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Short filmTranscript
00:00Throughout time, governments and the people who work for them have done strange and even
00:07terrible things in the name of national interest.
00:10Tonight, we look up.
00:13Imagine an intelligence agency stealing a fighter jet in broad daylight.
00:18He risks being blown out of the sky at any instant.
00:23And can we ever know with certainty what happens at Area 51?
00:28This is actually responsible for more than half of all reported UFO sightings in the
00:321950s.
00:34This is pure evidence that the government is hiding something big.
00:39It's time to bring these secrets of the skies back down to earth.
00:54It's fall 1954.
00:57In Burbank, California, aerospace manufacturer Lockheed is designing a top secret aircraft
01:04whose very existence will ignite one of history's greatest conspiracy theories.
01:19This plane is cutting edge technology, but it's kind of weird.
01:24It uses advanced materials like titanium that's strong and lightweight, but it also
01:29has these strange features like it's gangly and the landing gear is lined up like bicycle
01:34wheels.
01:36This is a curious looking bird.
01:38This plane has 130 foot long wings that droop at their length to the point that they actually
01:44will hit the ground when the plane is grounded.
01:47Most unusually, though, for a plane produced by a fighter jet company, this aircraft isn't
01:51going to carry a single weapon.
01:54The reason for this plane's extreme design is its extreme mission.
01:59It's being made for the US government to fly at record breaking altitudes on top secret
02:04reconnaissance missions over Soviet territory.
02:09In the 1950s, the Americans are worried about the technology that the Soviets have.
02:15The rumor at the time is that the Soviets had developed a bomber capable of flying from
02:20Moscow to the United States.
02:23So the CIA comes up with this ingenious plan to find out if it was true.
02:29We don't have much of a spy network operating in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
02:35The Soviets are protected behind an iron curtain.
02:38If you can't go through the iron curtain or sneak behind it, you might have to fly over
02:44it.
02:47To avoid detection, the CIA decides to build a state-of-the-art spy plane.
02:53Any aircraft that are flying over Soviet territory might be susceptible to air defense, including
02:58sophisticated missiles, and they might be accused of violating international law.
03:05The solution is to create an aircraft that flies twice as high as the Himalayan peaks.
03:1270,000 feet and above.
03:16No plane has flown so high for so long.
03:19To achieve it means developing brand new technology.
03:25So the government tasked Lockheed to build this spy plane, and their solution is essentially
03:31to make a giant glider and to stick a jet engine on it.
03:36Flying at the altitude that it is presents all sorts of new challenges.
03:38For instance, traditional jet fuel just won't work.
03:41They need to invent an entirely new type of kerosene fuel that doesn't boil off at
03:47low pressure.
03:49Lockheed's engineers call its new creation the Angel, as it flies so close to heaven.
03:55The government designates it Utility Aircraft 2, or the U-2.
04:00But building this incredible plane is only half the battle.
04:08When the U-2 is complete, the government needs to figure out how to test it, and most
04:12importantly, where to test it.
04:16Building a plane in secret, that's doable, because it's done inside of a hangar.
04:21But testing a plane in secret, that's a lot more difficult.
04:27For decades, the location of the U-2's testing site remains one of the government's most
04:32closely guarded secrets.
04:35But conducting so many flights of this classified plane has a strange side effect.
04:41When they start testing the U-2, UFO sightings go up tremendously.
04:46The public sees it, they have no idea what they're looking at.
04:49Air traffic controllers and professional pilots, they don't know either.
04:54They see the shimmering in the sky, they don't know what it is.
04:56It's really high up there, therefore they think it's a UFO.
05:01Rather than confess that they're testing a top-secret new plane, which might alert
05:05the Soviets to their plan, the CIA launch a cover-up.
05:08They claim the sightings are due to natural phenomena, so understandably, the conspiracy
05:13theories go nuts.
05:16There are some people who argue that the U-2, in its early stages of development, is actually
05:22responsible for more than half of all reported UFO sightings in the 1950s.
05:27In 2013, the U.S. admits for the first time what many have long suspected.
05:32The name of U-2's secret test base is Area 51.
05:43One of the reasons that Area 51 is so important and so secret is that it's near the Nevada
05:48Proving Grounds, and no one in their right mind is going to want to go into an area where
05:53they're testing nuclear bombs.
05:56They specifically purchased the land for testing the U-2.
06:00Were it not for the U-2, there would be no Area 51, and we would have lost our most iconic
06:06UFO conspiracy location.
06:10While Area 51 becomes the most notorious UFO site in the world, the U-2 plane becomes one
06:17of America's most vital intelligence tools.
06:21In 1956, the first operational flight, July 4th, through May 1st of 1960, the U-2 program
06:28dispelled the missile gap and the bomber gap.
06:31There was none.
06:32We were still ahead of the Soviets, even though they were saying they were ahead of us.
06:38Over the next four years, 30 flights photograph almost 15% of the USSR.
06:44This provides 90% of the CIA's hard intelligence on its fiercest rival.
06:49The CIA thought it had a shelf life of two to four years.
06:53Well, other than the B-52, the U-2 spy plane is the longest flying airplane in the U.S.
07:00Air Force's arsenal, and it's still flying today.
07:05The U-2 isn't the only secret aviation project to fly into the record books.
07:10A decade later, the world's first supersonic plane prepares for its maiden flight.
07:15But this isn't the Concorde in London or Paris.
07:19This is in Moscow, and this aircraft is named Tu-144.
07:30The maiden flight of the Tu-144 is a massive engineering and propaganda win for the Soviet
07:36Union over the West.
07:38Up until that point, the only planes to fly over the speed of sound are military jets.
07:45No one has ever built a large-scale plane like this that can carry passengers because
07:51the immense technical challenge of it all.
07:56The Soviet designers are on cloud nine.
08:00The creators of the Concorde are in shock.
08:07In 1962, Britain and France entered into an agreement to share resources to develop and
08:12build a supersonic passenger jet called the Concorde and get it in the sky before the
08:16Soviet Union.
08:18The fact that the Tu-144 beats Concorde into the sky is a surprise.
08:24Even more shocking, it has the same design.
08:28Both planes have got the same sleek nose, the same delta wing shape, and the same afterburning
08:35turbojet engine.
08:37The Tu-144 is so similar that the Western press, they called it the Concordeski.
08:44The Soviets insist their craft is 100% Russian ingenuity, but Western engineers point to
08:51a series of suspicious events during Concorde's development.
08:57Right from the onset, the Soviets showed an incredible amount of interest in the Concorde
09:01program.
09:02Could there also be a mole within the organization?
09:05Someone within the trust of the Concorde program giving secrets away?
09:11Rumors of industrial espionage remain just that.
09:15Then in 1992, a Russian bureaucrat walks into the British embassy in Latvia with a bold
09:22offer.
09:23A disillusioned KGB worker named Vasily Mitrokhin said that he had scores of documents that
09:30he would willingly hand over in exchange for asylum.
09:35When MI6 agents get to Mitrokhin's house in Russia, they find a treasure trove of material,
09:40more than 25,000 pages.
09:42In total, it's about six trunks worth of material.
09:46During his time at KGB, Vasily was actually hand copying notes that he had access to as
09:51an archivist.
09:52This discovery would turn out to be the largest single source of information ever collected
09:57during the entire history of the Cold War.
10:00Buried in this vast intelligence stash is evidence of a spy codenamed Ace.
10:07Agent Ace seems to be a British engineer who was leaking information to the Soviets.
10:12This is how the TU-144 got in the sky before the Concorde.
10:16Agent Ace was the mole that the UK and the Concorde program suspected from the very beginning.
10:22For 20 years, the identity of Agent Ace remains a mystery.
10:27But in 2023, a British professor pieces together clues from Mitrokhin's archive to crack the
10:33case.
10:36Agent Ace's real name is Ivor Gregory James, and he is a Hong Kong-born engineer who went
10:40to work in Britain in the 1970s.
10:43It was discovered that Agent Ace had actually supplied the Soviets with more than 90,000
10:48pages of documentation related to new aircraft designs over more than a decade.
10:54And inside that supply of information were details related to the Concorde program.
11:00The theft of the Concorde's secrets is one of the largest industrial espionage operations
11:06of all time.
11:07But for all its initial success, there's a good reason you've probably never heard of
11:12the TU-144.
11:19At this prestigious Paris airshow, both the Concorde and the revised 214 are the star
11:26attractions.
11:27The TU-144 flies at the Paris airshow.
11:32And initially it looks great.
11:33It takes off fine.
11:34It flies for a few minutes, but then it stalls and crashes.
11:42It all breaks apart in flames.
11:53It is a massive embarrassment for the Soviet Union, and the plane's reputation never recovers.
11:58The TU-144 only ever completes 100 domestic flights.
12:04The rumors are the sonic jet ends its days shipping mailbags in Siberia.
12:12It's 1967, and a mysterious light in the sky over a key American missile base is about
12:22to set off alarms and ignite a long-running mystery.
12:35On March 24th, Robert Salas arrives for his shift overseeing 10 nuclear missiles at Malmstrom
12:42Air Force Base.
12:45As a young missileer, his job is to serve as the first line of defense as part of America's
12:51nuclear arsenal.
12:54In the late 1960s, the Minuteman ICBMs are really the centerpiece of the U.S. nuclear
13:00arsenal.
13:02Malmstrom is one of multiple sites that houses 1,000 nuclear missiles.
13:07Each one is in its own silo, and 150 of them are at Malmstrom.
13:13Those missiles are kept on alert and ready to fire on very short notice in the event
13:18of a nuclear exchange.
13:22Salas' work is critical to national security, but it also gets a little repetitive.
13:28I actually had a chance to serve at Malmstrom Air Force Base as a nuclear missile officer.
13:33And when you're there, you don't feel very important.
13:35You're just one of about 1,000 other people who are all there taking turns going underground
13:40and monitoring these missiles.
13:42But in reality, you really are carrying the weight of nuclear deterrence on your shoulders.
13:47This particular shift at Malmstrom is anything but routine.
13:52Salas is in his command headquarters, and suddenly he gets a call from the gate personnel
13:59at the entrance to Malmstrom.
14:01And the guard reports that there's some sort of strange light that's flying, moving in
14:05a strange pattern over the actual base itself.
14:07This is an area that's restricted from aircraft and restricted from commercial travel.
14:11So what is this light that's flying overhead?
14:13They don't seem to be engaged in threatening action, but it is a little disconcerting to
14:17see unexplained lights above the base.
14:20A few minutes later, Salas gets a second call.
14:23This time, the guard calls Salas in a cold panic.
14:26There's a glowing orb of red light that's hovering right above the gate to Malmstrom.
14:34Needless to say, nobody knew what this was, and Salas, who's 100 feet underground, has
14:37no idea how to make any sense of this at all.
14:40Salas orders the gate personnel to not allow anything to pass the gate.
14:45And then, within just a few seconds, all 10 missiles under Salas's command go dark.
14:52These Minuteman missiles are the most sophisticated, technologically advanced nuclear weapons
14:57in the American arsenal.
14:59The idea that 10 of them could suddenly all malfunction at the same time is unthinkable
15:04to Salas.
15:0510 missiles actually covers about 15 square miles of location, all controlled by a single
15:11launch control capsule where Salas was actually sitting.
15:16With no explanation, the red orbiting light disappears.
15:21The missiles reactivate, and it's almost as if nothing happened at all.
15:30Was this a Soviet spy craft sent to disrupt America's defenses?
15:34Or some unidentified aerial phenomenon?
15:38To find out, the Air Force sends a team from an ongoing secret investigation known as Project
15:44Blue Book.
15:48Project Blue Book was a US Air Force program that started in the early 1950s and ran for
15:52about 15 years to track and classify all unidentified aerial phenomena and see if any of them were
15:58a threat to national security.
16:01Investigators from Project Blue Book look into this incident at Malmstrom, and they don't
16:06think it's an alien spacecraft, but they also can't find any other logical explanation.
16:11The official word is that the government doesn't know why those missiles shut down.
16:16Malmstrom is instantly classified like many other Project Blue Book sightings.
16:22Salas signs a nondisclosure agreement, and he's sworn to secrecy about the events that
16:26occurred.
16:28He's convinced that if he tells anybody what he saw, he's going to face prosecution and
16:33probably be put in prison.
16:36The Blue Book investigation ends three years later, and its findings are made public.
16:41The government concludes that UFOs pose no danger to America's defenses.
16:47There's nothing to hide.
16:48There's nothing to hide at all.
16:49And no credible evidence exists for extraterrestrial technology or vehicles.
16:57Problem is, Robert Salas knows what he saw.
17:03Three years later, in 2010, he decides to tell his story to the world.
17:07In 1967, I was a first lieutenant stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana.
17:12When Robert Salas came out with his story, UFO theorists and the community really seized
17:17on it and said, this is pure evidence that the government is hiding something that happened
17:22out there.
17:23The UFO community starts to believe that Project Blue Book is designed to just debunk UFO conspiracies
17:29instead of actually investigating them.
17:32I think the U.S. government does know more about some of these UFO sightings than it
17:37lets on.
17:39But that doesn't necessarily mean that they're alien spacecraft.
17:42A mystery is in some ways just as challenging as an actual secret.
17:47Still today, the U.S. government is just as likely to classify its ignorance as it is
17:54its knowledge.
17:59Just 15 years into the Cold War, controlling the skies is vital to defending the land.
18:06One idea of an ambitious U.S. general involves a fleet of covert nuclear bombers that circle
18:13the enemy nonstop.
18:15But on a winter's night in 1961, this planet was up in flames over North Carolina.
18:30It's just before midnight on an unusually warm evening in the small town of Goldsboro.
18:35Some of the residents are still awake when suddenly their rooms start to glow with a
18:40strange red light.
18:42They see this giant B-52 bomber with just a single wing on fire passing over their homes.
18:51I can only imagine being one of the residents of Goldsboro.
18:54You hear this loud crash, this boom outside.
18:56It's a B-52 blowing up right over your head, more or less.
19:01It had to be a horrific moment.
19:05The plane explodes, scattering debris across two square miles of cotton farmland, igniting
19:11fields of crops.
19:14Military helicopters start to descend upon the scene quite instantaneously just about.
19:19Next thing they know, a voice on a loudspeaker is yelling at everyone to evacuate.
19:28The residents of Goldsboro are told this crash plane has scattered deadly cargo.
19:35Two 3.8 megaton thermonuclear bombs, each 200 times more destructive than the one that
19:42leveled Hiroshima.
19:44What the world doesn't yet know is that this crash bomber is part of a classified national
19:50security initiative named the Airborne Alert Program.
19:59The Airborne Alert Program is the brainchild of General Power.
20:02And the idea is that the U.S. Air Force is going to be ready to deliver a nuke to the
20:07USSR at any time.
20:12General Power comes up with this idea to fly B-52s 24 hours a day because we want to make
20:18sure that we are able to strike Russia at any time should they launch these missiles
20:23at us.
20:24For a brief shining moment, the Soviet Union pulled ahead of the United States in the Cold
20:29War nuclear standoff.
20:31They had that first strike advantage.
20:35So it seems absolutely batty and insane, but undoubtedly many in the 1960s were thinking
20:42this is exactly how we ensure that the United States survives should the Cold War give way
20:47to a hot war.
20:50No one has ever tried to keep a fleet of nuclear bombers in the air 24-7.
20:55So General Power and his planners developed these routes that will go along the Soviet
21:02border and come back out.
21:04These were grueling missions that are testing the limits of human endurance.
21:09The reality was that they're circling in a B-52 over the Arctic Circle waiting to start
21:13a nuclear war.
21:18They have to be refueled while in flight, and that's very dangerous because these planes
21:22are carrying a nuclear payload.
21:25You have an American strategic bomber thundering through the sky at 40,000 feet with a bomb
21:32bay full of thermonuclear weapons trying to receive kerosene from another airplane while
21:37they both bounce around in turbulent air.
21:40What could possibly go wrong?
21:44Just wrap your head around it.
21:45Think about that.
21:46There are at least two nukes on every plane.
21:51General Power and our military think it's worth the risk.
21:56After the Airborne Alert Program has been in secret operation for years, General Power
22:01decides to make it public on January 18, 1961.
22:06He wants to use its existence as a deterrent to the Soviets.
22:11But exactly one week after his announcement, one of his bombers springs a fuel leak, and
22:17the residents of Goldsboro end up running for their lives from two unexploded nuclear
22:22bombs.
22:23Shortly before this mission was undertaken, Boeing realized that there was a mechanical
22:28issue with the B-52s, and essentially they were doing a callback.
22:32But this B-52 had yet to make the list.
22:36That's when trouble strikes.
22:39The military evacuate locals, cordons off the area, and brings in a crack team of bomb
22:44disposal experts.
22:47One of the bombs is very easy to find, safely hanging from a tree, ready for the government
22:52to take it away.
22:54Now the second bomb, that one's a bit harder to get to.
22:58The second bomb experiences a failure to deploy of its retarding parachute, and the result
23:03is it slams into the surface of the earth, going 700 miles an hour, and digs itself into
23:09a depth of 180 feet.
23:12The authorities dig for seven days and nights, under floodlights, in rain and snow, to try
23:18and find the bomb.
23:19One wrong move and it could all go boom.
23:26So finally they decide that further digging represented a greater danger than just isolating
23:32the device and leaving it alone.
23:35They realize the better thing to do is to seal it up and call it a day.
23:41They leave the bomb in place, and they just buy the field from the farmer for a thousand
23:46bucks.
23:47The deed to this land forever states that the owner is not to go more than five feet
23:51into the ground for any purpose.
23:55Forty-five years later, the Air Force releases a never-before-seen document detailing the
24:00crash, compiled by a senior nuclear weapons safety officer.
24:05It reveals a shocking secret and the paper-thin margin between near-miss and nuclear apocalypse.
24:13This document that comes out decades later reveals that the first bomb, of its multiple
24:19redundant security devices, all but one are compromised.
24:26As if by miracle, it stopped at the final stage, where one tiny electrical sequence
24:32away from a thermonuclear explosion in North Carolina.
24:38As for the second nuke, the one that is buried deep in the soil of Goldsboro, it's been half
24:43a century, it hasn't blown up, so I guess we're doing okay and fingers crossed.
24:53In the 60s, the Soviets released one of the most formidable, most agile, and most lethal
24:58fighter jets ever made.
25:01But this must-have weapon to rule the skies is not for sale to Russia's enemies.
25:06So for the young nation of Israel, stealing its secrets might tip the balance of a war.
25:16In the 1960s, the Soviet Union created a brand new, cutting-edge fighter jet that had the
25:21entire Western world on edge.
25:26And it's a game-changer.
25:27It's so fast and agile that it becomes the biggest-selling fighter in history.
25:33It is also designed to be simple to make and cheap to produce, which means air forces could
25:38have lots of them.
25:40It's called the MiG-21.
25:44And for one fledgling nation, Israel, this nimble new fighter plane spells disaster.
25:51Israel is surrounded on all sides by hostile neighbors.
25:56Like countries that were buying MiG-21s from the Soviet Union.
26:01What the Israelis want to do is study the MiG-21.
26:06They want to know its potential weaknesses and ensure their own ability to maintain air
26:12superiority.
26:14Israel's primary concern was this new fighter jet could tip the scales of power for any
26:18future war that might break out in the region.
26:22If the Israelis lose air superiority, they'll lose the war.
26:26If they lose the war, they'll cease to exist.
26:31The commander of the Israeli Air Force tells the head of Israeli intelligence agencies,
26:37Meir Amit, if you can bring me a MiG, you'll have done me a good day's service.
26:44Meir Amit accepts the challenge and hatches a covert plan to steal a MiG-21 from right
26:52under the noses of Israel's neighbors.
26:55The first step, finding a pilot.
26:59The Israelis started to make approaches to pilots in a lot of different countries.
27:05The Israelis identify an Iraqi pilot named Munir Redfa.
27:08And they identify this pilot because in an Islamic country, he himself is Christian.
27:15They orchestrate a meeting in a hotel room.
27:20It's such an important mission.
27:21The agency's top spy chief even watches the entire meeting covertly through a peephole.
27:29Redfa is a deputy commander of an Iraqi MiG squadron, and he's not happy because he's
27:34just been passed over for promotion.
27:38He believes it's because he's a Catholic, which is pretty unusual in Iraq.
27:43He's also very unhappy about being ordered to join a bombing campaign against Kurdish
27:48tribesmen on the Iraqis' northern border.
27:53In all the cases ever worked, in all the spies I've ever recruited, it was a deep, real relationship
27:58between us and them.
27:59Just because you have differing political idealizations doesn't mean that you aren't
28:04human beings together.
28:06All you have to do is think in terms of what can I do to inspire them to feel safe with
28:09me and solve that action they need solved in their lives.
28:14It's a very delicate process to create a defector, to turn a patriot into a traitor.
28:19And every defector comes with their own interests, their own needs.
28:24Sometimes it's education, sometimes it's finances.
28:27But in every case, all a defector is looking for is to have some sort of control over their
28:31future.
28:33Redfa is offered $1 million, Israeli citizenship, and safe passage for his entire family if
28:40he agrees to fly his MiG-21 to Israel.
28:44Redfa goes for the deal.
28:46But there's one significant setback.
28:49Fuel.
28:52As a Christian, Redfa is subject to a lot of scrutiny.
28:57His movements are tightly controlled, so he's rarely allowed to fly with a full fuel tank.
29:03This keeps him close to home.
29:07Even if Redfa has a full tank, a journey to Israel takes him through hostile Jordanian
29:11airspace.
29:13He risks being blown out of the sky at any instant.
29:17It's two full years before Redfa gets his chance.
29:23Eventually it happens.
29:25He's told that he'll be part of a formation flight with a full tank of gas.
29:33Mid-flight, he breaks away from his formation and heads for Israel, powering over Jordanian
29:39airspace.
29:42Jordanians scramble two jets to give chase, but they can't match the MiG-21's speed.
29:49Redfa hits his afterburners, sometimes flying as low as 700 feet to avoid missiles locking
29:54onto his plane.
29:56After a 65-minute flight of sheer terror, he reaches a base deep in the desert on his
30:04last drop of fuel.
30:15Thirty years later, details of this daring state-sanctioned heist are revealed to a journalist
30:20writing a history of the Mossad.
30:25And it's now seen as a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
30:30The ending of this story is, the Israelis discover the MiG's weaknesses, and in the
30:35event that they have to fight it, they're better prepared.
30:40This operation underscores just how good Mossad is at understanding their adversaries and
30:47exploiting opportunities.
30:49An intelligence organization that belonged to a small country that was less than 20 years
30:53old was now capable of carrying out one of the biggest heists in history.
31:01The arms race to control the skies has had governments everywhere investing in groundbreaking
31:05secret projects.
31:08So maybe it was only a matter of time before the most enduring design in science fiction
31:12gets a shot, the flying saucer.
31:161959's Avrocar.
31:24The Avrocar.
31:25It's effectively what you would get if you mixed a flying saucer with a hovercraft.
31:30Project Avrocar is the brainchild of a British engineer named John Carver Meadows-Frost.
31:36He's a big dreamer, and he's already got a project in mind to begin to think about the
31:42next generation of aerospace design.
31:46Frost begins to study this interesting aerodynamic phenomenon known as the Coanda Effect.
31:53He shows that a jet engine's exhaust can be routed around to underneath the object, where
31:59it forms an air cloud that allows it to lift off the ground.
32:03So basically he's designed a literal flying saucer.
32:09His lab work convinces the Canadian government that this is actually a possibility, and they're
32:14willing to support his work for about two years.
32:18And for Frost, this becomes his personal passion, to take this flying saucer from a blueprint
32:25to reality.
32:26But after a year, the project's astronomical price tag forces the Canadians to pull the
32:32plug.
32:34Frost needs a new backer to realize his dream.
32:38Luckily for him, a rich neighbor to the south is in the market for a flying saucer.
32:44In the early 1950s, the U.S. military is looking for planes that can vertically take off and
32:49land.
32:50They're known as VTOL planes.
32:53Governments are beginning to think about what fighting World War III would actually look
32:57like.
32:58So they are focused on developing planes that can take off vertically, that don't need long
33:03runways.
33:05Also, the military has been rocked by a series of newspaper articles claiming that the Soviets
33:10are developing similar tech.
33:12Apparently, Nazi engineers had secretly developed a working flying saucer during the Second
33:17World War, and they were now working for the USSR.
33:20So if there's even the smallest chance that the Soviets are developing a game-changing
33:25VTOL aircraft, the U.S. thinks they need one too.
33:31The story goes that when Frost gets wind of the U.S.'s interest in saucers, he spots
33:35a visiting delegation from the Air Force and intercepts them with his Avrocar prototype.
33:42Frost apparently shows them work so secret, even his bosses don't know about it.
33:48And shortly after, the U.S. Air Force agrees to fund a million-dollar feasibility study
33:54into his flying saucer research.
33:56For Frost, this is magic.
33:59In an instant, his project has gone from a side hustle of the Canadian government to
34:04accessing the largest, most powerful military and budget in the world.
34:11We'll never know what Frost said to get funding, but a clue lies in a remarkable document made
34:16public in 2012.
34:18In it, Frost makes some extraordinary claims about his flying saucer, now codenamed Project
34:241794.
34:27Frost claims that his saucer will far exceed any jet fighter of the age.
34:31That it's going to be able to go up to four times the speed of sound, fly to the edge
34:38of space, travel between continents.
34:41These are bold claims.
34:44If you're an Air Force general, this is a machine you definitely want in your hangar.
34:49Progress is anything but supersonic.
34:52After eight years, in 1959, Frost's team finally has a prototype ready for its first
34:58ever test.
34:59And by this point, the U.S. Army also wants in.
35:05The U.S. Army has come out of the Korean War interested in having basically a flying jeep.
35:11They see this flying saucer as perhaps their answer to moving equipment, moving troops,
35:17and even fighting.
35:18So Frost has both the Army and the Air Force, two bosses, both pushing him for results.
35:25Everything hangs on the Avrocar's first test.
35:28The million-dollar question is, will this thing fly?
35:33In the Avrocar's first test flight, it doesn't go completely as planned.
35:42Frost's design has some fundamental problems.
35:46It doesn't have the control surfaces that an airplane has to ensure stability.
35:51And it has no thrust, like the thing can't go fast.
35:56It's riding on a cushion of air, but as it goes up, the air dissipates.
36:00So it loses its lift.
36:04It's just bad all the way around.
36:10The promising supersonic flight at the edge of space, Frost delivers a wobbly 30 miles
36:16an hour, three foot from the ground.
36:18Unsurprisingly, the military pulls the plug.
36:23The project has canceled a complete disappointment to everyone, including, presumably, John Frost.
36:32Before it's grounded, the Avrocar racks up over $100 million in costs in today's money.
36:39A reminder that when it comes to the national interest, no idea is too crazy to try.
36:46The prototypes are quickly dumped into storage as a very obvious embarrassment.
36:55In the 1980s, decades of press censorship are crumbling in the USSR.
37:00And with this new freedom, Soviet newspapers focused their attention on a topic that really
37:05sells UFOs.
37:11During the Cold War, the Soviet government is very much against any stories that are
37:14at all subversive or unorthodox.
37:17And a UFO sighting is both.
37:19Discussing UFOs would be viewed as admitting that there was some sort of power out there
37:23stronger than the Soviet Union itself.
37:25And to do so would be not only risking your career, but also risking your freedom and
37:29ending up in jail.
37:31The media can't really report on this story at all until the government kind of lets up
37:35on these rules.
37:36In 1985, things start to change.
37:40In this era of glasnost and perestroika, you have the opening up of all of these incredible
37:46hidden stories that had been taking place inside the Soviet Union.
37:49It was like the floodgates were opened.
37:51All of a sudden, Russia just kind of went crazy for UFOs.
37:56Many scientists inside the Soviet Union question the truth of these stories.
38:01Soviet authorities try to explain away the sightings, saying that it's a natural phenomena
38:05like ball lightning that can give the impression of a large glowing orb that people say they
38:10saw.
38:11Ball lightning presents itself in a circular form, very similar to what people report as
38:15UFOs where they talk about flying saucers or balls of light in the sky.
38:19Others say that this is just mass hysteria, that people got one story and they just fed
38:23into each other and got really excited.
38:26It's easy to chalk this up as hysteria, sightings by an uninformed public.
38:32But then in 1991, a whistleblower from deep within Soviet military circles steps forward.
38:38A pilot with a resume so decorated, her claims demand to be taken seriously.
38:45Marina Popovich is one of the USSR's most decorated and well-respected aviators.
38:50She's the first Soviet woman to break the sound barrier.
38:53She holds 100 aviation records, and she's known in the Soviet Union as Madam Meg.
39:00The changes gave Marina the opportunity to talk about her experiences and what she had
39:04seen as a pilot in the USSR without the worry of repercussions.
39:08In press conferences and media interviews and her own writings, she begins to make some
39:13pretty fantastical claims.
39:16Popovich says she has multiple experiences with UFOs.
39:19In 1982, she says she was in Siberia when she saw what looked like a giant glowing orb.
39:27At a press conference in the Russian consulate in San Francisco, she claims that the Russians
39:31have been able to retrieve five different downed UFOs.
39:34And she also claims that there's evidence of some sort of hybrid breeding program breeding
39:38humans with aliens.
39:40And then in this very dramatic moment, she produces a photo that she says is a 15 mile
39:47wide alien spacecraft.
39:52She says it is a UFO that has either captured or destroyed Soviet space probes.
39:58Scientists explain it away as the picture being very consistent with the launch of a
40:02spacecraft.
40:03But because Popovich is so respected, the UFO community starts to back her, saying that
40:07she's the only one telling the truth and the government is covering up the real explanation.
40:12Her claims obviously create an incredible amount of interest.
40:16I mean, you can imagine the press would go crazy over stories like this, especially at
40:20that time in history.
40:22Marina Popovich isn't the first government whistleblower to cry cover up, but she's one
40:27of the most influential.
40:30Popovich becomes probably the best example that we have on the Russian side of a phenomenon
40:34that's actually pretty common.
40:37These so-called UFO whistleblowers, government workers, pilots, intelligence officers who
40:44come forward and say that they have privileged knowledge or have seen hidden evidence.
40:50The whistleblowers will keep coming forward with stories.
40:53But until someone has really verified evidence that can be shown publicly, it's just hearsay.
41:00But still today, we don't know the truth of what a lot of these mystery sightings end
41:04up being.
41:06Our world and our universe is still weirder today than we can imagine.
41:15For every covert mission we discover taking place in the skies, many more remain hidden
41:22until someone brings these secrets to light.
41:26I'm David Duchovny.
41:27Thanks for watching Secrets Declassified.