Garrett Graff
Appearances
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
One is our own advanced technologies, you know, what public UFO sightings actually represent, you know, classified planes, rockets, satellites, spacecraft, drones that the US has developed but doesn't talk about publicly. I mean, that's certainly some chunk of public UFO sightings that the US government doesn't like to talk about.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
The second layer that the government doesn't like to talk about is its own sensor technology, which is the US has enormously complex and enormously advanced sensor systems that it doesn't really like to talk about.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
what UFOs and UAPs it detects, because that would then give away some of that answer of what the US government is able to see, listen to, watch, hear, detect on a day-to-day basis, information that would be enormously valuable for our adversaries.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
The modern Pentagon office that's in charge of this says that it's able to answer now all but about two to five percent of the sightings that get reported to it.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
And some of that is just a huge percentage of these things are very straightforward. Oh, that looked weird to you, but that was just an obviously scheduled plane or a known satellite crossing the sky. But there are some chunk of this as a phenomenon that we just really have no idea what it is.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
Yes, absolutely. And that, to me, is the core of this whole mystery, which is, what is that 1% to 2% to 5% of known recorded sightings that just no one can answer? And we know that those sightings exist. We know that people have investigated some chunk of them and that they remain.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
Just as puzzled as anyone, you know, what more should we be doing to try to dive into and uncover and unravel those mysteries?
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
Area 51 is the Air Force's and CIA's secret flight test site. It dates back to the early stages of the Cold War. It's where the U-2 spy plane and other secret classified planes have been developed and tested over the years. I think part of the lure of it in these UFO conspiracies is that the government is incredibly secretive about what flies out of there.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
It doesn't like talking about what's being tested there. We know that that is where the government It takes secret planes to be tested and evaluated, whether those are manned or unmanned systems. And I think a lot of people have imagined that that's where the government sort of would take a crashed spacecraft
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
if the government ever managed to recover one but i think after looking into all of this and having covered national security for 20 years in washington i'm pretty dubious that the u.s government is capable of a sophisticated long-term cover-up of a crashed alien spacecraft you know it just seems as with all conspiracy theories
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
Yes, and that, in fact, is just my sort of most basic reasoning for why you shouldn't believe the government conspiracies about secret UFOs or bases under Area 51 or bodies is the government is capable of keeping secrets, but the government is not really able to keep secrets that are really big, that are known by a large number of people for very long.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
And so, you know, do I believe that the government could cover up a crashed alien spacecraft, you know, for a couple of hours, a couple of days, a couple of weeks, a month or two, maybe a year or two? Probably.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
But the idea that there is some massive government program that has been ongoing for 80 years where no one has accidentally emailed a budget briefing to their roommate about the UFO program, I just don't really believe. And my challenge with
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
really any government conspiracy is that they presuppose a level of competence, foresight, planning and strategy that is just not on display in the day to day work that the government does.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
little of all of the above, that you see the government really studying the skies on a daily basis. But what they're searching for are adversary technology, Russian satellites, Chinese spacecraft, you know, Iranian drones. You know, the government will react to some of these sightings if they come in in certain channels or appear to threaten national security.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
You know, you sort of saw that last year, that flap over the Chinese spy balloon, which sort of started out as a UFO sighting. But I think the core of the challenge is that, you know, whatever that percentage is, 1%, 2%, 5%, of sightings, the government just really is just as baffled as the rest of us.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
today on something you should know why you're throwing out food you don't really need to then a serious discussion on ufos our fascination with them began in 1947. none of this starts with the idea that these are aliens invading it starts with this fear that these are soviet spacecraft popular culture hollywood begins to pick up this idea of these flying saucers as aliens as martians
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
So I have to imagine that this is a question, you know, sort of this idea, are we alone, is one of the two or three most fundamental questions of human existence. You know, it's right up there with, you know, the questions of what happens after death and is there a God? You know, three questions altogether, by the way, that I think
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
may not be totally unrelated as we come to figure out as best we can the answers to any of them.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
It all begins in June 1947. There's an Idaho businessman named Kenneth Arnold who is flying in his private plane in the Pacific Northwest near the Cascades, and he sees a series of
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
fast moving bright objects in the sky that he likens to flying saucers and he lands tells some buddies about it he gets picked up by the media and very quickly kicks off this summer of the flying saucer um and you know week by week summer of 47 There are now flying saucer sightings all over the United States. They're ultimately across that somewhere.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
There are sightings in 34 states up and down North America, even up into Canada. And it hits at this very specific moment in our national anxiety. That summer of 47, the government is worried about these flying saucers, not because anyone thinks that they're aliens, but because they are afraid that these are secret Soviet spacecraft.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
being built by kidnapped Nazi rocket scientists and that these flying saucer sightings might herald a new technology that could invade the United States in this early stage of the Cold War after the end of World War II.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
Well, the summer of 47 is just this moment of huge upheaval for the US national security apparatus. That summer, literally within a couple of weeks of Kenneth Arnold sightings, even as these flying saucers dominate newspaper headlines across the United States, the US Congress passes what we now call the National Security Act of 1947. And it creates this modern national security apparatus.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
It creates the Unified Department of Defense. It creates the position of the Secretary of Defense, it creates the National Security Council, it creates the CIA, creates the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and it creates the Air Force as a standalone service branch. The Air Force up until then, of course, had been part of the Army.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
So in that summer, sort of the Air Force's first crisis is to try to identify what these flying saucers are. And the Air Force simultaneously tries to poo-poo that they appear to be anything threatening. But also, there's some fascinating paperwork from that era that shows that even behind closed doors, that the Air Force didn't have any idea what any of this stuff actually was up in the sky.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
And so you have the Air Force sort of racing to try to figure this out. They enlist J. Edgar Hoover's FBI for some help, then get into a classic bureaucratic tiff with the FBI. And the FBI basically says, we're getting out of the flying saucer business and leaves it all to the Air Force.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
And the Air Force, through that fall of 47 and the beginning of 48, really struggles to figure out what any of this stuff actually is.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
It's both. As I said, none of this starts with the idea that these are aliens invading. It starts with this fear that these are Soviet spacecraft. And What you see happen in the late 40s and early 50s is that popular culture, Hollywood, begins to pick up this idea of these flying saucers and imagines them anew as aliens, as invading extraterrestrials, as Martians, and that
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
what you see created in the late 40s and the early 50s is this flywheel, really, that becomes the way that our society thinks of these issues in the subsequent decades, where you have sort of popular culture fueling public sightings that then fuels national security concerns and anxieties
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
that then fuels more popular culture interest, that then fuels more public sightings and sort of on and on and on. And of course, part of the challenge of that is this idea that UFOs are real. All a UFO actually is, of course, is an unidentified flying object. And there are obviously unidentified flying objects. It's just in the public mind.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
sort of UFO becomes this shorthand for alien spacecraft.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
It is. And it's one that the government and the national security apparatus and the intelligence community and the air force all really struggle with in the years ahead, because on the one hand, the government wants to reassure the public that these UFOs, whatever they are, uh, don't pose a threat to national security, but at the same time, um,
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
you know it's pretty clear that the government does not know what many of these ufos actually are and you know time and time again uh you see the government sort of trying to pull together study groups or commissions or committees
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
to look at this phenomenon and try to put public concerns and official concern to rest, but doing so without really being able to solve what the underlying mystery actually is.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
One of the puzzles to me in looking at this is our government appears to be just as baffled as the ordinary public and far less interested in figuring out the answer to any of this mystery than I think it should be. To me, as a taxpayer, as a citizen, as a journalist, I want the government to be more interested in the subject of UFOs than it appears to be.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
And that there's a fairly significant number of respectable, credible witnesses to UAP UFO phenomenon that have come forward that I want the government to try to do better to answer. There has been a lot of attention since 2017 to this series of sightings by Navy pilots, Navy aviators, who have come forward to describe encounters with
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
phenomenon in the sky that they believe represent technologies that are more advanced than anything that the US government has. Some of this has been backed up by instrument data, by infrared videos and things like that. And the thing that's just really striking to me is the government isn't more interested in figuring out what that mystery is.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
And I hope that this new conversation that we're having about UFOs in the modern era helps spur more serious investigation of some of these credible sightings.
Something You Should Know
A Serious Look at UFOs & The Power of Grace in Today’s World
I think both are true. The government certainly doesn't share information everything that it does understand about UFOs and UAP sightings and that there are some layers of a public cover up because UFO sightings intersect with two of the most sensitive areas of sort of day to day government secret keeping.