February 17, 2026 • 43 mins
Captain Ron is joined by Donald Schmitt, The Lead Investigator for the world-famous International UFO Museum and Research Center. Don goes into depth about his decades-long investigation of the Roswell, New Mexico, UFO crash.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
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(00:42):
research and discover the subject matter for yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Hey everyone, it's Captain Ron and each week on Beyond Contact,
we'll explore the latest news in ufology, discuss some of
the classic cases, and bring you the latest information from
the newest.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Cases as we talked with the top experts. Hi, and
welcome to Beyond Contact. I'm Captain Ron. Today we're speaking
with Don Schmidt. Don is one of the world's leading
investigators of the Roswell UFO incident and a seven time
best selling author whose work has shaped the modern understanding
of UFO crash retrievals and government secrecy. A former co
(01:29):
director of the J. Allen Heineck Center for UFO Studies,
working directly under doctor j Allen Heineck and conducting first
hand interviews with military personnel, civilians, and intelligence insiders connected
to Roswell. He is also a founder and lead investigator
for the International UFO Museum and Research Center and a
board advisor to its executive leadership. Hey Don, my friend,
(01:52):
how are you, buddy?
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Good to see again, Rod. It's a pleasure. Thank you
for having me.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Absolutely always great to talk to you, Sir. You've been very,
very important in my journey in this world, and I
appreciate that. Before we get an update on Roswell, I'd
like to talk to you a bit about jay On Heineck.
I know that doctor Heinek was famously the serious scientists
attached to Project Blue Book who went on to believe
that perhaps there was in fact more to some of
(02:19):
these stories and that we needed to follow the data
and the science on the subject, something that I certainly believe.
Can you tell us about his arc on those feelings?
Speaker 5 (02:29):
It was a journey because it was not only was
serendipitous the way he was selected to be the Silk
scientific consultant the project Bluebook. He just happened to be
down the road. Blue Book was headquartered at right pat
Air Force Bases, you know, in Dayton, Ohio. And Heinik
was head of the astronomy apartment at Ohio State down
in Columbus, just down the road. And so how perfect
(02:51):
because he was their chief debunker. He was the one
that they would always trot out in front of the
microphones to dispel you on, discredit every citing imaginable. It
was the planet Venus, it was swamp gas, it was
you know, something astronomical weather related, what have you. They
did all they could, as Heinek would say, they would
(03:14):
jump handsprings whenever they could explain away a case. But
as Heinech evolved and we saw more and more that
all these people can't be lying, they can't all be misidentifying,
you know, common you know, rational alternative explanations. When he
was dealing with PhDs, when he was dealing with Strategic
(03:36):
Air Command officers, when he was dealing with trained pilots,
and then as he would be going about his own
business flying, you know, between lectures, and then when he
became head of the astronomy department, at Northwestern in Evansteed, Illinois.
He would be talking to both commercial and military pilots
(03:58):
about some of the most profound, you know, experiences. And
then when he would go back down to write Pat
and wade through all the recent reports at blue Book,
they were never there. And he would he would question,
where's this report and where's this pilot report? And he
would always be just summarily dismissed that, well, you know,
(04:19):
we don't know what's talking about what report? And he
realized that he did not have access to the actual cases,
that they were essentially censoring them for their benefits. And
then he realized that my god, this was nothing but
a pr front that blue Book was justice, you know,
dismiss all this as just so much silly season. And
(04:43):
then the only reason he stayed attached, and he threatened
them to resign, to fire himself many times, that he
wanted to stay accessible to the data that if something
should break, there is something truly extraor what happened over
a highly populated area for example, that he wanted to
(05:05):
be connected, and that was the only reason East stayed
with blue Book.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Thank god he did. What do you think people most
misunderstood about his personality or his motivation.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
Well, when the famous Dexter and Arbor sightings happened up
in Michigan in nineteen sixty six, and you had all
those university student sightings as well as a high ranking
Air Force officer, there were police sidings, and that Heinech
was forever labeled with that very term swamp gas marsh gas.
(05:39):
To just set the record straight, that only applied to
one specific sighting of many at that time and involved
a farmer who happened to see a orb of light
rising up over a marsh and for a Heinech, it
was just a case of well, that could have been
swamp gas, that as this gas would accumulate through as
(06:03):
far as a days of heat and humidity, that it
can start to reflect light from the surrounding buildings and
what have you. And so he in no way wanted
that to apply to all those sightings at that time.
It was strictly that one. But the press took the
swamp gut and ran with it. And just like that,
(06:26):
it was then Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan who cried
foul and they pushed for congressional hearings, which they did
have some preliminary hearings in Washington as far as the
latter part of nineteen sixty six didn't go anywhere. But
nonetheless he forever had to live that down swamp gas
(06:47):
when it only suggested one specific sighting.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Forty to fifty years ago, and we still all hear
about that talk about swamp guys. It's unbelievable. How would
you say, doctor Heinek spoke about the UFO phenomenon private
compared to how he did it publicly.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
Privately he was constantly wrestling with, as an astronomer, the
distances from point A to point b. He would use
the example like even in a classroom at Northwestern, if
you would take the distance of the Earth to the Moon,
and it would be represented by not the width, but
the thickness of a single playing card within a dector
(07:25):
of cards. And he would constantly pose the question to
his students, Now, how many playing cards do you believe
it would take to equal the distance of the Earth
to our nearest star system Alpha Centurion, four point three
light years away. No one would ever get close, not
even on the astronomers. And Heinich had you know, mathematically
(07:48):
determined that it would take nineteen miles of playing cards
to equal that distance, and to him that was just
totally insurmountable, impossible.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Yeah, you can't it from here there. It is nineteen
miles of this come on that.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
He still had to accept. He had to concede that
we were dealing with physical craft, physical objects that were
interacting with our environment, leaving depressions in the ground, swirled
areas of grass, breaking, tree branches tracked down radar. We
were dealing with physical objects. And the very last time
round that I actually had dinner with doctor Hiding, and
(08:29):
we'll never forget his pounding his fist on the table
and going down it's smacking more and more of nuts
and boats. So that's coming from someone who started out
as a complete debunker and then debunking the idea that
they were traveling from plant to plant to finally accepting
we were dealing with an actual physical phenomenon.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
How do you think Heinek would reconcile the lack of
empirical evidence with repeated credible witness testimony.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
He had to deal with that personally for all the
interviews that were conducted through Bluebook, and then certainly thereafter
when he had established a center for UFO Studies in
Chicago in the fall of nineteen seventy three, and the
fact that so many of the eyewitness testimonies, if they
were especially independent, that they could readily be explained. In fact,
(09:24):
at the Center for UFO Studies, our record was about
ninety five percent, but it was that remaining five percent,
and very often of highly educated people. And as Heinich
also determined, the higher the strangeness of the incident, the
greater the believability that nothing else could apply, nothing else
could be suggested to explain away these reports. So that
(09:49):
just hardened him all the more that we were actually
dealing with a phenomenon that was beyond our comprehension. I
think the same thing could be said about this eye
idea that like will Smith Inde Penance state jumping in
the seat, you know, that cockpit of that alien craft,
and he's able to fly it like he's done it
one hundred times before. But if ed bridge, what if
(10:12):
we can't bridge the technology? I think the late screenwriter
Tracy tore May Tracy was a dear friend for thirty years,
and he gave me the best example of all that
just imagined he could take something as simple as a toaster,
and you could teleport it back in time to say,
maybe the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. They might be
able to take it apart put it back together again,
(10:33):
but if they can't plug it in, they can never
get it to operate. They can never get it to
actually work.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Isn't it true that Project blue Book also had like
five percent that it could not identify.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Even admittedly actually thirteen percent thirteen.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
There you go.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
When Bluebook was finally declassified by President Jimmy Carter in
nineteen seventy seven, much of it still remained under the
lock and key. There are a lot of gun camera
cases that we've never any of the actual footage, the
stop frames, nothing of that sort. So anytime anybody tells
you a little book's all been declassified, no it hasn't been. No,
(11:09):
it hasn't been. But there were over thirteen thousand cases
they investigated. Of the thirteen thousand, seven hundred and one
remained unexplained, So that comes out to eighty seven percent.
So our record is buried than in the Air Force.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Well, there you go, man, that's awesome. We've got to
take a quick break here. Don When we come back,
we want to ask you about the various governmental programs
and their investigations on the UFO topic, as well as
what your take is on what's actually happening. You're listening
to be on Contact on the iHeartRadio when Coast to
Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. We are back on Beyond Contact.
(11:52):
We're speaking with Don Schmidt. Don, what is the takeaway
for what j Allen Heinek teaches us about how we
should treat this phenomenon?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Well, certainly, foremost have a scientific methodology in that we
are dealing first of all, because we don't have that
physical evidence as you mentioned earlier, Rock, the point being
that unless we have something that we can actually take
into a lab to tear down, to systematically analyze and
see what makes a tick, so to speak, that we're
(12:20):
dealing with a human sociological problem. Why is this person
making this claim? What about them in their background promotes
the idea that they had gone out of their way
to seek notoriety, contact established as far as you know,
contact with a legitimate UFO investigation, and risk ridicule, risk
(12:42):
loss of job. As we both know, until just recent years,
it was a taboo topic that it was a career breaker,
that if you were an air traffic controller at O'Hare Airport,
you did not mention anything about maybe what looked out
of the ordinary some night when you gave venus permission
to land, so to speak, when we would actually be
(13:03):
in people's homes, Heinig would up look at their reading material.
They got a whole library of UFO books. Well, they've
been a bit conditioned, you know, they've been a bit,
a bit coached. But if they swear that, I've never
even given the subject. I thought prior to this incident,
and I was not all driving late, and I peered
through my windshield hoping I would see something. I was
(13:25):
contemplating my pending divorce, and all of a sudden, this
light shows up out of nowhere and it descends in
front of my car. And the next thing, I'm missing
two hours of you know, my travel time. That type
of thing. So you pre investigate as much as you
actually look into the background of the individual, and as
a result, then you start flashing out where the independent
(13:46):
were the other sightings at the same time, what was
reported to the press, what was reported to the local
law enforcement. That type of thing. That was what heineg,
you know, make it into an investigation, just don't accept
the storytelling. Just write down the notes. Investigate. I often
have told people have worked with us, you're an investigator, investigator,
(14:06):
go out there and actually dig out the details.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I was going to ask, what about you, What is
your takeaway from Don Schmidt? What does your feel about
how we should treat the phenomenon? Is it the same?
Speaker 5 (14:18):
I would say, because he was so much a mentor
and a teacher to mean and I do privately often
ask now, what would Alan say or how would he
look at this? But then I still have to apply
my own methods. And I think that's why even in
our Roswell investigation, the fact that we were total skeptics,
(14:39):
just as Heineger initially, was that we had to actually
do a full one hundred and eighty. It's one thing
when you have a preconceived theory and you set out
to prove it. But when you actually are looking for
the rationalization the logic in what people have described and
you can't apply that, it's something extraor And as a
(15:00):
result of no matter who you speak with, they're all
describing it in the same terms. They're all wrestling for answers,
and then they're relying on you with the hope that
maybe you, as the investigator, can help them. When you
then come away going I got to get back down
here sooner than later because I failed, because I have
not been able to you'll come up with a prosaic explanation,
(15:24):
no matter how hard I've tried. It was like the
famous Lanni Zamora, the Socora, New Mexico instead of April
nineteen sixty four, and Heinek would talk about he would
talk with us. How I tried my damnness to explain
that away. I tried to come up with every practical
explanation imaginable, and I couldn't. So what's left except what eyewitnesses,
(15:45):
what the eyewitness is describing. And that's what makes it
all the more intriguing. When you are left with a
visual of what that eyewitness has just described to you
and you recreate it in your mind, you try to
relive it, and you realized, by God, that's all that's left.
That's all that's left is what the witness described.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Has to be. Do you know what his feelings were
as to where he thought the phenomenon might actually be originating.
I know he wanted to just look at the hard
data and the scientific evaluation, but did he ever speculate
and what it could be like? Was it maybe interdimensional
or consciousness based to.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Speculate Bingo Ronnie, he often would contemplate the idea that
this had to be something interdimensional, that this was something
that was here, that it was something that was able
to slip within our very realm and then interact with
us at times. And there again that was the astronomer.
He accepted that we may indeed be dealing with deep
space explorers, almost like the starship Enterprise, like from Star Trek,
(16:45):
and that they happened to be in our neighborhood at
the time of even the trinity flash of the first
atomic bob debtonation in July of nineteen forty five in
New Mexico, of all places, and that it still took
them two years to get here before they appeared to
arrive in mass during that summer of nineteen forty seven.
It almost appeared as though we were being invaded that summer.
(17:08):
Heinich was a bit of a mystic. I can state
that you know, for having known him personally, that he
was willing to wrestle in joust with just every conceivable
explanation short of extraterrestrial. But it was always the extraterrestrial
that stood above everything else, because that we were dealing
(17:28):
with an intelligence, we were dealing with the technology, We
were dealing with something that the government saw important, relevant
and important militarily enough that here we are eighty years
later and they're still covering it up. He had to
deal with the cover up as well, and the fact
that he too was being prevented from seeing the truth.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
I love that the ETF explanation was last for him.
I feel like that gets lost today that we need
to keep that in mind. That should be our last thing.
Let's check everything else. Maybe it's this, what are your
thoughts on the various programs the government has put forth
all these years over the years to these are air
quotes investigate the phenomenon, starting with you know, sign Grunge
(18:11):
Blue Book, not to mention the Condon Report in Robertson Panel,
all the way up to Arrow. Do you think they're
all the same or do you think they had different
degrees of genuine investigations?
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Well, each one had its own personality. Each one, first
of all, had its own personnel who were assigned what
even historians need to always go back to. It is
the fact that sign or saucer as was also called,
was pretty much created because of that wave of nineteen
forty seven. You know, we could say, I will suggest
(18:43):
that it was mainly because of Roswell that they actually
had hardware in hand, And even General Nathan Twining's letter
that's September, two months after Roswell and his assessment of
the situation and that the phenomenon was real and not
visionary or fictitious, and he ascribed them as dome shaped
saucers thirty feet in diameter and may indeed be anti gravity,
(19:07):
electromagnetic in propulsion, that type of thing talk about really
spinning down specific answers without having any physical evidence. So
there's a contradiction right there. Twining was speaking as though
he knew firsthand that we were dealing with someone else's hardware,
and then a sign was established, and a year and
(19:29):
a half later, what was their final conclusion that the
phenomenon was real, that we were dealing with something interplanetary.
As far as in nineteen forty eight, we already came
up with an answer. It was General Hoyt Vandenberg, who
is the chiefest staff of the Air Force, who, as
you recall, order the report burn that it could not
see the light of day, and we have not seen
(19:50):
the full Project Sign report as a result. His excuse
was that the public could handle it, and they were
just coming off of ten years before the Orson Welles
wore the War Worlds broadcast. They kept throwing that word
panic around. So then they established Project Grudge, which was
undoomed Project Sign. They essentially fired all the pro et investigators,
(20:12):
all the pro Et scientists. Isn't interesting that the name
of the project would be Grudge And what was their
final conclusion The phenomena was something tantamount to mass hallucination,
that it was more psychological that it was physical. And
then it was resultd of the oversight buzzing of the
(20:33):
White House in July nineteen fifty two, that Project blue
Book would be established that here we had you know,
how dare they they're actually buzzing the White House the
Capitol Building, right? How do you explain that away is
being psychological? When they're tracked on radar and they're pilots
that are you know, being encircled by them and they're
(20:54):
playing cat and mouse. That went on for two nights
a week and apart, and then you had the famous
Robertson where the CIA was asked to step in, and
they once again tried to make it a physical threat,
that the Russians could use this as a diversion for
an invasion, and that the reports witnesses were more of
(21:14):
a danger, were more dangerous to the country than the
actual phenomenon. So you see the psychological games they're playing.
But blue book becomes a pr front blue book needed
as far as an out. Well, let's bring in a
bunch of outside scientists, and you had Edward Connon at
the University of Colorado in Boulder. You know all the
end results there.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
But yet look right, the conclusion before we do the study.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Yeah, yeah, right, the conclusion And there again a preconceived
conclusion before we conduct the study. So the faulty premise
to begin with. And yet even the Condon Report, twenty
five percent of their cases they couldn't explain. Wow, so
they are worse than the Air Force. And so again
we need to always go back to our history to
(21:59):
realize where we are today. We're dealing with the wonderful
history of the fact that there were no drones. There
were no satellites that the skies were basically Christine back
in the late forties and through the fifties and spot
Nick wouldn't you know, be till fifty seven, fifty eighth
that type of thing, and so the phenomenon was pretty
(22:19):
virgin through those years, through those decades.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Hey down, we got to take a break here. When
we come back, we're going to shift over to Roswell
because you are probably the world's most versed man on
this case. So we're going to talk to you about that.
You're listening to Beyond Contact on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network. We are back on
(22:49):
Beyond Contact. We're talking with Don Schmidt. We're going to
talk about Roswell. Now, Don, I have had Roswell at
the top of my list as far as credibility, despite
the clichhaneness of saying Roswell. For some reason, it just
feels that way. But it's because I've read all your
books and I've spoken to over the years, and you've
said that that makes you feel ninety nine point nine
(23:10):
percent convinced that it's deal, and it's got me to
say it's at least ninety percent convinced that Roswell had
a non human component. Do you think it's the strongest
case we have.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Yes, by far, for the fact that not only it's
the only case that we actually have, the government slash
military officially announced that they had one in hand and
nonetheless the first atomic bomb squadron in the world, the
five or ninth bomb wing stationed at Roswell when they
put out that press release on Tuesday, July eighth, nineteen
(23:42):
forty seven, where they actually claimed we got one, we
have one, we've captured one, and then the slow evolution
within five hours they put that genie back in the bottom.
And the point is they got away with it. They
did get as far as the genie back where they
felt it it belonged, so there's no other case like this,
And then that it would languish for the next thirty years,
(24:04):
nobody really saying anything about it, the buzzing, the murmuring
as far as within the witnesses, and we often would
hear that through the years that the children would talk about.
We always knew Mom and daverck or talked about forty seven.
If they closed the shades, they closed the drapes that
they were going to, you know, talk privately between themselves.
And then when the head of intelligence had that five
all night bomb Wing, Major Jesse Marcel, then a lieutenant colonel,
(24:29):
he's diagnosed with terminal emphysema and he was the fall
of guy. He was the patsy. He's the one who
was ordered by General Roger Raimi, the head of the
eighth Air Force, which commanded over the five or ninth
bomb wing. And at that famous press conference where they
substitute the weather balloon common off the shelf, reflective foil,
(24:49):
wooden sticks, string, and a neopren rubber balloon off the
shelf material and each child would have recognized and he becomes,
you know, the poster child for the ros will cover up,
but always with that assurance that you'll just be a
good soldier, Jess. Truth will come out. Someday, you'll be exonerated,
you know, you'll be be vindicated. Never happened. And when
(25:12):
you realize that they were never coming out with the truth,
that's when he did. And the fact that before he
dies and up to the time he died, that he stated,
you know, without any doubt whatsoever that what he held
in his hands was not made on this earth. Where
were the banner headlines? The lead intelligence officer of the
(25:35):
first Atomic Bob Squadron states that he handled wreckage of
a craft from another planet, and the only publication that
even touched the story at that time was the National
enquire So you can imagine his bitterness that not only
was he stabbed in the back by the military, but
(25:55):
now by the press. The willing accomplices, who you know,
were just carrying their water, so to speak. But between
Marcel and then his son, who was a full bird
colonel and also a surgeon, a doctor who also handled
some of that wreckage, that they became quite a team.
And that's when the initial investigation, you know Stton Friedman
(26:20):
starting to track down the witnesses. And then when Kevin
Randall and I ended a tray in nineteen eighty nine,
my god, nineteen eighty nine, and then Tom Carey as
an anthropologist, and then Tom and I would work officially,
we'd start working together in nineteen ninety eight. And the
(26:40):
idea that we as as I mentioned earlier, we initially
went down to New Mexico thinking we would wrap this
up in a weekend and to acknowledge that we were
that wrong. And I think there too the fact that
we made every effort to track down every surviving witness
we could. We wanted to give them an opportunity to
(27:00):
go on the record the state as far as to
the best of the recollection, you know, minus any physical proof.
But granted there was still you know, our radar was
constantly out with the possibility maybe somebody had hit something
away in an army you know, a strong box, or
in a bank security both, what have you. But nonetheless
(27:21):
we realized we were racing with the undertaker that just
as we have never had the opportunity to speak with
Jesse Marcell Senior. We realized that if we didn't find
these people post takes, they would take it to their graves.
And many of them did. Many of them did, I
can't tell you. And it was at a time when
we didn't have the Internet, so we had to actually
(27:42):
track people down, We had to find people. It was
quite the effort, but we were that committed because as
the Provost Marshall, Colonel Edwin Easley at one point told us,
when he denied profusely, I can't talk about it. I'm
still swart of secrecy no matter what we asked him,
and when we asked them, could you at least tell
us if we're going in the right direction, to which
(28:04):
he responded, let's just say you're not going in the
wrong direction.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
That's great, you know, don I also feel like you
guys were very diligent about keeping the facts of this
case straight. Are there things that you guys kept out
of the books or the zeitgeist because you know, you
know a couple examples of things that were interesting that
were possible pieces to this puzzle, but you weren't convinced
that they were strong enough to put in your published works.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
Oh, absolutely, we have. I would say we probably have
over fifty witnesses that still remain in our gray basket,
and only because we've always insisted that there would be
corroborating testimony that if we had a special flight that involved,
you know, either the transfer of wreckage or remains out
(28:51):
of roswell, we just didn't take that information from one individual.
We would track down the rest of the crewmen who
were on that flight. We would cracked out anyone associated
with that flight, like in operations or through the operations building,
if they were working the radar Tower at that time.
I mean putting together as far as that whole mosaic,
(29:12):
connecting all those dots, and that's the wonderful thing that
really has impressed me. I think really at the top
of much of the investigation ron is that ten people
see a car accident, police assurance, justice will tell you
get ten different versions. That's something you know, that's almost
a common event, it's a yeah. Whereas this is something
(29:35):
again so extraordinary that it didn't matter whether it was
the highest ranking officer or even a child back at
that time, today an adult, it was as though they
were reading from the same script. It's one of the
reasons that, in my case, those of us who were
alive on July twenty second of nineteen sixty three, we
(29:58):
forever remember exactly where we were and when the news
broke and what we thought. And yet we weren't in Dallas.
We weren't in Dealey Plaza when the president was shot.
The same can be said about nine to eleven, and
again we weren't in New York. But nonetheless, when something
profound happens, it's indelibly etched as far as in our
very psyche. And that's exactly what I've observed with Roswell,
(30:22):
they're describing it as though it happened yesterday.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
It makes sense to me that it would be that strong.
You know, I'd almost like to see you guys put
together this thing of these fifty witnesses that you have
and just call the book. Maybe you know that these
aren't necessarily we're not putting our name to it.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
We're not give you a plea example, give you a
quick example round it. We have a moment. We spoke
to one of the at the stockade the jail at
the base, and we talked to him, and that was
his job, so he wasn't out in the field gathering
up wreckage or at the hangar guarding the bodies or anything.
But he talked about that there was someone in one
of the cells and he couldn't that this individual to eat,
(31:02):
and he would yell at it, and he would. But
but what he observed that the fatigues that the clothes
on it were hanging off its arms and all cuffed
up around its ankles. And then he said, at one
point he started banging the tray of food against the
cell bars, and it looked up at him and he
saw the eyes and it's like, so all the rumors
(31:24):
were true. That was Oh my god, the rumors are true. Okay,
we have another story that does you know is connected
to that with a bail bondsman that came in from
Texas to pick up a prisoner and the talk was
about the dwarf the little man they were, you know,
keeping under lock and key at the stock gave. So
(31:48):
there are two separate stories like that, but it's still
so far out there that you aren't right. We have
a lot of those stories.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Be cool to put that in as a compilation. Okay,
when we come back, we're going to ask down about
the latest updates regarding Roswell. You're listening to Beyond Contact
on the iHeartRadio on Coast to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network.
(32:26):
We are back on Beyond Contact having a fascinating conversation
with Don Schmidt regarding Roswell. Don, it's now twenty twenty
six and we've obviously lost every person who was around
during Roswell. But are there any new ways to get
some more evidence on this case. Maybe there's a new
technology or secondhand reports, perhaps some of the kids of
the witnesses, or maybe a whistleblower who has something that
(32:48):
was classified or hidden that.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
They as certa of the case, as you met your whistleblower.
The idea that anyone who still has access to the
physical evidence, certainly, that's one of the things that appall
to this date that whenever we've had the congressional hearings,
the Panel committee hearings in Washington, and all they talk
about our documents. If I'm Tim Burschett and I've told
on this to his space, if I'm you, I'm asking,
(33:12):
I want to hold a piece of the wreckage. I demand,
I'm giving you twenty four hours. I want a piece
of the wreckage, you know, a tissue sample something. And
they're not doing that. It's like there's still following orders.
They're still being very you know, as far polite and
gingerly as far as they handle this. The other thing
I throw at them is the fact that we have
compiled to date over thirty deathbed confessions, all admissible in
(33:37):
a court of law. And that's why right now, Ron,
we are going after more and more of the families
where we struck out, where we failed to find their fathers,
their grandfathers, their husbands. What have you now we're talking
to the families. What did they tell you at the end,
And invariably if they spoke at all about Roswell, they
(33:58):
confess to it. They said it was true. They talk
about the wreckage, and they talk about the bodies that
there were indeed bodies recovered and they weren't from here
again admissible physical evidence before any judge and jury. So
again we're winning. And that's why I'm more. I'm just
as enthusiastic as before, because I love it. Until someone
(34:22):
steps forward and can prove otherwise, I mean less we
ever forget the government slash military is up to four
official explanations regarding Roswell. There isn't a UFO case, you know,
equal to that level of concern on the part of
official dumb that they've had press conference, at the press
(34:43):
conference at the Pentagon trying to explain this all away.
We're now talking about wooden crash dummies five years removed. Now,
then we talk about time travel that the Air Force
is concocting stories that these crash dummies, Uh, you know,
time traveled back from nineteen fifty two back to nineteen
forty seven, that type of thing. So that's how ridiculous.
(35:05):
It's come in their efforts to stall for time, to
run out the clock until the final first hand witness
is gone. And even there we're not letting them win.
Now we're getting the families born. More to chime in
that my father lived under fear and intimidation, and then
at the very end he finally broke his silence and said,
(35:28):
don't believe a word the government is telling you. It
did happen, and they were not from here.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
I love it. Listen, after decades of researching this, obviously
you've been knee deep in it. Is there a question
or a piece of the puzzle, either with Roswell or
just phenomenon itself that elude you that you wish you
knew a little bit more about.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
Oh, many questions round, many questions as to why certain
events happened that seemed out of place, that almost seemed
as though they were also attempting to create diversions. The
press release that went out, for example, We're convinced was
a total diversion, talking about only the debris field. They
(36:09):
concede the debris, but they don't admit anything about the bodies.
And yet that site just north of Roswell twenty seven
miles removed from the debris field, it becomes the much
more urgent location. So they use a diversion to essentially
send the press, you know, on a wild goose chase,
that type of thing. So certain officers and what the
(36:33):
what they told us obviously didn't pan out, turned out
to be misinformation and at times even disinformation, but that
all becomes part of the game if it become if
it's too easy, then run the other way. The fact
that it has been as difficult as it has been,
and for all the attacks, both personal and especially to
(36:55):
the witnesses, we must be over the target. Otherwise who
would care?
Speaker 4 (36:59):
The o't even react to it exactly. What is the
strongest piece of evidence that we have for Roswell being
of non human origin? I would say it's the totality
of all this evidence. But do you have a specific.
Speaker 5 (37:11):
Piece Again, the deathbeds, when you have high ranking officers
on their deathbeds referred to the creatures for example, well,
crash test dummies aren't creatures, and if it's you know,
one of their own military personnel, it's quite a slam.
Well he was a creature. No, no, no, they were
talking about something else, handwritten notes about this is true
(37:34):
inside our books, that type of thing, and then given
out to the family before they died. Just the consistency
of even the deathbed testimonies, and then the fact that
the government has reacted the way it has. We obviously
are pushing the right buttons. As you said, Ron, they
wouldn't give a damn, why should they care otherwise? And
(37:55):
so who in the right mind would then walk away
from it? Will just say, you know, I washed my
hands of it because we came up empty handed. We
had now five archaeological digs at the briefield, we're planning
on another, and we're going in with subterranean radar drones
the next time, so we can really canvas the whole
(38:15):
area much more thoroughly than we have before. As you
talk about an area that covers almost a mile in
length alone, there's a lot of ground to cover. I'm
still as enthusiastic as before because as one of the
witnesses before he died, and I was with him at
the end and he said to me, you know, it's
up to you now to finish it, and that's exactly
how we see it.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
I love it's powerful.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
Yeah, would have one of them. Finish it.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
When you come across someone who flat out does not
accept any of the evidence in the Roswell case, whether
they've looked at it or not, what do you say
to them? What do you point to that might persuade
them that there's more to this story?
Speaker 5 (38:54):
Well, what we actually just discussed the idea that you
aren't going to tell me that you've looked at all
the evidence, albeit circumstantial, and then just can summarily dismiss
it just because you don't like what they say. We've
had witnesses that you can't trust any of the death
bet testimonies. Well, but then we got accept you know,
a million other death bet testimonies, you know, unrelated. I mean,
(39:16):
we can't have it both ways. When you have former
astronauts like edgar Mitchell, when you have even former presidents,
you know, Bill Clinton, who's publicly you know that the
one thing that they wouldn't tell me the truth about,
aside from even the Keunty assassination, that whole Webster Hubble
story about. I want the truth about UFOs and the
truth about the County assassination. You'll see what you can
(39:38):
find me. That type of thing we have former governors
like Bill Richardson of New Mexico that this is clearly,
you know, a cover up and they're not telling us
the truth. So I'm a good company. The late Congressman
Stephen Shift the fact that he was stonewall left and right,
and all we were trying to do was open up
the files and have hearings on Roswell. And now finally
run for the fact that how convenient, and now we
(40:01):
have hearings. Now we have so called whistleblowers, when at
its peak of our ROS investigation, we had over one hundred,
over one hundred first ten witnesses And just imagine Major
Jesse Marcel in front of that congressional hearing and say
I held it in my hands and it was not
(40:23):
from this earth, and he says that onder oath, my
God overnight.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Absolutely, I think about that all the time. What's the
single most important fact you think about Roswell? That people
don't understand.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
The human element involved the fact that they were threatening children,
That they were going into private citizens' homes, sequestering parents
in one room, children in another, and telling the parents
we will kill your children. If you ever talk about
(40:58):
this again, then strong arming the children you will never
see your parents again. We will take you out into
the desert and they will find your bones, you know,
next spring, that type of thing. What would possess our
government to resort to such extreme measures over something again
as mundane as a weather balloon.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
I'm sorry that those people could still be alive and reachable, right, yes, yes, yes,
And that's where that's a piece of the puzzle that
I think matters.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
And that's why I've already I emphasize in Washington that
if any official, including the very President of the United
States again, politics withstanding, Roswell has nothing to do with politics,
but that if you will come to Roswell, I will
fill up that theater, that video room fifty people. It's
(41:52):
my family members, and you can hear from them firsthand,
the fear, the intimidation, what they live with all these
years over a blow.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Well, Don, we're actually getting people in Congress to take
this topic seriously. The government's looked at more openly than
they have before, so maybe this will actually happen. Don,
We're out of time, but thanks so much man. As always,
I really appreciate your insights. Hey, where's the best place
people can reach you? Or maybe if they're out there
and they know something that you'd want to hear. How
can they do that?
Speaker 5 (42:21):
Of course through the International UFO Museum in Roswell, where
I'm the chief investigator, as well as our website which
is Roswell Investigators dot com. And I'm also on Facebook
under Donald Raymond Schmidt, and I make it a point
I respond to everybody, to anybody, and we're still open
(42:44):
to any leads, any information, no matter how insignificant you
may think it is to us.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
It may not except me. I reach out to him
on there and he ignores it. So I don't know
what to say about netfolks, but thanks you guys. To
find me on Twitter and Instagram at CIITV Underscore Captain Ron.
Stay connected by checking out contact inthedesert dot com. Stay
open minded and rational as we explore the unknown right
here on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal
Podcast Network.
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(00:42):
research and discover the subject matter for yourself.
Speaker 3 (00:57):
Hey everyone, it's Captain Ron and each week on Beyond Contact,
we'll explore the latest news in ufology, discuss some of
the classic cases, and bring you the latest information from
the newest.
Speaker 4 (01:09):
Cases as we talked with the top experts. Hi, and
welcome to Beyond Contact. I'm Captain Ron. Today we're speaking
with Don Schmidt. Don is one of the world's leading
investigators of the Roswell UFO incident and a seven time
best selling author whose work has shaped the modern understanding
of UFO crash retrievals and government secrecy. A former co
(01:29):
director of the J. Allen Heineck Center for UFO Studies,
working directly under doctor j Allen Heineck and conducting first
hand interviews with military personnel, civilians, and intelligence insiders connected
to Roswell. He is also a founder and lead investigator
for the International UFO Museum and Research Center and a
board advisor to its executive leadership. Hey Don, my friend,
(01:52):
how are you, buddy?
Speaker 5 (01:54):
Good to see again, Rod. It's a pleasure. Thank you
for having me.
Speaker 4 (01:57):
Absolutely always great to talk to you, Sir. You've been very,
very important in my journey in this world, and I
appreciate that. Before we get an update on Roswell, I'd
like to talk to you a bit about jay On Heineck.
I know that doctor Heinek was famously the serious scientists
attached to Project Blue Book who went on to believe
that perhaps there was in fact more to some of
(02:19):
these stories and that we needed to follow the data
and the science on the subject, something that I certainly believe.
Can you tell us about his arc on those feelings?
Speaker 5 (02:29):
It was a journey because it was not only was
serendipitous the way he was selected to be the Silk
scientific consultant the project Bluebook. He just happened to be
down the road. Blue Book was headquartered at right pat
Air Force Bases, you know, in Dayton, Ohio. And Heinik
was head of the astronomy apartment at Ohio State down
in Columbus, just down the road. And so how perfect
(02:51):
because he was their chief debunker. He was the one
that they would always trot out in front of the
microphones to dispel you on, discredit every citing imaginable. It
was the planet Venus, it was swamp gas, it was
you know, something astronomical weather related, what have you. They
did all they could, as Heinek would say, they would
(03:14):
jump handsprings whenever they could explain away a case. But
as Heinech evolved and we saw more and more that
all these people can't be lying, they can't all be misidentifying,
you know, common you know, rational alternative explanations. When he
was dealing with PhDs, when he was dealing with Strategic
(03:36):
Air Command officers, when he was dealing with trained pilots,
and then as he would be going about his own
business flying, you know, between lectures, and then when he
became head of the astronomy department, at Northwestern in Evansteed, Illinois.
He would be talking to both commercial and military pilots
(03:58):
about some of the most profound, you know, experiences. And
then when he would go back down to write Pat
and wade through all the recent reports at blue Book,
they were never there. And he would he would question,
where's this report and where's this pilot report? And he
would always be just summarily dismissed that, well, you know,
(04:19):
we don't know what's talking about what report? And he
realized that he did not have access to the actual cases,
that they were essentially censoring them for their benefits. And
then he realized that my god, this was nothing but
a pr front that blue Book was justice, you know,
dismiss all this as just so much silly season. And
(04:43):
then the only reason he stayed attached, and he threatened
them to resign, to fire himself many times, that he
wanted to stay accessible to the data that if something
should break, there is something truly extraor what happened over
a highly populated area for example, that he wanted to
(05:05):
be connected, and that was the only reason East stayed
with blue Book.
Speaker 4 (05:09):
Thank god he did. What do you think people most
misunderstood about his personality or his motivation.
Speaker 5 (05:16):
Well, when the famous Dexter and Arbor sightings happened up
in Michigan in nineteen sixty six, and you had all
those university student sightings as well as a high ranking
Air Force officer, there were police sidings, and that Heinech
was forever labeled with that very term swamp gas marsh gas.
(05:39):
To just set the record straight, that only applied to
one specific sighting of many at that time and involved
a farmer who happened to see a orb of light
rising up over a marsh and for a Heinech, it
was just a case of well, that could have been
swamp gas, that as this gas would accumulate through as
(06:03):
far as a days of heat and humidity, that it
can start to reflect light from the surrounding buildings and
what have you. And so he in no way wanted
that to apply to all those sightings at that time.
It was strictly that one. But the press took the
swamp gut and ran with it. And just like that,
(06:26):
it was then Congressman Gerald Ford of Michigan who cried
foul and they pushed for congressional hearings, which they did
have some preliminary hearings in Washington as far as the
latter part of nineteen sixty six didn't go anywhere. But
nonetheless he forever had to live that down swamp gas
(06:47):
when it only suggested one specific sighting.
Speaker 4 (06:50):
Forty to fifty years ago, and we still all hear
about that talk about swamp guys. It's unbelievable. How would
you say, doctor Heinek spoke about the UFO phenomenon private
compared to how he did it publicly.
Speaker 5 (07:02):
Privately he was constantly wrestling with, as an astronomer, the
distances from point A to point b. He would use
the example like even in a classroom at Northwestern, if
you would take the distance of the Earth to the Moon,
and it would be represented by not the width, but
the thickness of a single playing card within a dector
(07:25):
of cards. And he would constantly pose the question to
his students, Now, how many playing cards do you believe
it would take to equal the distance of the Earth
to our nearest star system Alpha Centurion, four point three
light years away. No one would ever get close, not
even on the astronomers. And Heinich had you know, mathematically
(07:48):
determined that it would take nineteen miles of playing cards
to equal that distance, and to him that was just
totally insurmountable, impossible.
Speaker 4 (08:01):
Yeah, you can't it from here there. It is nineteen
miles of this come on that.
Speaker 5 (08:06):
He still had to accept. He had to concede that
we were dealing with physical craft, physical objects that were
interacting with our environment, leaving depressions in the ground, swirled
areas of grass, breaking, tree branches tracked down radar. We
were dealing with physical objects. And the very last time
round that I actually had dinner with doctor Hiding, and
(08:29):
we'll never forget his pounding his fist on the table
and going down it's smacking more and more of nuts
and boats. So that's coming from someone who started out
as a complete debunker and then debunking the idea that
they were traveling from plant to plant to finally accepting
we were dealing with an actual physical phenomenon.
Speaker 4 (08:52):
How do you think Heinek would reconcile the lack of
empirical evidence with repeated credible witness testimony.
Speaker 5 (09:00):
He had to deal with that personally for all the
interviews that were conducted through Bluebook, and then certainly thereafter
when he had established a center for UFO Studies in
Chicago in the fall of nineteen seventy three, and the
fact that so many of the eyewitness testimonies, if they
were especially independent, that they could readily be explained. In fact,
(09:24):
at the Center for UFO Studies, our record was about
ninety five percent, but it was that remaining five percent,
and very often of highly educated people. And as Heinich
also determined, the higher the strangeness of the incident, the
greater the believability that nothing else could apply, nothing else
could be suggested to explain away these reports. So that
(09:49):
just hardened him all the more that we were actually
dealing with a phenomenon that was beyond our comprehension. I
think the same thing could be said about this eye
idea that like will Smith Inde Penance state jumping in
the seat, you know, that cockpit of that alien craft,
and he's able to fly it like he's done it
one hundred times before. But if ed bridge, what if
(10:12):
we can't bridge the technology? I think the late screenwriter
Tracy tore May Tracy was a dear friend for thirty years,
and he gave me the best example of all that
just imagined he could take something as simple as a toaster,
and you could teleport it back in time to say,
maybe the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages. They might be
able to take it apart put it back together again,
(10:33):
but if they can't plug it in, they can never
get it to operate. They can never get it to
actually work.
Speaker 4 (10:39):
Isn't it true that Project blue Book also had like
five percent that it could not identify.
Speaker 5 (10:43):
Even admittedly actually thirteen percent thirteen.
Speaker 4 (10:47):
There you go.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
When Bluebook was finally declassified by President Jimmy Carter in
nineteen seventy seven, much of it still remained under the
lock and key. There are a lot of gun camera
cases that we've never any of the actual footage, the
stop frames, nothing of that sort. So anytime anybody tells
you a little book's all been declassified, no it hasn't been. No,
(11:09):
it hasn't been. But there were over thirteen thousand cases
they investigated. Of the thirteen thousand, seven hundred and one
remained unexplained, So that comes out to eighty seven percent.
So our record is buried than in the Air Force.
Speaker 4 (11:24):
Well, there you go, man, that's awesome. We've got to
take a quick break here. Don When we come back,
we want to ask you about the various governmental programs
and their investigations on the UFO topic, as well as
what your take is on what's actually happening. You're listening
to be on Contact on the iHeartRadio when Coast to
Coast AM Paranormal Podcast Network. We are back on Beyond Contact.
(11:52):
We're speaking with Don Schmidt. Don, what is the takeaway
for what j Allen Heinek teaches us about how we
should treat this phenomenon?
Speaker 5 (12:00):
Well, certainly, foremost have a scientific methodology in that we
are dealing first of all, because we don't have that
physical evidence as you mentioned earlier, Rock, the point being
that unless we have something that we can actually take
into a lab to tear down, to systematically analyze and
see what makes a tick, so to speak, that we're
(12:20):
dealing with a human sociological problem. Why is this person
making this claim? What about them in their background promotes
the idea that they had gone out of their way
to seek notoriety, contact established as far as you know,
contact with a legitimate UFO investigation, and risk ridicule, risk
(12:42):
loss of job. As we both know, until just recent years,
it was a taboo topic that it was a career breaker,
that if you were an air traffic controller at O'Hare Airport,
you did not mention anything about maybe what looked out
of the ordinary some night when you gave venus permission
to land, so to speak, when we would actually be
(13:03):
in people's homes, Heinig would up look at their reading material.
They got a whole library of UFO books. Well, they've
been a bit conditioned, you know, they've been a bit,
a bit coached. But if they swear that, I've never
even given the subject. I thought prior to this incident,
and I was not all driving late, and I peered
through my windshield hoping I would see something. I was
(13:25):
contemplating my pending divorce, and all of a sudden, this
light shows up out of nowhere and it descends in
front of my car. And the next thing, I'm missing
two hours of you know, my travel time. That type
of thing. So you pre investigate as much as you
actually look into the background of the individual, and as
a result, then you start flashing out where the independent
(13:46):
were the other sightings at the same time, what was
reported to the press, what was reported to the local
law enforcement. That type of thing. That was what heineg,
you know, make it into an investigation, just don't accept
the storytelling. Just write down the notes. Investigate. I often
have told people have worked with us, you're an investigator, investigator,
(14:06):
go out there and actually dig out the details.
Speaker 4 (14:09):
I was going to ask, what about you, What is
your takeaway from Don Schmidt? What does your feel about
how we should treat the phenomenon? Is it the same?
Speaker 5 (14:18):
I would say, because he was so much a mentor
and a teacher to mean and I do privately often
ask now, what would Alan say or how would he
look at this? But then I still have to apply
my own methods. And I think that's why even in
our Roswell investigation, the fact that we were total skeptics,
(14:39):
just as Heineger initially, was that we had to actually
do a full one hundred and eighty. It's one thing
when you have a preconceived theory and you set out
to prove it. But when you actually are looking for
the rationalization the logic in what people have described and
you can't apply that, it's something extraor And as a
(15:00):
result of no matter who you speak with, they're all
describing it in the same terms. They're all wrestling for answers,
and then they're relying on you with the hope that
maybe you, as the investigator, can help them. When you
then come away going I got to get back down
here sooner than later because I failed, because I have
not been able to you'll come up with a prosaic explanation,
(15:24):
no matter how hard I've tried. It was like the
famous Lanni Zamora, the Socora, New Mexico instead of April
nineteen sixty four, and Heinek would talk about he would
talk with us. How I tried my damnness to explain
that away. I tried to come up with every practical
explanation imaginable, and I couldn't. So what's left except what eyewitnesses,
(15:45):
what the eyewitness is describing. And that's what makes it
all the more intriguing. When you are left with a
visual of what that eyewitness has just described to you
and you recreate it in your mind, you try to
relive it, and you realized, by God, that's all that's left.
That's all that's left is what the witness described.
Speaker 4 (16:05):
Has to be. Do you know what his feelings were
as to where he thought the phenomenon might actually be originating.
I know he wanted to just look at the hard
data and the scientific evaluation, but did he ever speculate
and what it could be like? Was it maybe interdimensional
or consciousness based to.
Speaker 5 (16:21):
Speculate Bingo Ronnie, he often would contemplate the idea that
this had to be something interdimensional, that this was something
that was here, that it was something that was able
to slip within our very realm and then interact with
us at times. And there again that was the astronomer.
He accepted that we may indeed be dealing with deep
space explorers, almost like the starship Enterprise, like from Star Trek,
(16:45):
and that they happened to be in our neighborhood at
the time of even the trinity flash of the first
atomic bob debtonation in July of nineteen forty five in
New Mexico, of all places, and that it still took
them two years to get here before they appeared to
arrive in mass during that summer of nineteen forty seven.
It almost appeared as though we were being invaded that summer.
(17:08):
Heinich was a bit of a mystic. I can state
that you know, for having known him personally, that he
was willing to wrestle in joust with just every conceivable
explanation short of extraterrestrial. But it was always the extraterrestrial
that stood above everything else, because that we were dealing
(17:28):
with an intelligence, we were dealing with the technology, We
were dealing with something that the government saw important, relevant
and important militarily enough that here we are eighty years
later and they're still covering it up. He had to
deal with the cover up as well, and the fact
that he too was being prevented from seeing the truth.
Speaker 4 (17:50):
I love that the ETF explanation was last for him.
I feel like that gets lost today that we need
to keep that in mind. That should be our last thing.
Let's check everything else. Maybe it's this, what are your
thoughts on the various programs the government has put forth
all these years over the years to these are air
quotes investigate the phenomenon, starting with you know, sign Grunge
(18:11):
Blue Book, not to mention the Condon Report in Robertson Panel,
all the way up to Arrow. Do you think they're
all the same or do you think they had different
degrees of genuine investigations?
Speaker 5 (18:21):
Well, each one had its own personality. Each one, first
of all, had its own personnel who were assigned what
even historians need to always go back to. It is
the fact that sign or saucer as was also called,
was pretty much created because of that wave of nineteen
forty seven. You know, we could say, I will suggest
(18:43):
that it was mainly because of Roswell that they actually
had hardware in hand, And even General Nathan Twining's letter
that's September, two months after Roswell and his assessment of
the situation and that the phenomenon was real and not
visionary or fictitious, and he ascribed them as dome shaped
saucers thirty feet in diameter and may indeed be anti gravity,
(19:07):
electromagnetic in propulsion, that type of thing talk about really
spinning down specific answers without having any physical evidence. So
there's a contradiction right there. Twining was speaking as though
he knew firsthand that we were dealing with someone else's hardware,
and then a sign was established, and a year and
(19:29):
a half later, what was their final conclusion that the
phenomenon was real, that we were dealing with something interplanetary.
As far as in nineteen forty eight, we already came
up with an answer. It was General Hoyt Vandenberg, who
is the chiefest staff of the Air Force, who, as
you recall, order the report burn that it could not
see the light of day, and we have not seen
(19:50):
the full Project Sign report as a result. His excuse
was that the public could handle it, and they were
just coming off of ten years before the Orson Welles
wore the War Worlds broadcast. They kept throwing that word
panic around. So then they established Project Grudge, which was
undoomed Project Sign. They essentially fired all the pro et investigators,
(20:12):
all the pro Et scientists. Isn't interesting that the name
of the project would be Grudge And what was their
final conclusion The phenomena was something tantamount to mass hallucination,
that it was more psychological that it was physical. And
then it was resultd of the oversight buzzing of the
(20:33):
White House in July nineteen fifty two, that Project blue
Book would be established that here we had you know,
how dare they they're actually buzzing the White House the
Capitol Building, right? How do you explain that away is
being psychological? When they're tracked on radar and they're pilots
that are you know, being encircled by them and they're
(20:54):
playing cat and mouse. That went on for two nights
a week and apart, and then you had the famous
Robertson where the CIA was asked to step in, and
they once again tried to make it a physical threat,
that the Russians could use this as a diversion for
an invasion, and that the reports witnesses were more of
(21:14):
a danger, were more dangerous to the country than the
actual phenomenon. So you see the psychological games they're playing.
But blue book becomes a pr front blue book needed
as far as an out. Well, let's bring in a
bunch of outside scientists, and you had Edward Connon at
the University of Colorado in Boulder. You know all the
end results there.
Speaker 4 (21:35):
But yet look right, the conclusion before we do the study.
Speaker 5 (21:38):
Yeah, yeah, right, the conclusion And there again a preconceived
conclusion before we conduct the study. So the faulty premise
to begin with. And yet even the Condon Report, twenty
five percent of their cases they couldn't explain. Wow, so
they are worse than the Air Force. And so again
we need to always go back to our history to
(21:59):
realize where we are today. We're dealing with the wonderful
history of the fact that there were no drones. There
were no satellites that the skies were basically Christine back
in the late forties and through the fifties and spot
Nick wouldn't you know, be till fifty seven, fifty eighth
that type of thing, and so the phenomenon was pretty
(22:19):
virgin through those years, through those decades.
Speaker 4 (22:21):
Hey down, we got to take a break here. When
we come back, we're going to shift over to Roswell
because you are probably the world's most versed man on
this case. So we're going to talk to you about that.
You're listening to Beyond Contact on the iHeartRadio and Coast
to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network. We are back on
(22:49):
Beyond Contact. We're talking with Don Schmidt. We're going to
talk about Roswell. Now, Don, I have had Roswell at
the top of my list as far as credibility, despite
the clichhaneness of saying Roswell. For some reason, it just
feels that way. But it's because I've read all your
books and I've spoken to over the years, and you've
said that that makes you feel ninety nine point nine
(23:10):
percent convinced that it's deal, and it's got me to
say it's at least ninety percent convinced that Roswell had
a non human component. Do you think it's the strongest
case we have.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Yes, by far, for the fact that not only it's
the only case that we actually have, the government slash
military officially announced that they had one in hand and
nonetheless the first atomic bomb squadron in the world, the
five or ninth bomb wing stationed at Roswell when they
put out that press release on Tuesday, July eighth, nineteen
(23:42):
forty seven, where they actually claimed we got one, we
have one, we've captured one, and then the slow evolution
within five hours they put that genie back in the bottom.
And the point is they got away with it. They
did get as far as the genie back where they
felt it it belonged, so there's no other case like this,
And then that it would languish for the next thirty years,
(24:04):
nobody really saying anything about it, the buzzing, the murmuring
as far as within the witnesses, and we often would
hear that through the years that the children would talk about.
We always knew Mom and daverck or talked about forty seven.
If they closed the shades, they closed the drapes that
they were going to, you know, talk privately between themselves.
And then when the head of intelligence had that five
all night bomb Wing, Major Jesse Marcel, then a lieutenant colonel,
(24:29):
he's diagnosed with terminal emphysema and he was the fall
of guy. He was the patsy. He's the one who
was ordered by General Roger Raimi, the head of the
eighth Air Force, which commanded over the five or ninth
bomb wing. And at that famous press conference where they
substitute the weather balloon common off the shelf, reflective foil,
(24:49):
wooden sticks, string, and a neopren rubber balloon off the
shelf material and each child would have recognized and he becomes,
you know, the poster child for the ros will cover up,
but always with that assurance that you'll just be a
good soldier, Jess. Truth will come out. Someday, you'll be exonerated,
you know, you'll be be vindicated. Never happened. And when
(25:12):
you realize that they were never coming out with the truth,
that's when he did. And the fact that before he
dies and up to the time he died, that he stated,
you know, without any doubt whatsoever that what he held
in his hands was not made on this earth. Where
were the banner headlines? The lead intelligence officer of the
(25:35):
first Atomic Bob Squadron states that he handled wreckage of
a craft from another planet, and the only publication that
even touched the story at that time was the National
enquire So you can imagine his bitterness that not only
was he stabbed in the back by the military, but
(25:55):
now by the press. The willing accomplices, who you know,
were just carrying their water, so to speak. But between
Marcel and then his son, who was a full bird
colonel and also a surgeon, a doctor who also handled
some of that wreckage, that they became quite a team.
And that's when the initial investigation, you know Stton Friedman
(26:20):
starting to track down the witnesses. And then when Kevin
Randall and I ended a tray in nineteen eighty nine,
my god, nineteen eighty nine, and then Tom Carey as
an anthropologist, and then Tom and I would work officially,
we'd start working together in nineteen ninety eight. And the
(26:40):
idea that we as as I mentioned earlier, we initially
went down to New Mexico thinking we would wrap this
up in a weekend and to acknowledge that we were
that wrong. And I think there too the fact that
we made every effort to track down every surviving witness
we could. We wanted to give them an opportunity to
(27:00):
go on the record the state as far as to
the best of the recollection, you know, minus any physical proof.
But granted there was still you know, our radar was
constantly out with the possibility maybe somebody had hit something
away in an army you know, a strong box, or
in a bank security both, what have you. But nonetheless
(27:21):
we realized we were racing with the undertaker that just
as we have never had the opportunity to speak with
Jesse Marcell Senior. We realized that if we didn't find
these people post takes, they would take it to their graves.
And many of them did. Many of them did, I
can't tell you. And it was at a time when
we didn't have the Internet, so we had to actually
(27:42):
track people down, We had to find people. It was
quite the effort, but we were that committed because as
the Provost Marshall, Colonel Edwin Easley at one point told us,
when he denied profusely, I can't talk about it. I'm
still swart of secrecy no matter what we asked him,
and when we asked them, could you at least tell
us if we're going in the right direction, to which
(28:04):
he responded, let's just say you're not going in the
wrong direction.
Speaker 4 (28:09):
That's great, you know, don I also feel like you
guys were very diligent about keeping the facts of this
case straight. Are there things that you guys kept out
of the books or the zeitgeist because you know, you
know a couple examples of things that were interesting that
were possible pieces to this puzzle, but you weren't convinced
that they were strong enough to put in your published works.
Speaker 5 (28:30):
Oh, absolutely, we have. I would say we probably have
over fifty witnesses that still remain in our gray basket,
and only because we've always insisted that there would be
corroborating testimony that if we had a special flight that involved,
you know, either the transfer of wreckage or remains out
(28:51):
of roswell, we just didn't take that information from one individual.
We would track down the rest of the crewmen who
were on that flight. We would cracked out anyone associated
with that flight, like in operations or through the operations building,
if they were working the radar Tower at that time.
I mean putting together as far as that whole mosaic,
(29:12):
connecting all those dots, and that's the wonderful thing that
really has impressed me. I think really at the top
of much of the investigation ron is that ten people
see a car accident, police assurance, justice will tell you
get ten different versions. That's something you know, that's almost
a common event, it's a yeah. Whereas this is something
(29:35):
again so extraordinary that it didn't matter whether it was
the highest ranking officer or even a child back at
that time, today an adult, it was as though they
were reading from the same script. It's one of the
reasons that, in my case, those of us who were
alive on July twenty second of nineteen sixty three, we
(29:58):
forever remember exactly where we were and when the news
broke and what we thought. And yet we weren't in Dallas.
We weren't in Dealey Plaza when the president was shot.
The same can be said about nine to eleven, and
again we weren't in New York. But nonetheless, when something
profound happens, it's indelibly etched as far as in our
very psyche. And that's exactly what I've observed with Roswell,
(30:22):
they're describing it as though it happened yesterday.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
It makes sense to me that it would be that strong.
You know, I'd almost like to see you guys put
together this thing of these fifty witnesses that you have
and just call the book. Maybe you know that these
aren't necessarily we're not putting our name to it.
Speaker 5 (30:38):
We're not give you a plea example, give you a
quick example round it. We have a moment. We spoke
to one of the at the stockade the jail at
the base, and we talked to him, and that was
his job, so he wasn't out in the field gathering
up wreckage or at the hangar guarding the bodies or anything.
But he talked about that there was someone in one
of the cells and he couldn't that this individual to eat,
(31:02):
and he would yell at it, and he would. But
but what he observed that the fatigues that the clothes
on it were hanging off its arms and all cuffed
up around its ankles. And then he said, at one
point he started banging the tray of food against the
cell bars, and it looked up at him and he
saw the eyes and it's like, so all the rumors
(31:24):
were true. That was Oh my god, the rumors are true. Okay,
we have another story that does you know is connected
to that with a bail bondsman that came in from
Texas to pick up a prisoner and the talk was
about the dwarf the little man they were, you know,
keeping under lock and key at the stock gave. So
(31:48):
there are two separate stories like that, but it's still
so far out there that you aren't right. We have
a lot of those stories.
Speaker 4 (31:58):
Be cool to put that in as a compilation. Okay,
when we come back, we're going to ask down about
the latest updates regarding Roswell. You're listening to Beyond Contact
on the iHeartRadio on Coast to Coast AM Paranormal podcast network.
(32:26):
We are back on Beyond Contact having a fascinating conversation
with Don Schmidt regarding Roswell. Don, it's now twenty twenty
six and we've obviously lost every person who was around
during Roswell. But are there any new ways to get
some more evidence on this case. Maybe there's a new
technology or secondhand reports, perhaps some of the kids of
the witnesses, or maybe a whistleblower who has something that
(32:48):
was classified or hidden that.
Speaker 5 (32:50):
They as certa of the case, as you met your whistleblower.
The idea that anyone who still has access to the
physical evidence, certainly, that's one of the things that appall
to this date that whenever we've had the congressional hearings,
the Panel committee hearings in Washington, and all they talk
about our documents. If I'm Tim Burschett and I've told
on this to his space, if I'm you, I'm asking,
(33:12):
I want to hold a piece of the wreckage. I demand,
I'm giving you twenty four hours. I want a piece
of the wreckage, you know, a tissue sample something. And
they're not doing that. It's like there's still following orders.
They're still being very you know, as far polite and
gingerly as far as they handle this. The other thing
I throw at them is the fact that we have
compiled to date over thirty deathbed confessions, all admissible in
(33:37):
a court of law. And that's why right now, Ron,
we are going after more and more of the families
where we struck out, where we failed to find their fathers,
their grandfathers, their husbands. What have you now we're talking
to the families. What did they tell you at the end,
And invariably if they spoke at all about Roswell, they
(33:58):
confess to it. They said it was true. They talk
about the wreckage, and they talk about the bodies that
there were indeed bodies recovered and they weren't from here
again admissible physical evidence before any judge and jury. So
again we're winning. And that's why I'm more. I'm just
as enthusiastic as before, because I love it. Until someone
(34:22):
steps forward and can prove otherwise, I mean less we
ever forget the government slash military is up to four
official explanations regarding Roswell. There isn't a UFO case, you know,
equal to that level of concern on the part of
official dumb that they've had press conference, at the press
(34:43):
conference at the Pentagon trying to explain this all away.
We're now talking about wooden crash dummies five years removed. Now,
then we talk about time travel that the Air Force
is concocting stories that these crash dummies, Uh, you know,
time traveled back from nineteen fifty two back to nineteen
forty seven, that type of thing. So that's how ridiculous.
(35:05):
It's come in their efforts to stall for time, to
run out the clock until the final first hand witness
is gone. And even there we're not letting them win.
Now we're getting the families born. More to chime in
that my father lived under fear and intimidation, and then
at the very end he finally broke his silence and said,
(35:28):
don't believe a word the government is telling you. It
did happen, and they were not from here.
Speaker 4 (35:34):
I love it. Listen, after decades of researching this, obviously
you've been knee deep in it. Is there a question
or a piece of the puzzle, either with Roswell or
just phenomenon itself that elude you that you wish you
knew a little bit more about.
Speaker 5 (35:48):
Oh, many questions round, many questions as to why certain
events happened that seemed out of place, that almost seemed
as though they were also attempting to create diversions. The
press release that went out, for example, We're convinced was
a total diversion, talking about only the debris field. They
(36:09):
concede the debris, but they don't admit anything about the bodies.
And yet that site just north of Roswell twenty seven
miles removed from the debris field, it becomes the much
more urgent location. So they use a diversion to essentially
send the press, you know, on a wild goose chase,
that type of thing. So certain officers and what the
(36:33):
what they told us obviously didn't pan out, turned out
to be misinformation and at times even disinformation, but that
all becomes part of the game if it become if
it's too easy, then run the other way. The fact
that it has been as difficult as it has been,
and for all the attacks, both personal and especially to
(36:55):
the witnesses, we must be over the target. Otherwise who
would care?
Speaker 4 (36:59):
The o't even react to it exactly. What is the
strongest piece of evidence that we have for Roswell being
of non human origin? I would say it's the totality
of all this evidence. But do you have a specific.
Speaker 5 (37:11):
Piece Again, the deathbeds, when you have high ranking officers
on their deathbeds referred to the creatures for example, well,
crash test dummies aren't creatures, and if it's you know,
one of their own military personnel, it's quite a slam.
Well he was a creature. No, no, no, they were
talking about something else, handwritten notes about this is true
(37:34):
inside our books, that type of thing, and then given
out to the family before they died. Just the consistency
of even the deathbed testimonies, and then the fact that
the government has reacted the way it has. We obviously
are pushing the right buttons. As you said, Ron, they
wouldn't give a damn, why should they care otherwise? And
(37:55):
so who in the right mind would then walk away
from it? Will just say, you know, I washed my
hands of it because we came up empty handed. We
had now five archaeological digs at the briefield, we're planning
on another, and we're going in with subterranean radar drones
the next time, so we can really canvas the whole
(38:15):
area much more thoroughly than we have before. As you
talk about an area that covers almost a mile in
length alone, there's a lot of ground to cover. I'm
still as enthusiastic as before because as one of the
witnesses before he died, and I was with him at
the end and he said to me, you know, it's
up to you now to finish it, and that's exactly
how we see it.
Speaker 4 (38:36):
I love it's powerful.
Speaker 5 (38:39):
Yeah, would have one of them. Finish it.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
When you come across someone who flat out does not
accept any of the evidence in the Roswell case, whether
they've looked at it or not, what do you say
to them? What do you point to that might persuade
them that there's more to this story?
Speaker 5 (38:54):
Well, what we actually just discussed the idea that you
aren't going to tell me that you've looked at all
the evidence, albeit circumstantial, and then just can summarily dismiss
it just because you don't like what they say. We've
had witnesses that you can't trust any of the death
bet testimonies. Well, but then we got accept you know,
a million other death bet testimonies, you know, unrelated. I mean,
(39:16):
we can't have it both ways. When you have former
astronauts like edgar Mitchell, when you have even former presidents,
you know, Bill Clinton, who's publicly you know that the
one thing that they wouldn't tell me the truth about,
aside from even the Keunty assassination, that whole Webster Hubble
story about. I want the truth about UFOs and the
truth about the County assassination. You'll see what you can
(39:38):
find me. That type of thing we have former governors
like Bill Richardson of New Mexico that this is clearly,
you know, a cover up and they're not telling us
the truth. So I'm a good company. The late Congressman
Stephen Shift the fact that he was stonewall left and right,
and all we were trying to do was open up
the files and have hearings on Roswell. And now finally
run for the fact that how convenient, and now we
(40:01):
have hearings. Now we have so called whistleblowers, when at
its peak of our ROS investigation, we had over one hundred,
over one hundred first ten witnesses And just imagine Major
Jesse Marcel in front of that congressional hearing and say
I held it in my hands and it was not
(40:23):
from this earth, and he says that onder oath, my
God overnight.
Speaker 4 (40:28):
Absolutely, I think about that all the time. What's the
single most important fact you think about Roswell? That people
don't understand.
Speaker 5 (40:37):
The human element involved the fact that they were threatening children,
That they were going into private citizens' homes, sequestering parents
in one room, children in another, and telling the parents
we will kill your children. If you ever talk about
(40:58):
this again, then strong arming the children you will never
see your parents again. We will take you out into
the desert and they will find your bones, you know,
next spring, that type of thing. What would possess our
government to resort to such extreme measures over something again
as mundane as a weather balloon.
Speaker 4 (41:20):
I'm sorry that those people could still be alive and reachable, right, yes, yes, yes,
And that's where that's a piece of the puzzle that
I think matters.
Speaker 5 (41:30):
And that's why I've already I emphasize in Washington that
if any official, including the very President of the United
States again, politics withstanding, Roswell has nothing to do with politics,
but that if you will come to Roswell, I will
fill up that theater, that video room fifty people. It's
(41:52):
my family members, and you can hear from them firsthand,
the fear, the intimidation, what they live with all these
years over a blow.
Speaker 4 (42:02):
Well, Don, we're actually getting people in Congress to take
this topic seriously. The government's looked at more openly than
they have before, so maybe this will actually happen. Don,
We're out of time, but thanks so much man. As always,
I really appreciate your insights. Hey, where's the best place
people can reach you? Or maybe if they're out there
and they know something that you'd want to hear. How
can they do that?
Speaker 5 (42:21):
Of course through the International UFO Museum in Roswell, where
I'm the chief investigator, as well as our website which
is Roswell Investigators dot com. And I'm also on Facebook
under Donald Raymond Schmidt, and I make it a point
I respond to everybody, to anybody, and we're still open
(42:44):
to any leads, any information, no matter how insignificant you
may think it is to us.
Speaker 4 (42:50):
It may not except me. I reach out to him
on there and he ignores it. So I don't know
what to say about netfolks, but thanks you guys. To
find me on Twitter and Instagram at CIITV Underscore Captain Ron.
Stay connected by checking out contact inthedesert dot com. Stay
open minded and rational as we explore the unknown right
here on the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast am Paranormal
Podcast Network.
Speaker 1 (43:19):
Thanks for listening to the iHeartRadio and Coast to Coast
Day and Paranormal Podcast Network. Make sure and check out
all our shows on the iHeartRadio app or by going
to iHeartRadio dot com
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