just as eager and anxious and impatient as everybody else because I know what I've seen. I want to, believe me, as curious as some people are and eager to get the truth out, I'm that times 10. And that's why I continue doing what I'm doing. I think the American people have a right to know. I think they can handle the truth. I think they deserve the truth.

36:25 Whatever the truth is, right? But then again, you look at social media and we wonder why. Well, how come they haven't been truthful with us? Look, this is how you handle information. Anytime someone comes out, you go ahead and you beat them up over the head with a stick.

36:38 And so many sides and armchair experts.

36:41 I mean, what incentive do people have? Well, the president should come out. You're not going to believe it anyways. Half of America, it doesn't matter who's a president. Half of America never believes the president anyway. So what are you talking about?

36:52 I've said that exact same thing.

36:53 You know, to me... I don't understand. And they'd be like, well, why haven't we had more truth? Look in the mirror. You want to know why? Look in the mirror. You're the reason why. Because of your behavior, because of the way you treat other people, because the way you react, and because you going out and wanting to be judge, jury, and executioner and beat anybody over the head that you don't agree with or is not pushing your narrative. Yeah. Right.

37:16 Absolutely. There's an old saying, people only read what they believe. You know, I mean, it's kind of the same way when it, Once they make up their mind, yeah, you're going to get that little guy.

37:24 Just one of them, too. I feel bad killing it. Even insects I don't like to kill. But he's worn out of welcome, this one.

37:33 So let's shift gears just a little bit just for one question here. When you started looking, I know when you, I heard the whole story a number of times how you first got involved in this, but I don't know if you can even talk about this, but I would like to know what your the first key evidence that you saw that made you think, wow, there's really something to this.

37:56 It wasn't one. It was a volume. It was mountains of information and data that once I realized existed and where to find it, it opened my eyes. So it wasn't like one, oh, yeah, this is really compelling. No, it's, oh, my gosh. What? No way. I mean, it was like that. Yeah.

38:19 Now, when... David Grush first came out and talked about the crash retrieval program. I had this, whoops, isn't that, that's a little too far maybe or something like that. But then I started understanding and realizing that it is possible. I mean, the first thing you hear people say, well, the guy here from wherever they came, how could they possibly crash? You know, there are absolutely some cases where there could be shoot downs too, not just You know, something went wrong with lightning or whatever it is. There's all kinds of theories.

38:54 I'm going to put you on the spot here for a second.

38:55 All right, yes.

38:56 We had a wonderful conversation before we came into this interview about cars. You and I both like cars, right? We're talking about the Tesla. Yeah. And you had mentioned something incredible statistic, like 20 billion miles, driver miles of data.

39:09 13 billion.

39:10 15 billion. 15 billion driver miles of data, worth of data, has all been integrated into the Tesla system. artificial intelligence, right, in order to avoid accidents and blah, blah, blah, and it's very, very successful. And yet, Tesla's still getting car accidents, don't they? And yet, Tesla's still will sometimes autopilot take over and put somebody over a cliff or into a very dangerous situation. Now it's not, there's been a few.

39:38 I know, but that's earlier software. But anyway, yeah, I got it.

39:41 It could be earlier. It doesn't matter. My point being is no matter how sophisticated technology is, it can always fail. And that's why it's technology because human beings are the same way. There is no such thing as a perfect system. Human beings fail. We get cancer, right? We fail mentally. We have all sorts of failures that we have. We have high blood pressure. So physically we can fail. Mentally we can fail. And technology will always fail eventually. It's inevitable.

40:07 All technology eventually will fail. It's the reason why our automobiles are good for a certain amount of mileage and we've got to get something new because the internals fail. The reason why people are always upgrading computers because after a while they run slow. Why? Because they're failing. Right?

40:22 So technology, even if it's super advanced, we lose jet fighters all the time. Super advanced jet fighters. Very expensive jet fighters. We lose them all the time. Now, how is that possible? Remember the unsinkable Titanic? Not so unsinkable, huh?

40:37 Right.

40:37 So we have to understand that technology is what it is and that all technology, all technology has a vulnerability. Now, it may not be obvious, but all technologies have a vulnerability. And it turns out with UAP, there is a potential vulnerability.

40:55 So when you were doing your research, again, I don't know what you can talk about and what you can't, but when you were first tasked.

41:00 I'll let you know if I can't talk about something. I'm very open about that.

41:03 When you were tasked with looking into this, did you come across any crash retrieval type of situation?

41:12 So as much as I want to answer that, and here's where you're going to get beat up on this interview... I've made it very clear before that I signed a document with the United States government years ago that forbade me from talking about crash retrievals. People go, oh yeah, but David Grush did. I'm not David Grush. I don't know what he signed. I can tell you what I signed.

41:30 And it says, I cannot talk about crash retrievals, which that alone should be very indicative. You don't sign a secrecy oath on something if there's nothing there to protect. And the fact that now, members of Congress and others are having this conversation. I think it's great, but I have not been relieved of that. No one came by and said, you know what, Lou, that document you signed, it's no longer valid. The moment they say it's no longer valid, let's do it, hot damn, let's have a conversation.

41:54 But until that happens, I can't do it, and I won't.

41:58 Now, did that document, if you can remember, did it have an end time? I talked with someone that just had a 30-year NDA in the military.

42:10 Mine isn't until the government makes it. It's lifelong.

42:12 Wow.

42:13 Lifelong. Yeah.

42:15 Wow. It must be kind of frustrating.

42:16 And I can tell you where that document is. It's somewhere in Colorado Springs. And that's all I'll say.

42:21 Wow. Well, it must be a little bit difficult to have this knowledge in your head that you know that it would be nice if it could be shared, if it's not disrupting in any type of way.

42:33 Yeah, but keep in mind, as a former member of the intelligence community, you're used to keeping a lot of secrets. That would be nice if Americans knew, but You can't for national security reasons. This topic's a little different than those other circumstances because there are aspects of this topic that should never have been classified to begin with. And that's my problem. It has nothing to do with the fact that we're keeping information from the American people. It's that we're keeping information from the American people that should not be kept from them. Right. That's my problem. That's my concern. I know it seems like splitting hairs, but it's really not. It's a core value for me.

43:07 When the tranches came out, I... was there at the same time you were down at the Disclosure Forum. And I was one of the two podcasters in the audience or one of the two people that asked the question. And I asked Burleson, where's all the good stuff? You know, that's what everybody's talking about when these things come out.

43:26 Like they're really interested. There's that really amazing thing with the, I don't know, he was a skeptic and he was, I can't remember what department he was in and the orgs.

43:36 Office of the Director of National Intelligence. He was a senior intelligence officer. probably assigned from another agency to the DNI, and he went on that investigation, and him and the pilot encountered these orbs over a sensitive military installation. That's correct. Over an area, sensitive military area. And, yeah, a bit of a skeptic himself until he came out, and he's like, oh, my God, they're real. That's what we told you. No, no, you don't understand. I saw it. I know. That's what we've been trying to tell you. No, but they came close to the helicopter. I know. Welcome to the club. Yeah.

44:09 Well, it's funny, the other day I did a talk at a library and all these people showed up. And you know those silver spheres that you've seen?

44:18 I do very well.

44:19 So this woman is telling me this is the second time I've ever told this to anybody in my life. She said, I was chased by a UFO when I was a child on a horse and my friend and I. So then she said it was in Elliott, Maine. I said, I grew up in Elliott, Maine. And she goes to the Marshall Farm. I said, my sister was best friends with Marilyn Marshall. So anyway, and then all of a sudden it hit me like, oh, I remember hearing about this when I was a kid. And, you know, I didn't really think much of it. But anyway, she said it was a silver sphere that went like an orb that was chasing her and stopped and things like that.

44:56 But I don't know where I'm going with this other than that they've been around forever. And when people are saying, well, that's our technology. Well, this was in 1964. Right, right.

45:07 Temporally, it doesn't align. There's a bunch of people trying to make excuses. I think there's a lot of cognitive dissonance out there. People are afraid to consider that it's not our technology, and so they continue to dig their heels in. I think some of that is just cognitive dissonance. I think there's some people that are truly afraid of the alternative. So they're better off, oh, no, no, it's our technology. No, it's not. A lot of that stuff is not our technology. It was not our technology, certainly back in the Foo Fighters during the late 1940s. Not in the 1950s and 1960s. We did not have the capability to travel in hypersonic velocities and instantaneous acceleration and, you know, all the stuff that we now associate with

45:45 UAP performance characteristics. You know, we had barely, right after World War II, we had barely broken the sound barrier. We had not been to space and we're capturing objects on radar and visually doing 10,000 miles an hour and faster.

45:57 And not breaking no sonic boom.

45:59 No sonic boom. That's right.

46:00 Which is so bizarre.

46:01 No observable. So... There were these things, encounters that were occurring that were not our technology. And if they were someone's technology, not ours, then this would be the greatest intelligence failure in the history of the United States. Because despite the billions and billions of dollars reported to the 17 intelligence communities out there, that no one at a single time had a shred of information that some 80 years ago, 90 years ago, 70 years ago, some country had developed this technology in secret. And oh, by the way, managed to deploy it. On a regular and continuing basis over the continental United States for all these years? Well, if that's the case, we should just hang up our coat and call it a day and give up because

46:41 we'll never be able to be competitive with a nation like that. But of course we know that's not the case. Right. It's something else.

46:47 So what do you think about my question to Burleson? Where's the good stuff? I mean, do you think that they're just hanging on to some really amazing things that they just... feel as though they can't let go, and for what reason?

47:07 Let me share a quote with you. I'm not going to tell you who told me this. But I was told, Lou, there are some technologies and capabilities we have that we're willing to lose a war for. Now, I disagree with that. I completely and vehemently disagree with that perspective. But, I understand if that is the perspective of certain people. Something that is so advanced that it would have gotten to the hands of an adversary could be very bad for all of us. So, again, I don't agree with that perspective, but I can understand it.

47:50 Now, a couple of things. I'm going to be bouncing around a little bit here. I do remember hearing you say at one point, I think you posed a question. What if there's been something here all along, and what if we're not at the top of the food chain? Can you say something like that?

48:09 Well, yeah, you're exactly right. I did say that. And you tell me what that means. Let me ask you something. You drive a Tesla. Beautiful vehicle, by the way. Very jealous. We are a species that... is extremely insecure. It's the reason why when you look at a city, they're developed in north and south, east and west grid lines, so we can navigate. It's the reason why when you drive your car down the road, you see speed limits. I say speed limit 55, no merge area, soft shoulder, you know, pull off here, don't pull off there. We are a species that likes to know where we are at all times, or at least think that we know where we are at all times, right? Otherwise, the unknown makes us very insecure.

48:55 So we have, we develop these things like an ant farm, with rules and lanes, and we all have certain jobs. What do you do? Well, I'm a doctor. What do you do? Well, I'm a lawyer. What do you do? No, I work in construction, right? And mentally, we have this racking and stacking of kind of where everybody fits in society, what they do, their roles and responsibilities. And that's why society works. We all have this mutual social agreement that this works, that if I give you a ten dollar bill that's good for x y and z but what if it turns out that people realize that it's just a piece of paper yeah we agree we agree that it's ten dollars but the paper itself is worth what two cents yeah you know so This only works because

49:34 we have social agreements and we like to have left and right limits on things. It's the way we are. When you talk about this topic, you have to remove all of that. All of that goes away because it's truly the unknown and that makes us very, very insecure as a species. We don't like that. In fact, we can talk about it later with time, but the reason why time is so important to us, time doesn't even really exist. Time is not at all what we think it is and yet We live our lives by time.

50:05 We run elections by time. We put out the garbage because of the time. We pay our taxes because it's time to pay our taxes. We go to bed. We eat. We sleep because it's time to do so. We drink. We are very regulated that way. And there's a reason why I'm saying this. Because when we realize that some of the stuff that we thought was the way things are, are not, that creates a great deal of anxiety in the human species. We don't like the unknown. We are ingrained to always know. That's why we're always, you know, people are afraid of the dark. They're afraid of what's behind the corner. I want to be able to see, right?

50:49 It's instinctual. It's survival. It's the reason why we survived as a species up to this point, because we are always anticipating what's behind the next corner, right? What threat may exist or opportunity may exist. And when you realize that, look, we're all in this thing together, we are all stuck on this rock we call planet earth. That's orbiting some obscure star and some obscure solar system and some obscure galaxy.

51:20 And when people come and you tell them, Hey, look, you know, there is, you'll never going to be in the same place twice. well, sure, I'm going to go to work today and I'm going to come back home and have dinner at my house. Yeah, but you're never going to go back to the same place. Why? Because Earth is rotating. Earth is orbiting and moving at a tremendous velocity around the sun, which our sun is also orbiting around a much larger galaxy, right? So there's no going back. There is no thing as ever going back.

51:46 And that kind of thought can be a little bit uncomfortable for some people because we like rules and limits we like to know where we are in our place you know or what we think our place is in society in the universe or on the highway it's no different that's why people want to know you know what happens when you i hear with the tesla some people get range anxiety right because oh my god am i going to make it to a charging station or at least that used to be the case um you know i think there's some things that have been done now to eliminate that but Range anxiety was real because, look, I don't know if I'm going to make it to the next charging station. What's going to happen to me?

52:23 What's going to happen to my car? What am I going to do? And that's just something simple like driving an electric car. You can imagine when you multiply that involving every aspect of your life and your existence, what type of anxiety that might create. We have entire religions, and each country has their own laws. in order to give people that understanding of who they are and where they are. And when you remove that, you're removing that security blanket off of somebody. And that can create a tremendous amount of stress, both internally and emotionally, but also externally and from a national security perspective.

53:06 So in the fact that there may or may not be something here that's above us in intelligence, is that. Sometimes I wonder about reality in general, but also about our spectrum and the different ways we sense things. And I just wondered if that would be, in your opinion, whatever you were talking about, if this is something that we can't sense in any type of way.

53:35 Well, look, most of reality we can't. And I'm going to say this again because folks who maybe never heard this perspective before from me, they can hear it, but... We are extremely limited as a biological species. These iPhone cameras that everybody has on their personal cellular device are far more capable than us. Now, what do I mean by that? It's just a phone. If you look at the five fundamental senses by which we judge the universe, there's five. And for the most part, if we can't touch it, taste it, hear it, smell it, etc., it doesn't exist. And let's look at, first of all, for example, the visual optical spectrum by which we see We see our universe around us. The electro-optical spectrum is a tiny

54:22 sliver of the greater electromagnetic spectrum. In fact, it's 0.0035% of the entire electromagnetic spectrum, meaning less than 1% of 1% of everything out there that's vibrating, we can see. Right? So that's a limitation for us. If you look at a night sky and ponder the beautiful galaxy above you, you see the beautiful stars. Now look at that same part of the night sky through a radio telescope, and you'll see an entirely different reality around you. You'll see nebula and medullary clouds and things that we couldn't perceive, and yet that's where most of this stuff is. This is where the conversation of dark energy and dark matter comes in, because most of the cosmos is beyond our ability to perceive it. And then you've got beyond a biological...

55:10 For us, it's a limitation, right? Because we can only perceive so much. You have also a scalability and size issue. And so, just humor me for a minute while I digress. We are an infinitesimally small speck compared to the size of the greater universe. And in fact, if I look in this direction and in that direction, my universe horizon, where light, visible light, the farthest reaches of our universe, is roughly... 14.5 billion light years in any direction. So collectively, think of a 27 billion light year horizon, and we're kind of this little spot in the middle. Now, that sounds like a big number, but when you really think about how big one light year is, let me capture that for you. A light year is the distance one

56:01 photon of light can travel in one year. How fast is it? Well, it's about 186,000 miles per second.

56:07 Okay.

56:08 Or seven and a half times around the earth in one second. Now, imagine how fast or how far you can go in a week and how far you can go in a month and how far you can go in a year. That's one light year. Take that and multiply it by 27 billion.

56:22 Right.

56:23 So you're 27 billion light years. Yeah. It is enormous. And in fact, in the visible, not the entire universe, but just the visible universe alone, which only represents, at 27 billion light years, only represents about 10%. Most cosmologists agree that only represents about 10% of the actual size of the universe. The problem is the universe is so big and so vast that light leaving a star from that distance will never reach Earth. It'll never reach us.

56:49 So even what we can perceive is only about 10% of what actually there is. It might even be bigger than that. So what's my point to this? There are, scientists have said that in the visible universe, there are over 200 sextillion stars. Now, I don't know what a sextillion is, but I know it's a big number. But scientists have put it in other terms. There are more stars in our observable universe than there are grains of sand in all the beaches of all the world. Right.

57:18 And that's just our observable universe, right?

57:20 Yeah.

57:21 And we're this tiny little speck in the middle. Now, if that's not mind-blowing enough, You remember Avogadro's number, right? In chemistry class, in the size of a hydrogen atom. Well, if you compare the size of a subatomic particle like a quark, and you compare that to the human being, that's roughly the same order of magnitude, plus or minus, as we are to the universe. Meaning there's an equally amount in scale, amount of space inside every human being as there is outside. And we... as a species reside right in that middle area, almost the middle scale of the universe. And we can only interact with one or two orders of degree magnitude up or down with our reality.

57:58 Otherwise simply the universe is too big or too small. We'll never be able to interact with it directly.

58:02 Right.

58:03 And yet that's where most of the stuff of our universe is. That's where everything is. So we have to understand that we are perceiving the universe through a very, very, very narrow window. It's like trying to look, here's a good example. Imagine trying to watch a football game with a straw. Imagine being in a stadium and looking at an entire football game through a straw, right? That's all you can perceive. You're not going to learn very much while you're looking through a straw. You might see a play or two, but you're not going to get a picture of the whole game or what the field looks like and what each player is doing. And so, you know, it's very humbling when you start thinking about about that

58:49 because it forces us to reconcile the notions that we've been told that we're the best and we're the pinnacle of achievement. Exactly. If we're the pinnacle of achievement, we would not be killing each other in warfare and stuff like that.

59:00 Yeah, that's an unfortunate thing we do. And oftentimes why I know Stanton Friedman used to say, you know, we're a tribal society. and why would anyone want to.

59:12 Look at the planet and when you look at the planet from space you realize it's not like a map. There are no lines and borders or anything like that. It's all together. We're all connected. And yet we do instinctually we create boundaries. We create walls to separate us.

59:24 In every which way we can.

59:26 Socially, theologically, philosophically, physically, We build walls. We want to keep you out and keep my tribe in.

59:34 That's right.

59:34 Right.

59:35 Now, a while back, I think we had a conversation, and I've heard you say it more than once, that there was this 23-minute video. And what's the story with that? I was hoping that we'd see that like a couple of years ago, and it never came.

59:52 I think you will, but that's not the most compelling one. It's a very compelling one, but there's others where these things come 15 feet. from the cockpit, but you've already heard Ryan Graves talk about how these things were so close that he split the combat formation right down the middle.

1:00:04 Yeah, pretty amazing. I like what he's doing with the ASA.

1:00:08 He's doing fantastic. And by the way, he's generally a great human being. He's a good human being. Yes.

1:00:15 And Chris Mellon, I was lucky enough to be the first one to interview him. I talked to him about that on June 25th at the Disclosure Forum.

1:00:25 You're right, Chris Mellon, Admiral Gallaudet, Dave Fravor, Alex Dietrich, uh, you know, they're all, they're all heroes in my, my, my opinion, you know.

1:00:34 Right.

1:00:34 Will you be.

1:00:34 Working with Chris at all? I mean, I know you've done a lot of work with Chris in this topic. I'm just wondering, are you in, is Chris involved with the same thing you're involved in?

1:00:44 Chris and I have a very special relationship. Um, he is a very dear friend. Um, and he's also very formidable and extremely intelligent and a genuinely a good soul, like very philanthropic. People have no idea the philanthropic acts he does on a regular basis. Right. Very, very generous to our society, his lovely wife, and he's got a great family. He has a lot to lose to pursue this topic. And yet he does it. And he's doing a lot of things behind the scenes. It's not my place to say what he's doing. Right. But Chris and I always coordinate and always work very closely together. Um, I admire Chris. There's a few human beings that I tend to put up on a pedestal, and it's earned.

1:01:30 Chris is one of those people. He is truly unique and truly, truly a special person and just a genuinely kind human being with a tremendous amount of responsibility. I don't know how he does it. I've told him this before. I said, I'd never be able to do what you do. I can't. There's no way. Wow.

1:01:51 He's got such a good attitude about it.

1:01:52 Of course.

1:01:53 Yeah.

1:01:53 Of course. And that's why I admire about him. He never lets the crap on social media get to him. I try not to. It's hard sometimes because some of the stuff people say is just so outlandish. I had one guy, Lewis mentioned in the Epstein Files. Listen, dude, you're so ridiculous. That's a good one. People don't know about it, right? It's like, oh, Louis Mitchell's up to you. No, I wasn't. I didn't even know the guy that couldn't stand anybody who represents that is a disgusting human being, right?

1:02:22 But for some reason, people like manufacturing drama and BS, and people believe that stuff. And Chris is a lot better at it than I am. He just lets it roll off his back. But there's a lot of people that deserve credit. People like Hal Pudoff and Eric Davis. People like George Knapp. He's done tremendous work. You want to talk about a guy who's really been in the trenches, George Knapp is one of them. Jeremy Corbell has done very good. Got to go back to Bigelow. You've got to give Bob Bigelow credit for what he did and what he started and used his own money for. There's a lot of folks out there. Jim Lukatsky did a great job. Jay Stratton did a great job. A lot of folks out there did their part.

1:03:05 Just wrapping this up, what do you think we can expect in the coming years? Do we have any known direction?

1:03:14 Well, thankfully there's some good people there that are trying to make recommendations on what that looks like. What does the end state look like? And we're all in this together.

1:03:25 And I do think, I really do think at this point we can handle whatever it is. But I also agree that, and I've said this a number of times that you mentioned, there's only going to be a percentage of people that's going to believe whatever is factual.

1:03:39 That's right.

1:03:40 And we can't do anything about that.

1:03:41 There's still people who think the Earth is flat. I don't know what to tell you.

1:03:44 I had a conversation with one, and it was pretty funny. I said, okay, picture someone in space. They're in space, and there's no gravity. And water gets... What happens to water when you put water out?

1:03:56 That's right. It becomes a sphere.

1:03:57 It goes into a ball, to a sphere.

1:03:59 Okay.

1:03:59 I said, it's a natural thing to have. And he said, well, you know, he had his arguments and they were hilarious. It was actually entertaining for me to kind of debate.

1:04:09 I feel bad. I feel sorry. And you're not going to convince them. And that's okay. Look, and you know what? They have a right to believe what they want to believe. And we have to, you know, we may not agree with it, but we have to honor that because it's a free country and this is a society we live in.

1:04:23 And I actually went to war, believe it or not, to defend the rights of people who don't think like me. In fact, I went to war for people who actually hated me and hated everything I represented, and I still went to war so they'd have an opinion. They'd have a right to have that opinion.

1:04:38 And I've heard you say before that you're not aligned with any political party or anything like that.

1:04:45 People do not know my political affiliation for a reason because it has nothing to do with this conversation, nor should it. Right. I've been accused, well, Lou's on Fox News. He's a diehard conservative. Then I go on CNN, oh, Lou's a flaming liberal, right?

1:04:59 You're right. And that's what I really love about these people that are really trying to push this. And Congress.

1:05:05 Oh, yeah. Congress is doing great. Look, I've got to tell you right now. Luna, she's killing it. She's doing great with this. Burleson, phenomenal. Absolute American patriot. Burchett, I mean, man, that's another guy. Had I known 10 years earlier, man, the guy is unbelievable. Super, super guy. But you've got folks like Andre Carter, right, that are also towing the line.

1:05:24 Here's a Muslim American guy. veteran who's saying, I think cop, sorry, police officer, who's willing to take up this challenge, right? I mean, he should be applauded for that. And you have folks on the Senate side, too, and you've got, still in Congress, folks like Moskowitz, and there's been a long line of people that are putting their political neck on the line so we, the people, can have this conversation.

1:05:48 They should be lauded for that.

1:05:49 Right, right, I agree 100%. It was really great, I've been to, I was in the Roman Grush was there, and it's right behind you when you testified in the room. And I didn't make the one where Jeff Nucicelli and those other people were. But I didn't make that one, but that was a good one. So I want to just ask you this last part, and that is, is there anything that we didn't discuss that you'd like to share out there that you can think of off the top of your head?

1:06:18 About UFOs, no. Okay. But, you know, there's parts of me, nobody ever asked me really about me. People are always interested in the topic, but they never ask me, like, who are you, Lou?

1:06:33 Who are you, Lou?

1:06:34 Well, I'm not saying you have to ask me. No one really ever seems to really care much about me, which is, I guess, a good thing, you know, so I don't have to get personal.

1:06:44 No, I would like to know more. That's the first thing I asked Alex Dietrich when I interviewed her. You know, what led you on the path to where you arrived? I know it's late in the interview, but You want to give a little recap of that?

1:07:00 You know, let me share something with you. We talked a little bit about the limitations of human beings and our ability to perceive the cosmos because of biological restrictions and size limitations and whatnot. But most people who know me realize I'm not overly typical. I don't go to sports bars. I'm not necessarily into, you know, organized functions and things like that. I tend to be pretty introverted. People, oh, yeah, you're an extrovert. I see you on TV and you're just extra. I'm not an extrovert. I have to be extroverted to have a conversation, but I am not. That's not my natural state. I am introverted, very introverted. And in fact, I do things to pass my time when friends of mine are going out to the bars. I'm

1:07:52 at home doing patents. I'm an inventor. I have several patents to my name. and one of my passions is watches, restoring old vintage watches.

1:08:01 I love that.

1:08:03 And I'm sure with your other job you can appreciate this, but the reason why is not because I look at someone wearing a timepiece and go, oh, you're wearing a Rolex or an IWC or a Patek Philippe. To me, it's something far more profound. If I were to ask you a question, and I might digress in here for a second, but I'll share with you my passion. The reason why I love... watches so much and restoring vintage watches.

1:08:29 I never sell them. I keep them. So if anybody out there has an old watch from grandpa that you don't want anymore, send it to me because I will restore it. I take, like I said, some of these watches I'll spend 20 hours taking apart and re-oiling and lubricating and putting it back together.

1:08:42 You better watch what you ask for.

1:08:44 No, I'm serious. I'm not kidding. It's my, my, my wife knows like one of my guilty pleasures. I, I, I find old watches at a, at a, at a flea market that someone's been used and abused and doesn't work anymore. And I bring it back to its original glory because, it gives me it gives me a sense of accomplishment. And, and what time represents is completely human manufactured.

1:09:03 And yet it drives every decision that we make time. If you look at it from a quantum mechanics perspective, you know, we, we experienced time linearly, unlike dimension where three live in a three dimensional space. Time is expressed for us, at least experienced linearly. Um, But the reality is time isn't really linear. If you look at it from a quantum physics perspective, there's a whole lot of gray areas in there and uncertainty. And yet time drives every single thing that we do, every decision we make.

1:09:34 And so for me, time is elusive and it's very precious. And if you talk to a very wealthy person, they'll tell you the only luxury that they can't afford is time. time is something that whether you like it or not there it is and it runs out and so a watch represents to me mankind's ability to try to control it remember we talked about limitations earlier and creating these boundaries and borders that's exactly what this is we are trying to capture and understand a concept that first of all is not experienced the same for everybody and is very relative depending who you ask Einstein said it the best you can spend a Spend an hour doing something menial, and it'll feel like a year goes by, and you

1:10:25 can spend, what did he say, an hour with a pretty girl, and it feels like a minute, right? That's what he said, so I'm just putting it out there. But the point is that we all experience it a little bit differently. And if I were to ask you a question, I say, I want you a task. I want you, let's say we're back in the 1800s, right? 1860s, and I say, I want you to build me a device that will keep accurate time of the calendar each day, like the Inca tried to do, right? And the other Mayas and stuff like that. What would it take? Well, I could build you a box, maybe this big, that would keep with enough batteries and the accurate day for maybe the next few years, right? And then you have to go in and calibrate it. And then I say, well, actually,

1:11:08 I want it more accurate than that. I want it 24 times more accurate. And I want you to keep the exact hour and the exact day for at least the next three years. So I'd build you a device. It'd probably take, I don't know, half the size of this room to do it, right? And then you say, no, no, no, no. You know, I want it 60 times more accurate than that.

1:11:24 In fact, no, it's got to be more than that. I want it to be, I want you to keep the exact minute, the exact hour, and the exact day of the week. And then I want you to go further than that and also keep time of the exact second, right? So now I would build something like an eight-story building in order to keep that for a few years. I just don't know how to do it, right? And each gear has to relate perfectly And if you have one cog of one gear off by even half a degree over the countless revolutions, it's going to throw your time off, right?

1:11:54 And then I say, oh, by the way, you can't use electricity. You can't use any type of external device other than kinetic movement. It has to wind itself. Well, I wouldn't know where to start. I'd have to build something like a server farm, right, to do that. And then I say, on top of that, it has to fit on your wrist. Yeah. That's what we achieved back 150 years ago. It was so important to us. Time, the concept of time that's not even real, that we put that kind of human engineering and effort into. And so when I get a chance to take an old watch apart, And I can see the relationship each gear has.

1:12:35 And maybe they've been gummed up a little bit. Maybe there's some sort of resistance in there. Maybe it's old oil and it's kind of congealed. Yeah. And you can bring it back to its original glory. That, to me, I can't express the satisfaction. To me, it is a point of pride for me that when I can finally put that watch in that display case, even if I never wear it, which I try to wear each watch.

1:12:59 I really do.

1:13:00 Oh, that's great. But.

1:13:02 Knowing that it's now been restored back to its original glory. I mentioned to you, I think, recently I found a watch in the bottom of a bilge. Right. Of an old boat that's been there for like 20 years. And you know what a bilge is, right? Oil and gunk.

1:13:15 It must have looked beautiful.

1:13:17 Yeah, it did not.

1:13:18 Let me ask you, do you take before and after pictures and all that?

1:13:21 Sometimes I do.

1:13:22 Yeah. That would have been a good one.

1:13:24 And, you know, my wife used to drive my wife nuts. But when she realized, you know, really my passion towards it, she's... She's far more accepting of it. Because I don't go to the bars and I don't do a lot of things that a lot of folks do to pass time. I kind of get lost in this other world.

1:13:42 That's great. I remember in seventh grade, our science teacher said, the homework for tonight is time. Describe it.

1:13:52 That's right. Great question. I was going to ask you that. Because you can describe space. Space is really the distance between two points. That's space. But what about time? How do you describe it?

1:14:05 And does it change?

1:14:06 That's right. Well, we know through gravity it does. E equals mc squared. We know mass and energy can both affect time because it affects space time. And you can't have one without the other. Absolutely. So time is very elusive and yet it's so important. Yeah. You know, it's almost like asking the question, who is God? Well, what is time? Well, time is something different for everybody. Yeah.

1:14:29 And I imagine, when we were talking earlier, like I brought up, like everything has a story. You know, when it's connected to a story.

1:14:37 Oh, that's right.

1:14:38 You know, it makes it.

1:14:39 In this particular case, not this watch, but the watch I found in the bottom of the bilge belonged to an old fisherman that had long been dead. And his boat was now third or fourth generation being used. And when I found the watch, they were like, oh my God, that's granddad's watch.

1:14:54 Oh, now that's a story.

1:14:55 Yeah. And, you know, it was just a cheap little time piece, but it meant so much. And I said, well, here you go. And he said, no, Lou, you like watches. You take it. Just get it back to what my grandfather would have appreciated. So I did. 20 hours later and, you know, there's the watch.

1:15:12 That's great. Lou, it's been wonderful. Thank you so much.

1:15:15 For your time. Always my honor and privilege. Thank you for having me. You know, you're always welcome.

1:15:20 Thank you for all you do.

1:15:21 Oh, no problem. Thank you for what you do.

1:15:24 And you know what? Yeah, just let it go. I mean, the people are always going to attack. They attack me. It doesn't matter. But, you know, as long as we keep our side of the road clean.

1:15:35 That's right.

1:15:36 And do the next right thing.

1:15:37 That's right.

1:15:37 We really shouldn't have.

1:15:38 To worry about it. And by the way, we are humans. People are going to make mistakes. Yeah, that's right. All we can do is hold ourselves accountable. That's right. You know what?

1:15:44 I heard a great saying.

1:15:44 That's right.

1:15:45 Why do pencils have erasers? Because we all make mistakes.

1:15:48 That's right. You know? Anyway. That's right.

1:15:50 Good stuff.

1:15:51 Thank you, man. Honor and privilege, brother. Thank you. Yeah. Always. Yeah.