701. David Marler

In this exclusive interview, Martin Willis of Podcast UFO speaks with David Marler, Executive Director of the National UFO Historical Records Center (NUFOHRC). Marler has assembled one of the world’s largest collections of UFO books, case files, newspapers, recordings, and government documents—preserving over 75 years of UFO history. We’ll explore: How Marler built his vast UFO archive, The mission of the National UFO Historical Records Center in New Mexico, Why safeguarding these documents is critical for future research, Insights from historic UFO cases hidden in the archives, The importance of making these records accessible to researchers, educators, and the public.
SHOW NOTES

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:14):
Hello, and welcome to the show.

Speaker 2 (00:15):
And Martin willis share host and we have one of
my very favorite guests on. He hasn't been on in
a while, a year and a half or something. David Marler.
Always a pleasure. And someone had asked me on another show,
and I'm not sure if it's I was on John Kerriaku.
I was on his show, The CIA x CIA. He

(00:39):
has a great show.

Speaker 1 (00:40):
I was on that, and.

Speaker 2 (00:43):
I do believe it was him who asked me who
I would trust to release the information from the United States,
like if we found contact for sure, one hundred percent proof,
And I said David Marler.

Speaker 1 (00:57):
And I mean that.

Speaker 2 (00:59):
I really there's few people out there with as much
integrity that look into the UFO topic. And I'm not
trying to belittle anyone else. I'm just saying he's right
up top with integrity, and he has a archive. We're
going to be talking about that. It's just so many

(01:21):
things have happened since he's been on last and I'm
going to be bringing that up as well. A lot
of people remember Ray Stanford, who has been on the
show a number of times over the years, and right
from the beginning when I started in twenty eleven. I
think he was on like twenty twelve, twenty thirteen, and
I had the pleasure of being in race home in

(01:47):
Maryland and looking through his massive collection of you name
it photos, all kinds of clips of videos of all
these sightings that he had over the years. And we're
going all the way back to the nineteen seventies when
he had all this electrical equipment out detection equipment out

(02:08):
in Texas and he had I think they raised about
a million dollars back in the nineteen seventies for all
this equipment.

Speaker 1 (02:16):
Anyway, so Ray passed away.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
I mentioned that on the show several months ago, and
there is some.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
People trying to raise funds to get.

Speaker 2 (02:29):
His archive together and put in a good location, perhaps
maybe even the.

Speaker 1 (02:38):
Where we're going to be talking with.

Speaker 2 (02:39):
Dave today and his archive perhaps a place like that.
So anyway, I'm going to put this in the show notes.
I would like for you to if you can, if
you have the means, to help raise the money so
we can take care of all this great information that
can be passed on for generations ahead. So that's kind

(02:59):
of what this show is going to be talking about,
is preserving the history and with no further ado, bringing
in Dave Marler.

Speaker 1 (03:09):
Are you doing David? Great to see you again.

Speaker 2 (03:12):
So let me ask you, do you finally have some
room in your garage?

Speaker 3 (03:17):
Well, the running joke for the last year year and
a half has been and in fact I made this
comment during our ribbon cutting ceremony a year ago. In
the partnership with the public school system providing us with
public buildings for our archives. They not only helped preserve
UFO history, they help preserve my marriage because my wife
was getting fed up with all of the UFO material

(03:38):
that was filling every room in the house.

Speaker 4 (03:39):
So now all that UFO.

Speaker 3 (03:41):
Material is in a nice, secure facility and again in
partnership with the real Rancho public school System. My thanks
to them, and the last year has just been a whirlwind.
But we'll be talking about that during the show, I'm sure.

Speaker 1 (03:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:53):
And do you still have that the area in your
garage though we have the desk, is everything moved over there?

Speaker 3 (04:00):
Everything is now at the archives, yes, be able to
park in the garage.

Speaker 4 (04:06):
Yes, yes.

Speaker 3 (04:07):
There is actually separation of church and state now. So
there's my personal life and then there's the archive.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
Yeah, yeah, that's a great, that's a great thing. I'm
so glad.

Speaker 2 (04:17):
And you know, it was so hard for you to
refuse things when you'd hear these collections.

Speaker 1 (04:21):
How could you refuse them? You had to do something
with them.

Speaker 4 (04:24):
We don't say no.

Speaker 3 (04:25):
We don't say no because you know, so many collections.
We don't often talk about this, but so many collections
have not had succession plans and ultimately wound up in
a landfill somewhere. Yes, we don't often talk about the
ones we lost. We like to talk about the ones
that we've salvaged.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Well, I do remember, and you do have this collection?
Was the guy bought at a yard sale?

Speaker 1 (04:50):
Right? It was he founded a yard sale. I'm trying
to remember. He was on my show, But eventually it
got to you.

Speaker 4 (04:56):
Was that the blue book material?

Speaker 1 (04:58):
That's correct? Yeah?

Speaker 4 (04:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:59):
It was actually a storage unit that went into arrears
on payments, and so it was like storage wars where
people were coming in to bid on these units. And
this one particular unit, which was outside of Dayton, Ohio,
had a bunch of lumber piled up, and so the
gentleman bid on it. He thought, Okay, this is great,
I've got some cheap lumber. For my construction company, and

(05:22):
he won the bid, and he and his crew started
hauling out just stacks of two by fours in plywood
and to the very back of the storage unit, literally
tucked away for decades, where two or three large boxes
marked Project Blue Book. And it was in the Dayton area,
so it was near right Patterson, so it's in the
right locale. But long story short, the gentleman could care

(05:46):
less about the UFO subject, and he posted all this
on Craig's list and mister Rob Mercer in Ohio Spreyfield, Ohio,
who actually ultimately purchased it from this gentleman. And in
his research he kept coming across a name in the
original Blue Book documents and it was Lieutenant Carmen Morano.

(06:08):
And I think you and your audience will agree that's
not a common name. It's not like Joe Smith. And
so he looked up the name Carmen Morano and there
was one gentleman by that name that he found on
the Internet and it led to an email address which
led to a phone number. Long story short, he did
strike up conversation with Lieutenant Carmon Morano and he is,
in fact one of the last Blue Book staff members,

(06:30):
and there's a photo if you google Project blue Book
staff photo. There's two famous photos, but one shows a
very slim, darker skinned gentleman standing behind Hector Quintinella, who
was in charge of Blue Book in the mid late sixties,
and that's Lieutenant Carmen Morano. And long story short, they
struck up a rapport and after about the third or

(06:52):
fourth phone call, Carmen Morano told Rob, it seems like
you're really enjoying that material. I think I've got two
or three boxes out here in Pennsylvania where I moved to,
and he sent that material out and then ultimately Rob
was very kind and generous and donating that material to myself,
which is now part of the holdings at the National
UFO Historical Record Center.

Speaker 1 (07:12):
Wow, that's great.

Speaker 2 (07:13):
So it looks like we have someone right there and
Rio Rancho right next right there happens to be watching. Yeah.
So yes, you're the building. Let's let's hear about the
building you said that belongs to the schools the local Yes,
and how much square foot did do you have there?

Speaker 4 (07:33):
Well?

Speaker 3 (07:34):
Currently, let me see, I have to I think we
have roughly three thousand square feet total, but we're looking
to expand. As I like to say, it's proof of concept.
But just for the backstory, I had started reaching out
to the mayor, to the city council. I also presented
to the county commissioners. I was introduced to the county
chairperson and he had asked, would you like to come

(07:57):
and present this to the city the county council, which
I did in twenty twenty three, and ultimately, I mean,
I can't tell you how many meetings I was engaged
with Martin to get where we are, but it ultimately
led me to the public school system and they stated
that they actually had some portable classrooms that they were
not using, and so they were kind enough to provide

(08:21):
those buildings for our use. And over the course of
the last year, we've done major innovations. They've done major
innovations with the ground. We have a private parking lot,
security fencing, automated gate. Both the building and the facilities
are all badge access only, security cameras, alarm systems, bulletproof

(08:42):
glass on the buildings. When they saw the nature of
what we had original bluebook military files going back to
forty seven. As a visitor recently was State Senator Jay
Block from New Mexico, he visited us about a month ago,
posted on Facebook after he had seen what we had
twice Martin. He said this, Now, this is a state

(09:04):
senator saying this about a UFO archive. He told his
audience on his Facebook page, this is a national treasure.

Speaker 1 (09:11):
Wow, and so awesome.

Speaker 3 (09:14):
That's the level of support that we're starting to garner.
We're looking to help hopefully secure some county funds, some
state funds, and continue to grow this. This is just
at the beginning, and that's great.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
You know.

Speaker 2 (09:26):
The thing of it is is think about how much
has changed since you and I started talking, you know,
ever since. I have to say, I always go back
to the New York Times article in twenty seventeen, where
the stigma has just lifted so much since that time,
because I don't think that would have happened with that

(09:47):
senator prior to that. I don't believe he'd say that.

Speaker 3 (09:51):
It's not often that you can point to one specific day,
one specific event that truly was a sea change that
changed everything to your point, you know, December twenty seventeen
with the New York Times article, everything changed and so
many people that are coming to the archives. Now, so
many people that are contacting me state I really never

(10:12):
gave this UFO subject any thought until twenty seventeen.

Speaker 2 (10:17):
That's right, Yep, yep, that's really something. So I want
to ask you, what how did this whole thing start?
How did it start with you?

Speaker 3 (10:29):
Well, I mean going back to nineteen ninety and I'm
dating myself as this coming January, I'll be have been
actively involved in the.

Speaker 4 (10:36):
UFO field for thirty six years.

Speaker 3 (10:39):
When I first got involved actively in nineteen ninety, i
joined moufon. I thought to myself, if I'm going to
go out and investigate, I should know what I'm talking about.
So naively and I look back, it was so naive
on my part. I was looking at local library branches
in my area, thinking I could check out all these
books on UFOs, and to my surprise, there were little

(10:59):
or no book looks on the subject in any of
the library branches I was going to. So at the time,
and again this is really prior to the internet blossoming,
it was just primarily bulletin boards back in nineteen ninety. Still,
I started going to use bookstores in the Saint Louis
area where I'm originally from and slowly started cobbling together
a library. And by library, I mean a bookcase in

(11:22):
my living room. Then it occupied, you know, a small
room in my home, than a large room in my home,
than multiple rooms in my home. And as I like
to say, the laws of physics, it talks about the
larger the mass, the greater the gravitational pull, the more
that we gather, the more people are coming out of
the woodwork saying we have collections, we have material. I

(11:42):
would like to donate this item, I would like to
donate this collection. And so it's been a snowball effect.
And unfortunately, on a sad note, and I speak for
both of us on this, you know, we sometimes inherit
these collections, not under the best conditions, you know, our
mutual dear friend Lisepiegel, for example. I still miss Lee.
I still expect him to call me all the time.

(12:04):
We had so many late night conversations, as I know
you did.

Speaker 1 (12:07):
I talk about it all the time.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
Yeah, But it's unfortunately under circumstances like that that we
inherit those files. And literally days after before or after
I can't remember, because that was a really bad time,
but a day or two before or after Lee passed.
David Perkins, another dear friend of mine here in Santa Fe,
New Mexico, passed away. And for those that didn't know David,

(12:30):
he actually showed Linda how the Ropes in the early
mid seventies about cattle mutilations. Both he and Tom Adams,
who was they were really pioneers with regard to the
cattle mutilation mystery. And so he passed away and his
widow contacted me. I was actually working with him up
until the point where he died, because he knew he
had to do something with his collection, and so I

(12:50):
started getting his collection before he passed, and then I
had to go to his home after he had passed
and work with his widow. So it's unfortunately under those
conditions we quite all can get those collections now. On
a positive note, it's not always gloom and doom. Antonio
Huneus reached out to me and he was wanting to
sell his collection several years ago. And Antonio had a
wide range of foreign material, rare foreign material and books

(13:15):
and journals, and so we have that in the library.
And then one of the other stories, which I don't
often talk about, we talked about Rob mercer with the
blue Book files and how those surfaced. The backstory on
some of these are just funny. I got contacted and
I literally do not know who originally reached out to me,
but there was a self proclaimed dumpster diver in New
York State who claimed that he had all this historic

(13:37):
UFO material. So after a successive number of emails that
led to phone calls, come to find out that he
was going into this dumpster where a family was throwing
all this material out. Well, it was the family of
doctor Leon Davidson. Leon Davidson worked on the Manhattan Project.

Speaker 4 (13:54):
He was a.

Speaker 3 (13:55):
Prolific UFO investigator researcher in the fifties, sixties and sees.
And he had passed away several years ago, and ostensibly
his collection resided at Columbia University as alma mater. But
this gentleman was finding original correspondents, his college degree certificates

(14:17):
from the War Department thanking him for his work on
the Manhattan Project correspondence and case files. And so, long
story short, I purchased the collection. And that's another collection.

Speaker 4 (14:28):
That we have.

Speaker 3 (14:28):
But this is one that was literally in the trash
ready to go to a landfill. This gentleman on successful
successive nights, and he even added some nights it was
raining and I would have to close the lid on
the dumpster, and I was in there with a flashlight
gathering up all but original correspondence from Kenneth Arnold, just
to give people an idea what we're talking about, and

(14:51):
any big name from the nineteen fifties, there was correspondence
to and from those individuals.

Speaker 2 (14:56):
Now, when we had a conversation the other day, I
told you that I'm reading this book and it escapes
my mind. I just traveled down to South Carolina and
brought it with me. But you knew the book right away.

Speaker 1 (15:07):
It was probably that's it, Yes, and you know, reading
that it might have been Mysteries of the Guys, that's it.

Speaker 4 (15:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:15):
And who is the author of that, Lauren?

Speaker 4 (15:18):
It was Harold and Knowel and Gordon Lore.

Speaker 1 (15:23):
That's a White Tower. Yes, Yes, great, great book so
far that I'm reading into it.

Speaker 2 (15:28):
But it's so funny to read. They're talking about Kenneth
Arnold And they said, and so that was twenty years
we've been looking into this topic.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
Well, And as we also talked about, that was the
first really good book that focused a chapter on the
Battle of La Incident, which is of course one of
my favorite cases.

Speaker 1 (15:47):
That's right, and I'm going to be talking to.

Speaker 2 (15:51):
Josh I have Joshua bertrand researcher coming up on Thursday,
and we're going to be talking about the Lighter than
the air ships and things like that, which is in
this book. They talk about the ghost ships and they
set eighteen ninety six, eighteen ninety seven. Yes, and I'll
be darn if they don't talk about a cattle.

Speaker 1 (16:13):
Mutilation back there. Yes, yes, I mean that whole story
is just amazing.

Speaker 4 (16:18):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (16:18):
And in fact, we get the question asked while we're
talking about airships. One of the questions I often get asked,
Martin is what's the oldest item you have in the archives?
And the thing I point to is we have original
framed front page originals, not copies eighteen ninety seven airship
newspaper accounts.

Speaker 2 (16:38):
Yeah, yeah, you know, and there are records going way back,
you know. I mean, you know a lot further than that,
but I mean that's still you know, but for your archive,
that's what you have, as far as you know, the oldest,
which is quite amazing. And since you did the book
on the triangle UFOs. I know what happens when books

(16:58):
like this come out, all of a sudden, all these
people get a hold of you and say, well, I
got to tell you about my encounter and my encounter.

Speaker 1 (17:04):
I'm sure you've had a lot of that.

Speaker 3 (17:06):
Well, yeah, and I was not expecting that. When I
wrote the book. I was wanting to get the information
out there. I did not expect to have people flooding
me with additional reports.

Speaker 1 (17:16):
And I have.

Speaker 2 (17:17):
I've talked to you about a number of things that
I've heard from different people. But still, what would you
say would be the first triangle that was noted?

Speaker 3 (17:26):
Well, as I always like to preface stating, the further
you go back in time, the less detailed the accounts are,
so you know it's for example, we have reports to
answer your question from like eighteen eighty one, and from
that general timeframe. I have an original Scientific American from
eighteen eighty two that talks about what sounds like the

(17:48):
sighting of two triangles in Connecticut. But admittedly, when you're
looking at these little reports that are often a paragraph
or two in these publications from the eighteen hundreds, they're
not as detailed or exhausted as a military report, say
from nineteen fifty five or nineteen fifty nine, where you
have wins, a loft data, you have radar, you have

(18:10):
all these other elements, but there are these interesting, I
would say, intriguing, highly intriguing reports of what appeared to
be triangular objects for lack of a better term, in
the late nineteenth century.

Speaker 2 (18:25):
I did tell you about a listener of this show.
I haven't heard from her for a while, but her
name is Katie. She lives in Australia and back in
the nineteen early in nineteen eighties, I believe it, when
she was a young girl with her grandmother, a triangle
came over them when they were in the garden, and

(18:47):
she said that forced them to the ground. Then pressure
pushed them down down to the ground. I do think
I told you about that, but maybe I do.

Speaker 4 (18:56):
That one doesn't ring a bell. That's pretty intriguing.

Speaker 1 (19:00):
Yeah, yep.

Speaker 2 (19:00):
So here's the thing that a lot of people will
say to me, or I've heard people say on other
shows and things like that, is that all these triangles
that people are seeing, they're just they're military, you know, projects,
and you know you hear about all that, but they
never talk about, oh well, there were some in the fifties,
you know, and if that's the case, if we had

(19:22):
that technology in the fifties, we certainly wouldn't be able
to keep it quiet that long.

Speaker 1 (19:26):
Yeah my opinion.

Speaker 4 (19:27):
Yeah, I agree.

Speaker 3 (19:28):
Now, I like to kind of words matter, so I
always like to try to answer this very carefully. We
don't know today what state of the art technology is
as far as compartmented classified projects.

Speaker 4 (19:42):
We really don't know the.

Speaker 3 (19:44):
State of aircraft unless you're involved in those projects. But
so some in answer to your position, some of these
may be military that people are seeing today. However, the
flight characteristics, the lighting characteristics, those elements are identical to
reports we have going back to the forties, fifties, sixties,

(20:06):
and more specifically, I think we need to emphasize this
martin worldwide, not just the United States, worldwide reports and
so even reports of these triangles flying with the flat
end as the leading edge, I mean reports of that today.
We have reports from the fifties and sixties of these things.

Speaker 1 (20:25):
Yeah, or there's been a couple of them that they've
been on like.

Speaker 4 (20:30):
A vertical correct.

Speaker 3 (20:32):
Yeah, there's a case from Connecticut I believe it was
nineteen sixty two or sixty four with a sketch showing
a triangle on edge like that with the point of
light at each and then a red light in the middle.

Speaker 1 (20:46):
So just like people talk about yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:49):
Yeah, And while we're on that subject, i'd love just
to mention this briefly. We've garnered a lot of attention
with the work that we've been doing with the Archives
in assembling all of this historical data. And I can't
go into too much specifics because I don't want to
jeopardize the relationships I'm building right now. But we have
been contacted by agencies from DoD and DOJ, and I

(21:10):
was contacted for two reasons. This is kind of tying
these two things that we're talking about together. They're interested
in the history that we've assembled, and we've even had
a visitor from DoD that actually came to the Archives
to see it firsthand. But also, and again these are
separate encounters that I'm having. Agency from DD agency from

(21:32):
DOJ when they approached me, said we also want to
talk to you about your research on triangles, and both
these individuals separately said I'm currently reading your book, and
they literally showed me the book, they had it in
their hand. And so the point is that it's the
research that I've done on triangles, the work we're doing

(21:52):
on the historical archives and assembling what could arguably be
upwards of one hundred thousand historic case files, both foreign
and into MESSI. It is starting to generate official attention.
People are starting to stand up and take notice of it,
and we're continuing dialogue in those areas. But I know
a lot of conspiracy theorists say, well, I hate to

(22:14):
have all that material in one place. You know it's
going to be an easy target for the government. Well,
they're not flying in with black helicopters. They're not breaking
in and stealing it. They're contacting me and politely saying
can we come and can we look at the archives?

Speaker 4 (22:27):
We would like to see the material that you've assembled.

Speaker 3 (22:29):
So there's this collegial relationship that I'm trying to build
with official DUM, which is gratifying because when I first
and in fact the lectures out there on YouTube, I
think you can find it when I was pitching the
idea for the National UFO Historical Record Center, right before
we got our five oh one C three status. I
stated that I wished officials from the government would acknowledge

(22:53):
and focus on pre two thousand and four. In other words,
this phenomenon existed before the Tictak incident. But as you know, Martin,
a lot of the official dialogue for several years now
has been two thousand and four. Moving forward, well, arguably
we have eighty years of data. And I mean we
at the archives. We have the case files from NIGHTCAP,

(23:15):
the largest civilian UFO organization that ever existed. We have
all of their case files. We have the Center for
UFO Study case files. We also one of the feathers
in our CAP, which I'm very proud to say have
rescued and now have made publicly available the lost APRO files.
And so bringing all these case files, and those are
the large ones, I have a list of about eight

(23:36):
to ten other smaller collections as well. But bringing all
this material together, I can tell you, Martin, from visiting
researchers that have come, they've pulled the NIGHTCAP file on
a case and then they thought, let me see if
APRO had an investigation. And Jan Aldridge, who just moved
out here, one of the leading historians on the subject,
he just moved here two weeks ago to work in

(23:56):
the archives. He was looking at a case from the
nineteen fifties and he was looking at the Nightcap file.

Speaker 4 (24:03):
He goes, let me.

Speaker 3 (24:03):
See if APRO has anything. And for the first time,
and from a research standpoint, think about this. For the
first time, he had the ability to have the original
NIGHTCAP file in front of him. Now having the original
APRO file and no surprise to you or your audience,
Nightcap interviewed witnesses, APRO didn't and vice versa, and Jan

(24:24):
sat back. He had this epiphany. He sat back and
looked at me and he said, for the first time,
we're getting a holistic picture of this case because now
we have these data sets that we can bring together.

Speaker 1 (24:34):
Hmm.

Speaker 4 (24:35):
Very nice.

Speaker 2 (24:36):
And if you can digitize eventually, No, that's what you
want to do, Yes, then think about what you could
do with that we have. And thank you for saying that,
because I wanted to go there. Our mantra, our unofficial
mantra myself and my volunteers is centralization and digitization. We
can't digitize all this until we centralize it. Well, we've

(24:57):
done a pretty good job thus far of doing that.
We now have the facilities, the workspace. We're talking to
two or three different third party groups currently to secure
significant funding with the express purpose of what you said, Martin,
to digitize this material so data analysts can look at it,
utilize AI technology. But the thing we want to do,

(25:18):
and this is really a message for your audience and
anyone that's listening, we want to take the physical files
that we've preserved and now centralized, digitize it and our
goal is to upload it for the worldwide community. Very nice,
that's really nice. And you know this is for a
preservation for the future. That's why I get really excited
about this because I love historic things anyway, you know.

Speaker 3 (25:41):
On the history not as well as you know, both
inside and outside of UFOs.

Speaker 1 (25:45):
That's right. Yeah, same here.

Speaker 2 (25:46):
So when when it comes to what you're what you're
trying to do, and then you get contacted by you said.

Speaker 1 (25:58):
The d O D and the d D D, yeah,
it just makes me wonder, what do you think they want?
What do you think they wanted to find out?

Speaker 3 (26:06):
What do you think they want to look for a
common theme. I don't want to go into too many
specifics right now. Again, I don't want to, you know,
talk out of turn. But I will be honest with you.
Both groups again separately approaching me, which I thought was interesting.
Interested they're both interested in triangles, they're both interested in
the history put together. I will tell you that they

(26:26):
both conceded very humbly. We don't know the history you do,
and they're acknowledging that they need too much. As I
said in twenty twenty two, we need to look beyond
two thousand and four. And my response was yes, because
if you're looking at this stuff for the first time,
it's all new. The reality is everything that's being reported

(26:49):
today with a fair degree of you know, totality, has
been reported over the decades. In fact, I told Lou
Elizondo once at a conference. I was sitting next to him,
and I said, with all due respect to Lou, who's
sitting here. When the five observables were announced, myself and
my colleagues and probably yourself as well, Martin, we kind
of chuckled because these these are nothing new. These are

(27:11):
characteristics that are exemplified in all of the case files
that we have.

Speaker 1 (27:16):
Right right, So, but here's the thing. What about going
all the way back to when was it nineteen fifty two?
When the first you know, government project was it Grunge?

Speaker 3 (27:28):
What was before well signed sign was project Sign end
of forty seven begin beginning of forty eight. Yeah, so
that was right off the bat.

Speaker 2 (27:39):
So I mean that is the government looking all the
way back then into and so they should have like
that part of the historic records themselves.

Speaker 3 (27:49):
They do, but they were surprised when I mentioned that
we have some of the quote unquote Missing Blue Book
files that are not part of the National Archives holdings,
which were discovered in doctor j. Allen Heinez's collection. We
have some of the files that are not part of
the official record.

Speaker 1 (28:04):
So are a lot of the records in the National Archives?

Speaker 4 (28:09):
Oh? Yes, yeah they were.

Speaker 3 (28:12):
When Blue Bucks shut down in December sixty nine, they
went to Maxwell Air Force Base where they were microfilmed
and then later they were then transitioned to the National Archives.

Speaker 1 (28:22):
I see, and I know McDonald.

Speaker 4 (28:26):
What's his first name, James McDonald.

Speaker 1 (28:28):
James McDonald. His collections at a university is a University.

Speaker 3 (28:33):
Of Arizona in Tucson, and I highly recommend anyone that's
interested in history or in James McDonald and his work
please go there. And I only say that because They
have a beautiful setup. I was there myself several years ago.
I wish I had the time to go back, but
I'm just very busy right now locally with the archive,
our own archive. The staff there is extremely accommodating, and

(28:55):
the amount of material that you can go through you
could spend a lifetime.

Speaker 1 (29:00):
Wow, you know, I'm going to be there next week.

Speaker 4 (29:03):
I would recommend stopping in that area.

Speaker 1 (29:06):
I think I will. I think I will.

Speaker 3 (29:08):
Yeah, I think you would because you get to literally
hold doctor James McDonald's original handwritten notes and you can
listen to the recordings the interviews he did with witnesses,
and it's just in fact I went there at the
urging of Stanton Friedman. I told Stan several years ago
I was going to start looking into the Farmington, New
Mexico flying Saucer Armada from nineteen fifty and he looked

(29:31):
at me and he goes, typical Stan. He had a
little twinkle in his eye and he goes, you might
want to check James McDonald's material. I think Jim looked
into that back in the sixties and he was right.
I found material. It really helped my research.

Speaker 1 (29:44):
Yeah, I missed Stan Boy he was.

Speaker 2 (29:46):
He was such a character and you know, and a
lot of the new people that are getting into the UFOs.

Speaker 1 (29:52):
We'll talk a little bit about that later, but you know,
they have no clue if you know.

Speaker 2 (29:56):
I mean, he's you know, he's been gone what four
or five years now, and.

Speaker 3 (30:01):
Yeah, yeah, I was honored to have him here at
my home. And I believe it was twenty sixteen or
twenty seventeen he came to speak in Albuquerque and we
were able to have him over along with some local
UFO enthusiasts and it was a really nice time and
I'll always remember that.

Speaker 1 (30:17):
Oh yeah, that's awesome.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Yeah, yeah, I got to I got to visit with
him and do a retirement show with him, and then
he came back out of retirement.

Speaker 4 (30:30):
So well, he did what he enjoyed. Literally until he's right,
you know, that's rights. He did what he enjoyed.

Speaker 2 (30:37):
Yeah, yeah, that's right, that's right. So so what do
you have. You've watched the trends of you know, what's
happening in the UFO world. Yeah, and I've seen, you
know a lot of things happen as well. And the
audience is stretched thin compared to because there's so many
people in the UFO topic.

Speaker 1 (30:58):
Now.

Speaker 2 (30:58):
I was at Contact in the Desert and I was
sitting at a table and someone said, I think everyone
at this table is a podcaster. And then there was
a guy standing there and he goes, who in this
whole you know, who in this whole conference is not
a podcaster?

Speaker 4 (31:15):
You know?

Speaker 1 (31:15):
It just seems like there's you know, there was very
very few when I started, and now there's someone told
me this five hundred. Now that might be an exaggeration.

Speaker 3 (31:25):
Well, I'm on the UFO topic. It's amazing how many
podcasts are out there. And I will tell you one
of the number one questions I get, why don't you
do a podcast? And my response is I barely have
enough time to bathe and feed myself as it is
with my day job, my family and working at the
archives and doing my historical research.

Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah. I mean if you were retired, that would be
a different.

Speaker 4 (31:49):
Thing, exactly.

Speaker 1 (31:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (31:51):
Yeah, But but no, I leave the podcast to professionals
like yourself, Martin. That's not my area of expertise, my
my area. In fact, I was remarking very moved here
from Colorado recently. He was with Colorado movein He's a
dear friend and colleague, and he, much like jam which
I mentioned earlier, retired and literally moved from Colorado here

(32:13):
to the Albuquerque area with the express purpose of working
in the archives. I mean, we have people uprooting their
lives to come and be part of this, which is
truly humbling. But Barry and I have talked about, you know,
the whole aspect of the history and the importance of
getting it preserved.

Speaker 1 (32:30):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's so great. And I you know
we mentioned offline when we were talking about the archives
in Sweden, right, that's.

Speaker 4 (32:41):
Yes, yes, archives for the unexplained.

Speaker 1 (32:43):
Yes, and that's and that's cost fun or he has
some involvement in it, I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (32:49):
Yes, oh, yes, yes.

Speaker 1 (32:51):
Great guy. I've been on the show a number of times.
I always enjoyed talking to him.

Speaker 3 (32:55):
They just celebrated i think their fiftieth anniversary of the
last year or two, and so, you know, we really
wanted to emulate what they've done. I mean, the idea
of having an archive certainly is nothing new, but it
is new specific to the United States. And I always
like to let people pause for a minute and think
about this. When you look at the organizations Martin that

(33:15):
have been prolific names right in the history, Apro, NICAP, move.

Speaker 4 (33:21):
On, KUFOS.

Speaker 3 (33:24):
All of those were organizations formed with the express purpose
of investigating and research. We've never had a large scale
national archive dedicated to preservation of the history and making
that history available to others. And so we didn't create
a nonprofit just to create a nonprofit. I've got plenty

(33:44):
of work on my plate already, but we felt there
was a need, you know, we needed to fill that
void here in the United States to preserve the history
of the subject. Because as you know, going back to
twenty seventeen, as you alluded to, we've not only seen
the general public wake up to the subject of UFOs.

Speaker 4 (34:02):
The reality of UFOs.

Speaker 3 (34:04):
We are now starting to see academia and a great
example is the Soul Foundation. The PhD researchers that are
part of that. They're starting to come into this and
just recently I was invited date to be determined, but
in the spring I'll be speaking at Yale University on
the subject and the work that we're doing. So this

(34:25):
is a sign of the times. But as I like
to say, it's great that we have PhDs coming into
the field, But where are you going to get your data?
And I would argue a lot of that data resides
at the National UFO Historical Record Center, Siting reports, radar reports,
Commercial airline pilots, sidings, etc. Audio recordings, video recordings, photographs.

(34:47):
We have every element of history, artifacts and relics from
famous UFO cases, and so it's great that we have
academia coming in, but we need to afford them the
opportunity to access this critical data because we talk about
a historical archive Martin, when I talked to the public
school system, I was trying to convey this. We're not
a World War two museum where we have uniforms on display.

(35:11):
This is an historical archive that I want to put
this forth to you in your audience. These are case files.
These are all potential data points when we're looking at trends,
patterns and correlations in the data. And as the DoD
and DJ both articulated to me, we're getting current reports,
but we want to compare them to what historically has

(35:34):
been reported. It provides context for the contemporary reporting.

Speaker 2 (35:39):
Right absolutely, So when you get like a collection, I
would think it would be impossible to save everything.

Speaker 1 (35:47):
How do you go through it and what do you.

Speaker 2 (35:51):
How do you decide what you want to preserve and
what you shouldn't be preserving.

Speaker 3 (35:56):
Absolutely anything, I mean anything related to this subject. If
it's directly related to the subject, we will preserve. But
as you can appreciate, Martin, a lot of these families
will send us collections, we'll find personal mementos. In fact,
I'm glad you asked this question because I did not
want to forget to mention this. About a month ago,
about five weeks ago now, I had the incredible opportunity

(36:20):
to meet Larry Lorenzen, the son of Jim and Coral Lorenzen,
who founded Group. I had been trying to reach out
to Larry since November twenty twenty three when we acquired
the collection, and I failed every email I had, every
phone number I had, it just they weren't valid. I
did a podcast for a local university in Arizona, and

(36:42):
as a result of that, a friend of Larry's heard
it and said, hey, they're talking about your parents, and
so he reached out through our website as a result,
and then he and I met five weeks ago. But
to your point, in going through the app profiles, I
found this incredibly, incredibly beautiful Valentine and state card. It
was very large from I believe it was nineteen sixty four,

(37:05):
and it was from Jim Lorenzen to Coral Lorenzen, and
it said, to my dear.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
Love, you know, I love him so much.

Speaker 3 (37:10):
And that has no relevance to UFOs, but obviously that
has relevance to the family. So I brought that and
I gave that to him.

Speaker 1 (37:17):
He had never seen it.

Speaker 3 (37:19):
And then I found and I did not know this,
but Coral Lorenzen, besides raising a family and working and
heading up APRO along with her husband Jim, she loved
to do watercolor paintings. And we had a watercolor painting
I found in the bottom of a box that had
been tucked away for thirty five years. So I framed

(37:39):
that and I presented that to Larry and it's now
hanging in his office and his home.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Wow, he must have just loved that.

Speaker 3 (37:46):
Well his comment to me when I was presenting these,
he started tearing.

Speaker 4 (37:50):
Up a little bit.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
Oh yeah, you know, he was frustrated, as we all were,
that his parents' legacy had been locked away for thirty
five years. And when I presented these moments and I
told him, look, we now have a public facility. Your
parents work can now be accessible for everyone that's interested,
and we don't charge for it. And he started tearing
up and he said, Dave, he goes. This is heeled

(38:14):
a very decades long wound for me, knowing that this
material is finally available and to the public because that's
what my parents wanted.

Speaker 1 (38:22):
Wow, that must make you feel so great.

Speaker 3 (38:25):
I was very proud, and I told him we're honored
to preserve their legacy because literally it was their their
it was their life.

Speaker 1 (38:31):
Yeah, that's right, that's right. So when you were.

Speaker 2 (38:38):
Trying to preserve all these things, and there must be
so many challenges. I think of the different things, the films,
the posters, the anything. Everything's biodegradable basically, and you have
to figure out how to handle these things, yes, or
have other people handle and make sure that things aren't
you know, I mean, yes, it must be really tricky.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
Oh yeah, we do cotton gloves, we do the acid
free paper, we do all of the archival aspects. In fact,
we just several months ago, not recently, but several months ago,
we went through and we had correspondence from doctor Carl Young,
between Apro and Carl Young, the father of Youngian psychology.
And there's a lot of Carl Young fans out there,

(39:21):
and so we now have all of his letters enclosed
in this archival booklet where you can leave through and
actually see the original letters to and from Carl Young,
between Carl Young and Apro, and so just an incredible
amount of history. We also have a letter from Lyndon
Johnson when he was a senator. We have on a

(39:42):
darker chapter, we have a letter from Joe McCarthy, believe
it or not, Senator Joe McCarthy, and a number of
other ones. We have a letter from Carl Sagan. We
have a couple of letters from Gerald Ford, who was
of course a state representative in Michigan when the sixty
six sightings occurred. So, as I mentioned to some visitors
that have come in, sometimes wives of husbands or husbands

(40:04):
of wives that aren't interested in the subject, they still
find fascination because even if you're not steeped in UFO lore,
these are names that most people would identify with or recognize.

Speaker 1 (40:15):
Right. Wow, So.

Speaker 2 (40:20):
Let's see, I had a question here someone had posted,
Oh yes, and I think it's a great one, and
I know you're not going to want to answer it.
If you had to pick out the most amazing thing
in the whole entire collection and you could only choose one, Oh,

(40:43):
what would that be?

Speaker 4 (40:45):
That is a hard one.

Speaker 3 (40:47):
Yeah, Well, I'll answer it with the understanding that there's
probably three or four other items that would be like
right up there with that. I would have to say.
I alluded to this earlier. I loved the Battle of
La incidents. Interesting chapter in World War two history. Arguably
it's a chapter in UFO history. But I have an
original Battle of La photo that was from the Associated Press.

(41:12):
I obtained it from a gentleman in California that acquired
a huge cash of original Associated Press photos from the
forties all the way up through the sixties, and he
was selling this one and I was lucky enough to
win the bid on it. It has the original news
teletype glue to the back, its stamps in red ink
February twenty fifth, nineteen forty two, property of Associated Press.

(41:35):
But the news clipping on the back is really telling
because it states that there was a solitary, slow moving
object that some sources thought might be a blimp or
an aircraft. It was moving too slow. It gives the
rundown of the Battle of La. But it's interesting because
it was literally from that morning later, just hours after
the incident. So that's one of my favorites. I really

(41:58):
enjoy that one a lot, just because it really takes
you back in time to that very morning.

Speaker 1 (42:03):
I believe you and I did an entire show on that.

Speaker 4 (42:06):
I think we did. Yes, now that you say number
of your.

Speaker 1 (42:09):
Show, yes, that's right. Yeah, that is a fascinating one.

Speaker 3 (42:13):
Yeah. And someone had told me, I don't know if
it's true. They looked up some of my lectures online
on YouTube and they said the Battle of La is
the highest viewership, the most clicks, the most views. Was
the Battle of La lecture amazing.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
So someone just wanted to know how long would it
take to go through all your material ours days, years?

Speaker 1 (42:35):
I would say years.

Speaker 4 (42:36):
That's a great question, ken.

Speaker 3 (42:40):
I had someone in just the other day and they
said it would take a lifetime to go through all
this material.

Speaker 4 (42:44):
And I think that's the answer to the question.

Speaker 3 (42:47):
My wife, Blowys remarks when we have someone come out
for a weekend, she goes, you take all this for granted,
you got to let people know that there's so much
material here that you know, they really need to allow
more time. They just can't come in for a day
or two. And we've actually had people come back and
make repeat visits. You know, they come in initially to assess,
and then they come back with more specific ideas in mind.

(43:10):
But it's just, as you can tell, as you can sense,
it's my joy to be able to provide these materials
to serious researchers and people that just want answers. In fact, conversely,
I'll tell you this little comment. Someone came up to
me from the city council about three weeks ago and
they said, so, do you get a lot of UFO

(43:30):
nutcases they.

Speaker 4 (43:31):
Come in here?

Speaker 3 (43:32):
And I said, actually not, And they looked at me quizzically,
like really, I said, no, we really don't. We've had
some very We've had PhD researchers, retired military, retired San Dille,
Los Alamos, people come in general public, parents of students
that are going to the school where we're based. But
I said, but you've got to keep something in mind.

(43:54):
The people that you're alluding to already think they have
the answers.

Speaker 4 (43:58):
They know what UFOs are. They know why they're here.
They can tell you how many species are here.

Speaker 1 (44:03):
Oh, that's so funny.

Speaker 4 (44:04):
People that the archive, like myself, are people that just questions.

Speaker 1 (44:09):
Yeah, so there's a good point. I would have never
thought of that.

Speaker 4 (44:12):
I think you have the answers.

Speaker 3 (44:13):
It's aliens and it's these species, and this is why
they're coming here, and they fly these types of ships.

Speaker 4 (44:19):
You don't need to do research.

Speaker 1 (44:20):
Yep, that's right, and run from those people exactly exactly.

Speaker 3 (44:28):
I always say it's like religion. If someone tells you
they know what God wants for you run the other way.

Speaker 1 (44:33):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (44:34):
Yeah, So here's a basically Bob Blazar that. Yeah, Bob
Blazar comes in all these shows, Hey Bob, how are
you doing?

Speaker 1 (44:42):
Good to see it?

Speaker 2 (44:42):
So he wants to know about are you tracking? Is
there anything in your archive about alien abductions?

Speaker 3 (44:50):
Great question, and yes, quite often I talk about the
sighting reports. But I'm really glad Bob brought this question up.
When we got the APRO files, we were not surprised,
but I was to some degree that there were a
lot of humanoid and abduction reports. Now, I say that
for those that knew NICAP and APRO back in the

(45:13):
day Nightcap had a little bit of a sampling bias
when it came to cases. Don Keiho and others within
the organization said, we can accept that there's strange objects
moving in our atmosphere, but we're not going to deal
with humanoids. We're not going to deal with entity reports.
We're certainly not going to deal with abduction accounts. But
this is where the two organizations differed. APRO said, yes,

(45:36):
we're going to document all of that. So we not
only have domestic, but a lot of South American abduction
accounts in the APRO files, but also one of the
smaller collections. I'll give a shout out to my dear
friend Philip Mantle in the UK. Philip shipped his entire
collection several years ago, her entire palette. We are integrating
his files into our master case file collection. Both Philip

(45:59):
Manna and another researcher when it is colleagues at the time,
mister Andy Roberts from the UK, we have their files
and their files contain a number of British UFO abduction
related reports.

Speaker 1 (46:15):
Wow. That's amazing. Wow, that's it is part of it
was a hard part for me to first, you know,
go into When I started the UFO show, I said, Wow,
I don't know if I'm going to be talking about this.
I've become open minded that it's all part of it,
you know what I mean? There are just too many, Yes,
you know.

Speaker 3 (46:34):
It's much like it's much like citing reports can can
can most be attributed to conventional explanations. Yes, but it's
not that I summarily believe all the accounts. But equally so,
I think if you're going to be an honest and intellectually,
you know, curious person, you can't summarily discount all of
them either.

Speaker 2 (46:53):
Well, you know, like we talked about earlier, class fun
I have class on and I asked him the question,
how you know do you hear about abduction cases there?
And he says, very very few, he says, but the
one that I really, you know, started talking about this
is the police officer, very credible police officer and his

(47:15):
wife were both sleeping and he wakes up and she's
up off the ground and there's these beings there and
he can't move. He's like completely paralyzed, and eventually he
like yells or whatever, and she drops down on the
bed and they take off and all that and you
know that was like an attempt or something like that.

(47:38):
And he says, I tell you, he says, I can't
discount that one. That's just so, you know, so credible.

Speaker 3 (47:44):
And I'm glad we're having this conversation because something else
I would like to mention, as it relates to the archives,
we take all material related to the UFO subject. It
doesn't matter if David Marler thinks there's credence to this
aspect of the phenomenon. It doesn't matter if my chief
archivist are, our volunteers do. Our attitude is it's all

(48:05):
part of the history. Crazy, credible, and all things in between.
So we don't try to be prejudiced or have our
own prejudices that come in when we're collecting and collating
this material. For example, we have a lot of Georgia
Danmski contacting material from the nineteen fifties and a lot
of his contemporaries. Some people scoff at that, but I
know there's probably audience members that's listening to this that

(48:29):
are fascinated with Georgia Damski and some of the contactes.
I can give you my personal opinion, but when I'm
there representing the archives. I'm just there as a curator.
I'm here to help you find the material relevant to
what you are interested in.

Speaker 2 (48:45):
That's great, So let's walk through what happens. Does someone
contact you and they say, hey, I have a specific
case that I'm interested Or do people say hey, can
I just come and take a look?

Speaker 1 (48:58):
Do you ever have that?

Speaker 3 (48:59):
It runs the We have a lot of people that
would just like to do a tour who come away.
Quite often a sentiment we hear is I had no
idea how much history there was to this subject, and
so that's just music to our ears because I think,
as you know Martin, quite often with television, with even
discussions like this, sometimes we focus on the you know,

(49:22):
highly popular cases bent Waters and those types of things.
For every bent Waters, there's five hundred cases you haven't
heard about that we have in our archives, in our holdings.
These are cases that are yet to be you know, disclosed,
to use that word that's overused in this field.

Speaker 4 (49:39):
A lot disclosed to.

Speaker 3 (49:40):
The general public. But we do have a lot of researchers.
In fact, I got a contact from a gentleman in Wisconsin.
His name is David Booher, and he wrote a book
on a case from nineteen fifty nine called the Jerry
Irwin case, and this was a gentleman that a military
individual who went a wall.

Speaker 4 (49:58):
And so.

Speaker 3 (50:01):
I got contacted by David Booher, who had written a
book on it several years ago. But he said, Dave,
I got a copy of the appro form that was
done on it from nineteen fifty nine. But the thing
I'm really looking for is on the report it says
see tape. I'm really hoping there's an audio tape somewhere.
I said, Well, we got thirteen file cabinets of appro

(50:24):
files and materials, fifty boxes of material and included in
that are roughly two hundred reel to reel recordings going
back to the mid nineteen fifties and cassette recordings.

Speaker 4 (50:36):
He came.

Speaker 3 (50:36):
He flew from Wisconsin's with the express purpose to look
for that tape, and I'm happy to tell you and
your audience, Martin. He went into the room and I said, look,
we've not even had a chance to organize those tapes,
so don't worry about putting them back in any certain order. David,
I said, but there they are.

Speaker 4 (50:51):
Have at it.

Speaker 3 (50:52):
I'm in the other room doing some digitization work, and
the suddenly here Dave, he comes running in and he
had a reel to reel from nineteen fifty nine and
it had Jerry Irwin written on the outside, and long
story short, we queued it up on one of the
many real to real players that we have that are
hooked up for digitization, and he and I sat there
and listened to this interview with Jerry Irwin from I

(51:15):
believe October November nineteen fifty nine. Jim and Coral Lorenzen
are interviewing him in their living room in Alamagordo, New Mexico.

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Amazing.

Speaker 3 (51:23):
And the takeaway was he he get We digitized it, digitally,
remastered it, threw it on a thumb drive.

Speaker 4 (51:30):
He went home. He wrote me about.

Speaker 3 (51:32):
Two or three days later he said, David, there is
so much new material. I'm going to have to do
a complete revision of my book now. And he was
kind enough to do a transcript of the interview, which
we then now put into the nineteen fifty nine case file,
which we didn't have.

Speaker 1 (51:45):
Oh that's nice to have that.

Speaker 2 (51:47):
So Katie Page is kind of saying, I hear, hey, Katie,
and she's basically saying that you that it blew open
this Snippy case.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
Well, we didn't.

Speaker 3 (51:59):
Katie and Tony Angiola did the work, but we were
facilitators and at least getting him in touch. Katie had
the pleasure and I'm sure she would use that word
if she was speaking right now, had the pleasure of
literally going through the original Snippy case file that apro did.
And as I mentioned to Katie and as I alluded
to earlier, these files had been locked away for thirty

(52:22):
five years. She was the first person with the express
intent of getting into the Snippy file and reviewing that material.
And I think I speak for her Tony as well
as myself. There were goosebump moments when we were listening
to some of these real to real, actual interviews from
the time period, when we're looking at sketches and drawings

(52:42):
of the I like to call it the crime scene,
and photographs, tons of photographs from the original investigation. And
Tony and Katie did the lion's share work of taking
all that material and synthesizing it and truly for the
first time, and I was honored. I got a chance
to write the forward to the book, and I meant
this sincerely for the first time in history we have

(53:05):
this coherent, accurate retelling of the Snippy case with all
of the original documentation to back it up.

Speaker 1 (53:14):
That's great.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
Yeah, I mean I had Haran recently and we talked
about all that and that was yeah.

Speaker 1 (53:19):
But I saw the pictures.

Speaker 3 (53:21):
But my hat is off to Katie and to Tony
because these are people that took the time and spent
their own dime to come to Albuquerque and literally doing
the work. People talk about research, and quite often when
you start talking to these people, they're talking about surfing
the internet. Katie and Tony were wading through all of
these documents, all of these papers and trying to make

(53:43):
sense because these files got mixed up over the years.
But they were able to take those pieces of the
jigsaw puzzle and put them together. And the book that
they've written is I said it in the forward, it
is the definitive book on this case.

Speaker 1 (53:57):
Very very good.

Speaker 2 (53:58):
Now, as far as books, people, someone's asking here are
you accepting books that would really depend wouldn't it?

Speaker 4 (54:05):
It does? And thank you for asking. Rick.

Speaker 3 (54:08):
We get a lot of requests to donate books. I
will tell you we're interested, but unfortunately we have to
be judicious. In other words, if we can get an inventory,
or people can snap pictures of the books on the
shelf where we can look at the titles. The only
reason I say this, Martin, is I'm sure you and
your audience can appreciate. We've acquired a lot of collections.

(54:28):
A lot of those collections had the same books, and
we have an off site, a huge offsite storage warehouse
where we have upwards of two hundred banker's boxes of
nothing but duplicate books.

Speaker 1 (54:40):
Oh my god, for anybody.

Speaker 3 (54:42):
That would like to build their UFO library, if you
want to come out and go through all those duplicate books,
you're welcome to them.

Speaker 1 (54:49):
Wow, isn't that nice? But we've acquired well, have some
you may have some takers on that.

Speaker 3 (54:54):
Well, we have upwards of ten to twenty copies of
some of these old, rare books, but we just don't
have the time to photograph, write descriptions, put them on eBay,
sell them. We just simply don't have the time. So
right now they're in deep storage.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Wow. Hey, someone was just bringing up AI here. Yes,
and how could AI help you in any type of way?
Have you have you looked at an angle?

Speaker 4 (55:20):
We haven't explored it yet.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
This last year literally has been getting all of the
files the archives organized, helping Katie and Tony and other
researchers like David Booher doing tours. It's just been we've
been drinking water out of a fire hose this last year.
But I think that the short answer is, and I've
said this several times recently in interviews, I feel that

(55:43):
we're at a critical juncture in time Martin where we
have decades worth of work on the part of these
organizations and individuals that have collected the data, documented it,
preserved these case files, and when you think about it,
the KUFOS files resided in Chicago most of their life.
The Nightcap files were in Washington, d C. Later Baltimore

(56:06):
or in the Maryland area. We had the Apro files
that were in New Mexico and then later Tucson. So
all of these collections derived from different parts of the country.
They're now brought together in one location, but for decades
they languished in these file cabinets. What I propose is

(56:26):
now that we have them all together, now that we
have secured workspace, once we can get adequate funding, we
will digitize all those Once they're digitized, we can manipulate
and analyze and really start looking for correlations using these
AI tools.

Speaker 4 (56:43):
And what I like to say is.

Speaker 3 (56:44):
Maybe we're at a unique moment in time where historical
preservation meets AI technology and truly for the first time,
we might be able to discern trends, patterns, and correlations
in all of this data for the first time in history.

Speaker 2 (56:58):
Wow, amazing. Well I can't believe it. We're at the
end of the show already.

Speaker 4 (57:02):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (57:02):
So I know that went so fast.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
Seems to always go fast, and I'll have to have
you back, you know again, not wait so long this time,
but well, yeah, it's always thank you David.

Speaker 1 (57:12):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (57:13):
And on Saturday the eighteenth, we're going to have our
community open house. If anybody's in the Albuquerque area, they
love to come and tend our open house nine to
five on Saturday, October eighteenth.

Speaker 1 (57:23):
Sounds great, Take care now, thank you?

Speaker 2 (57:25):
All right, okay everyone, So I will be back this
Thursday night at eight pm with Joshua or Bertrand I may.

Speaker 1 (57:33):
Not do these Thursdays. It's a lot of work doing
two shows a week.

Speaker 2 (57:38):
I may not be so consistent with the Thursday show
you will Always see me here Tuesday night at nine pm.
Thanks so much everyone, and remember to keep your eyes
to the sky.