Incident at Area 51 - A Crash Investigation Uncovers Material of Unknown Origin

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
Reports of unidentified flying out here, unidentified, veryal phenomenal hoday bio.

Speaker 2 (00:10):
Weapons being tested by our own or foreign governments.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
The American people are becoming both interested and in many
instances very alarmed by the UFO stories.

Speaker 3 (00:19):
So why do you suppose that all of this has
been kept.

Speaker 4 (00:22):
From the world exploring our past, our future, and the
mysteries of our universe?

Speaker 5 (00:27):
Where come Brock?

Speaker 4 (00:28):
Why can't explain it?

Speaker 5 (00:29):
Everybody in uthology is screaming for disclosure.

Speaker 4 (00:32):
The future is now. This is Micah.

Speaker 1 (00:35):
Hanks from the high Mountains of Appalachia and a bunker
below ground. Welcome, one and all. It is the Micah
Hanks Program. Glad as always to be getting behind the
microphone and getting into gears. We go in pursuit of
the anomalous in our existence, as we do every week.
Listen on demand via podcasting apps everywhere. I hope everyone

(00:56):
out there had a wonderful weekend. I of course, am
easing into autumn here in Appalachia. And what that means
for those who've never experienced the seasons and they're changing
here in the Appalachian Mountains, is that the seasons haven't
quite made up their minds yet.

Speaker 5 (01:11):
About what they want to be.

Speaker 1 (01:12):
One day it feels like summer, and before you know it,
the next day it's really cold outside and jacket weather.
So in other words, you got to plan ahead before
you leave the house. Always bring a jacket or a
hoodie or a sweater if you think it's boot weather.
You might also want to bring something a little lighter
weight because you never know when it's going to get
really hot out there and all of a sudden, all
the cooler weather wardrobe you brought along thinking you were

(01:34):
going to be so stylish isn't really working when the
temperature gets up to close to eighty ride. Also a
quick shout out to everybody out there who sent along
messages following the three I Atlas episode last week, so
many people saying thank you for providing all of these
insights into this object, because these days we don't know
what to believe and how much of the information we're

(01:55):
being bombarded with online actually lives up to the hype.
And in fact, here in a minute we will have
an update on the latest about three I Atlts because
there continue to be very intriguing observations. Although spoiler alert
if you haven't heard last week's episode. I'm still in
the comet camp on this one. I really don't think
this is an extraterrestrial probe that's been doing a planetary

(02:17):
drive by through our solar system and taking notes along
the way. Then again, stranger things I suppose could happen.
In fact, things have taken a turn for the strange
with the ongoing investigation into a crash retrieval out there
in the Nevada Desert near area fifty one. This is
getting really bizarre in fact, and so we'll have an

(02:37):
update on that here in a moment too. But first
we have breaking news, and ladies and gents, this is
indeed a big one because the Associated Press is now
reporting that all twenty living hostages held by Hamas and
hundreds of Palestinian prisoners held by Israel walked free on
Monday as part of a ceasefire, pausing two years of

(02:58):
war that decimated the Gaza Strip and killed tens of
thousands of Palestinians. The AP adding here that Hamas said
Monday it will hand over the bodies of four of
twenty eight deceased captives, though it was not immediately clear
when the rest would be released. Israel said it freed
more than nineteen hundred Palestinian prisoners as part of the

(03:18):
Gaza cease fire deal. Benjamin Netanna, who is raerely Prime Minister,
declared he was committed to this piece, raising hopes, of course,
that this war, which has triggered other conflicts in the
Middle East, might finally come to an end. But again,
as the AP notes, the fundamental questions remain over when
and how or whether Hamas will disarm and who will
govern Gaza. This is, of course one of the most

(03:41):
contentious issues of our time. Opinions remain extremely divided on
this one, but I think no matter where you stand,
peace is something that we always need to try and
aspire for, and this is some very very much needed
and long awaited good news regarding that long running conflict.
Hopes remain high that we will continue to see peace.

(04:03):
Let's certainly hope that that remains to be the case.
Shifting our attention over toward things happening in our skies.
You know, there was something really strange seen in the
skies over rural Texas recently. The AP also reporting on
this one. Anne Walter had been the witness. She looked
outside her rural West Texas home and initially didn't know
exactly what this object was. She was seeing moving through

(04:25):
the sky. What is that a bird? A plane at UFO. Well,
within a few minutes the object became more clear because
she watched this thing land in her neighbor's wheat field.
It was a boxy piece of scientific equipment. The AP
describes about the size of a sport utility vehicle attached
to a massive parachute adorned with NASA stickers. Imagine seeing

(04:49):
something like this land in your neighbor's yard. This would
be an absolute field day for me.

Speaker 5 (04:54):
Of course.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Now she called the local sheriff's office, as one does,
and found out that as would be indicated, of course,
by all the NASA logos all over this thing. Indeed,
NASA was looking for a piece of equipment that it
had lost. It's crazy, miss Walter said, because when you're
standing on the ground and see something in the air,
you don't realize how big it is. It was probably
a thirty foot parachute.

Speaker 5 (05:16):
It was huge.

Speaker 1 (05:17):
Now that's a really important point because even in this case,
when this UFO turned out to be an IFO, it
identified flying object or I guess you might say floating
since it was being carried by a parachute, wasn't really
flying right. But as she notes, when you see something
in the sky, sometimes it's a little hard to gauge
its size until you see it closer to the ground,

(05:38):
And there's a very good reason for that. When there's
an object in the sky and there's nothing alongside it
to help provide any kind of context in terms of
its size, it's actually much easier than you think to
get your size estimates off base. Case in point, with
a lot of the sidings of alleged mystery drones recently,
continuing data on those incidents based on flight radar information

(06:02):
and other data that's publicly available to anybody who wants
to spend the time to go and look, generally does
indicate that most sightings of drones turn out to be
conventional aircraft. And often you'll hear people saying, well, this
thing wasn't big enough to be a normal plane. Others
will say, well, it was a really big drone. Some
will even go so far as to say it had

(06:22):
all the lights like a regular aircraft, But this thing
was definitely a drone because it was too small, or
there were other characteristics that made it seem like it
wasn't an aircraft, when in fact, all the data in
so many of these cases really does point to these
things simply being aircraft. Now, it's really easy at times
to want to ridicule people people are so dumb they

(06:42):
don't know what planes look like. But in truth, there
are actually a lot more factors going on here, one
of them being yes, that more people when they hear
about drone sightings happening, tend to start looking up and
they start looking at planes that they normally don't pay
attention to, and they may I think that they are
seeing things that everybody else says that they're seeing. But again,

(07:04):
the other factor, as we're hearing here in this AP report,
is that often size can be misleading when you're looking
at an object, and add to that, when you're looking
at it in the night sky as opposed to in
the daytime, then it makes it even more difficult to
discern things like size and other details, and all the
more likely that someone will misidentify a prosaic object, stars, aircraft, planets,

(07:26):
et cetera as being a mysterious drone I mentioned. We
had an update about three iAtlas and my pal Njbnias,
writing for US there at the Debrief, recently noted that
the latest big discovery involving three iAtlas is that, apparently
scientists say, it is releasing quite a bit of water,
more specifically hydroxyl gas, a chemical signature of water that

(07:49):
has been detected from the object for the first time,
as MJ reports, using NASA's Neil Gerrel's Swift observatory, the
Auburn University team behind this discovery determined that three ia
Atlas is releasing water at a rate of roughly forty
kilograms per second, comparable to a fire hose running at
full blast opposition nearly three times farther from the Sun

(08:10):
than Earth. So what does that mean? Why is that
so important? Well, one thing has to do with the distance,
which is about two point nine astronomical units, and that's
well beyond the region where most Solar System comets start
showing any significant signs of that kind of activity. He
notes that when we detect water, or even its faint
ultraviolet echo from an interstellar comet, we are reading a

(08:32):
note from another planetary system. It tells us, in other words,
that the ingredients for life's chemistry are not unique to
our own. So while we would stop short of saying
that we have now seen evidence of life on three
I at lists, nobody has said that. But what this
study has found is that the ingredients for life's chemistry

(08:53):
have been observed on an interstellar comet. And again, this
is like a calling card from another planetary system. I'm
not sure we've ever really seen anything quite like that.
And you can go ahead and just add that to
the long list of unusual things we have now observed
with relation to three iye atlas. Don't forget, of course,
a couple of weeks ago we talked about the fact

(09:14):
that it also has an abundance of metal, and as
doctor Auvi Lobe has pointed out, this is really intriguing
the relationship between nickel and iron that has been observed
regarding three eye at lists. Based on spectrographic information, essentially
observing light bands, breaking those apart, and discerning chemical signatures
based on the spectra of the light being reflected by

(09:37):
the object, it is revealed that there are unusual abundances
of nickel that are generally only associated with manufactured processes
when they occur here on Earth. Now, of course, one
interpretation here could be that we are seeing evidence of
manufactured metals on three eye atlas. But the reason I
don't really think that that's what's going on here is

(09:57):
because a there have been other scientific papers that have
reported this, and they do call it very anomalous, but
their interpretation the scientists behind those papers had not been
that therefore three iatlass must be manufactured. B Avi Lobe,
who has proposed that possibility, has reported on those papers,
and he doesn't point to that as being definitive evidence

(10:18):
of three iatlists being something manufactured. And then finally, there
were a lot of reels circulating on social media in
recent days claiming things like Avi Lobe and his team
with the Galileo project had actually spotted UFOs accompanying three iAtlas,
whereas in fact those reels that were saying additional objects
flying alongside the comet have been detected is completely the

(10:42):
opposite of what Avi and his team have actually said.
In a recent update at his Medium page, Avi was
very explicit in saying that he and his team had
looked and there doesn't appear to be any evidence of
anything accompanying three iAtlas along the lines of some kind
of additional spacecraft or probe or anything that might be
suggestive of a technology. So again, in my opinion, the metals,

(11:06):
the water, all these things that are being detected from
three eyealys are consistent with how we might presume a
interstellar comet would behave. And make no mistake, these things.

Speaker 5 (11:16):
Are really weird.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
They're weird enough that it does cause some people to wonder,
what if we are looking at something a little more
complex than a comet, But based on my own ongoing
analysis of all the data, it is far more likely
that we're just looking at a natural object that is
displaying unusual behaviors that if we had seen other interstellar
objects in the past, we probably would have observed these

(11:38):
kinds of things. Then, too, we're used to looking at
objects that have already been bopping around in our solar
system for who knows how long, maybe since time immemorial,
and so they've already burnt off a lot of their
metals and their water, and they've interacted with the Sun,
and they've been heated and cooled and heated and cooled,
and they're gravitationally bound to the Sun or to other objects,
and so they exhibit very predictable behaviors unlike three eye Atlas,

(12:02):
which has not been here for very long, and which
is not going to be here for much longer. So again,
the mystery really has everything to do with it being
an object that is not from here. But again, as
Professor Bodowitz says, what we are seeing is very much
indeed like a note from another planetary system, because that
is basically what we're seeing. We are seeing an object

(12:22):
that originated from someplace far, far far away, and for
the first time we're getting a pretty good look at
how it behaves when it drifts through our neighborhood, and
I just find that endlessly fascinating. You know something else
that I find fascinating are these weird Martian dust devils.
And there was a recent study about these that my

(12:43):
pal Ryan Whalan, writing for US there at the Debris,
reported on where they have now determined that, apparently based
on the analysis of one thy thirty nine dust devil
observations collected over two decades by the European Space Agency,
we now have the best idea about these objects, how
they behave, and why they do the things that they do.

(13:04):
In fact, there's a really cool image of one of
these buddies captured in imagery I believe by the Mars
Reconnaissance orbiter as it makes its way across the Martian's surface,
featured right there in the article at the debrief, so
you'll want to check that out. I've been tracking these
dust devils for a long time because a couple of
years ago there was a video of one of these
things streaking across the background that was captured in footage

(13:26):
by the Perseverance Rover, and we reported this at the
debrief and it absolutely went off like wildfire. People were
so fascinated to see something moving off in the distance
across the Martian landscape. Not the kind of thing you
expect to see every day, but it just goes to
show that the climate there on the Red planet can
get pretty weird sometimes. Definitely check out that article, and

(13:48):
in fact, while you're there checking in at the debrief,
you might also check out the article by Tim McMillan
that recently looked at how neuroscientists are now saying, you know,
this idea of a sixth sense that maybe a little
long off base no looking at our brains, The latest
data revealed by neuroscientists suggests that our brains may in
fact be wired for seven senses as ten reports. Based

(14:11):
on a new study published in Scientific Reports, researchers from
King's College, London, Lofboro University, and the Skulkovo Institute of
Science and Technology have developed a new theoretical model showing
that the brain's ability to form and retain memories might
depend on the dimensionality of the century world that it perceives,
suggesting that the optimal number of sensory dimensions is actually

(14:34):
not five, not even six, but yes, seven senses. So
definitely pop over to the debrief and check out that
story as well as the one that we recently featured
by yours truly documenting the new weirdness that has been
discovered at the crash site where something went down out
there in the Nevada Desert near area fifty one. We're
going to dive into that story next when we return

(14:55):
right here on the Micah Hanks program.

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Speaker 1 (17:55):
What was the material of unknown origin? Recently founded got
a mysterious crash site near Area fifty one. Welcome back.
This is not the kind of story you expect to
see every day in the news headlines, unless, of course,
you are a frequent reader of the Debrief dot org.

(18:15):
And this was indeed an unexpected twist and what was
already a fairly weird story.

Speaker 5 (18:21):
So let's dive in.

Speaker 1 (18:23):
Recently here on the shore, of course, we already reported
on the fact that there was some kind of an
object that went down out there in the Nevada desert.
Very little information was revealed about this, but it was
suspected of having been an aircraft that initially left from
Creech Air Force Base. It went down in the desert,
and very little additional information was provided. Of course, I

(18:44):
reached out to Creach Air Force Base for a statement,
and they had issued a press release that they disseminated
to some members of the media, offering very little in
the way of facts, if anything, leaving much more to
the imagination. A lot of Lost Vegas news outlets like
KLAS and others began to dive into this and to

(19:04):
report on the suspected crash of a drone of some
kind because the Air Force had said that there were
no casualties. No one had been injured when this aircraft
went down, so it seemed evident it was probably a drone.
Now the latest update, however, has revealed some very unusual
new details about this crash, which has now apparently been

(19:25):
turned over the investigation, that is, to the Air Force
Office of Special Investigations and the FBI. So those are
the agencies that are investigating right now. Here's what we know.
The aircraft, whatever it was, went down on September twenty third,
twenty twenty five, in the early morning hours. It crashed
somewhere northeast of Las Vegas, near the perimeter of the

(19:47):
classified US Air Force facility of course, famously known as
Area fifty one, also known as Dreamland, Groom Lake Watertown
as well, depending on who you ask. The FAA had
issued a ten pep prairie flight restriction around the time
of that crash, covering a five nautical mile area east
of the base, and that restriction essentially just cited national

(20:09):
security as its reason. It didn't give any additional explanation
for the TFR as it was known. US Air Force
officials then moved into the area and they cleared that
crash site pretty quickly, and at that time the official
statement that was made available on September thirtieth was released
from the four hundred and thirty second Air Expeditionary Wing
Public affairs there at Creech Air Force Base. They confirmed

(20:30):
again at that time that there had been no fatalities
or injuries. There wasn't even any property damage, just something
crashed in the desert. We went out there, scooped it up,
carried it away. Nothing to see here. Move along. Now,
they did acknowledge an ongoing investigation was underway, but yet
again no additional details were provided at the time that
I reached out for clarification on the matter on.

Speaker 5 (20:51):
Behalf of the debrief.

Speaker 1 (20:52):
So the debrief didn't actually report on the story at
that time because frankly, there wasn't much of a news story.
We touched on it here on the podcast, we talked
about how some thing had crashed. The history of how
crash is out there in the desert near area fifty
one actually have fed into UFO lore over the years. Well,
we finally got a major, the first real major update
in fact about this incident on October fourth, so last Saturday.

(21:15):
And it's always weird to me when an update comes
out over the weekend. It's almost like they put it
out on the day of the week that they know
people are the least likely to see it. And so
this one went out on Saturday. Here again from the
four hundred and thirty second Air Expeditionary Wing Public Affairs,
and they essentially report in this short update on the
investigation that during a follow on site survey that occurred

(21:39):
one day earlier, which would have been Friday, October third,
officials uncovered signs of what they characterized as tampering now
at the crash site. More specifically, not just tampering, but
they said that they found what appeared to have been
an inert training bomb body and an aircraft panel of

(22:00):
unknown origin that had been placed at the crash site. Now, again,
few details were provided, almost no additional context. Once this
release came out, I reached out to Creech Air Force Base,
contacted the four hundred and thirty second Air Expeditionary Wing
public affairs, asked for any guidance on this, any context,

(22:22):
And unlike my first query where they actually did get
back in touch very quickly and they sent along the
existing press release, this time I received no response. And
I contacted them the following week, on a weekday, at
a time of day in fact, where I figured that
probably I would get a response. So I've still heard
nothing from them. They are really saying very little this time,
apart from these really strange and kind of confusing details

(22:46):
that they released last weekend. Just to be clear, though,
it seems that what they are saying is that after
the cleanup, when they went in there and they went
to the crash site picked up whatever crash, this presumed
drone or UAV. After apparently they went in there and
they got that and they removed it from the location.
They said that further investigation during a return visit to

(23:08):
the site revealed that somebody had gone in there and
placed this inert training bomb body and an aircraft panel
of unknown origin. Now, the first question, of course, is
who would have done that? The next question, I guess
is why would anybody have done this. We'll come back
around to those speculations a little later, but again in

(23:30):
this statement that was released from the four hundred and
thirty second Wing, they emphasized the investigation is still ongoing and,
as I mentioned, currently being overseen by the FBI and
the Air Force Office of Special Investigations. Now that brings
us to Jorg Arnu, who is a very intriguing individual, indeed,
because Yorg is the founder and webmaster of Dreamland Resort,

(23:53):
which is a website that for many years, decades in fact,
has chronicled essentially all things area. And this website is
maintained and in fact still in every way looks very
much like a very early nineteen nineties website, because frankly,
when Yorg launched it back in the nineties. It was
I guess, pretty state of the art at that time,
but the site essentially maintains the same look and feel

(24:16):
that it's had now since it appeared online. But for
those of us who are intrigued with the lore about
Area fifty one, really Dreamland Resort is one of the
best websites known on the web for the information that
it features. It's also been a bit of a subject
of controversy in recent years, especially considering the fact that
there was an FBI raid on mister r New's home

(24:38):
just a couple of years ago, which we'll talk about
a little later to provide some context for how the
Air Force treats the Area fifty one subject and those
who go snooping into Air Force affairs related to it.
But I bring up your Rnu right now because he
actually had gone out there to the crash site during
the period between the site and being cleaned and the

(25:02):
subsequent discovery of this inert training bomb body and the
aircraft panel of unknown origin that the Air Force announces
days later that they find out there at the crash site.
And so when mister Arnu drove out there and he
videotaped his trip out to the location and he posted
this on his YouTube page. There didn't seem to be
any sign of any inert bomb body used for training exercises,

(25:27):
or any kind of mysterious aircraft wreckage or paneling from
unknown aircraft that had been at the site at that time.
So somebody seems to have gone out there and placed
these objects at that crash site after Arnu had been
out there and filmed the location. But if you want
to get a look at that, I have a link
in the show notes to the video that he posted
online about this. Now, Arnew had conducted his own investigation

(25:48):
into all of this, and very intriguingly, it was just
a few days ago that the full article detailing some
of his findings appeared on his website. We're going to
talk about that a little more later. I do just
want to point out for the time being that Air
Force official statements had attributed this incident to a unit
operating from Creech Air Force Base. And while that may

(26:10):
be true, and of course they have been handling that
all the communications about it from public affairs there at
the four hundred and thirty second Air Expeditionary Wing mister Arnu,
who as part of his chronicling of happenings there around
Area fifty one, at least to the extent that a
civilian can legally do so, but he also monitors radio traffic,
and he said that security radio traffic that was overheard

(26:32):
on the night of the incident actually the early morning,
seems to have actually linked the crash to a hangar
at Area fifty one, and so mister Arnu therefore suspects
that the crash was connected to a large nighttime military
operation occurring in the region around that time on September
twenty third. More on that than just a bit. Of course,
as we already know, Area fifty one has a long

(26:53):
standing reputation for secrecy and experimental aircraft testing. This goes
all the way back to the nineteen fifties, and you
can actually read histories now about when Kelly Johnson and
some of those pioneers behind programs like Lockheed Martin Skunkworks
initially flew out there and landed in the dry lake
bed known as Groom Lake. And the reason that site

(27:14):
is chosen is essentially because a it's out there in
the middle of nowhere, it's kind of hard to get to,
and of course, if you put up a bunch of
perimeter fences around the property and make sure people aren't
able to enter or get anywhere near the primary facility,
it makes it really difficult to get a good look
at anything that's taking off from or landing out there,
even though famously people for years have gone to the
top of Tikaboo Peak, a nearby mountaintop where you can

(27:37):
actually stand and on a clear day you can usually
get a pretty good look at Area fifty one. That's
one of the closest locations that people can legally go
and actually stand and try to see Area fifty one.
But there's been some weirdness associated with that over the
years too. Television crews that have done segments where they
go out there and they try to capture footage are
sometimes buzzed by black helicopters, and even as range and

(28:00):
conspiratorial as that might sound, I mean, when you've got
a film croogleing up there trying to film one of
the most highly secretive Air Force facilities anywhere in the
United States, Surely once Air Force officials catch wind of that,
they're going to go up there and they're going to
do some intimidation tactics, so they're at least going to
try and buzz these people and find out what it
is they're doing, what their intentions might be. And in

(28:22):
recent years I think that there was actually a camera
put up there on top of Tikaboo Peak, with some
of the speculation online being that it was actually placed
there to help officials know when people are climbing to
the top of the mountain. But again, lots of people
have done that over the years. People still do it,
and of course it's one of the few ways that
you can legally try to obtain a distant glimpse of
the near mythical area fifty one. But the Air Force's

(28:45):
use of that facility, of course, beginning in the nineteen fifties,
gave us the U two spy plane, which back before
we had satellites, we used these high altitude spy planes
to go and spy on the Soviet Union. And at
the time that they were developed, those aircraft weren't exactly
the most advanced aircraft per se. They were just designed
and specially built for flying at high altitudes, and this

(29:08):
of course enabled us to get a good bird's eye
view of what the Soviet Union was doing without their
fighter jets being able to reach US and intercept. But
eventually that aircraft was replaced by its successor, the SR
seventy one Blackbird, which still remains the fastest aircraft acknowledged
to exist. Intriguingly, Lockheed itself has even said over the years,

(29:29):
but the SR seventy one is the fastest acknowledged aircraft,
seemingly leaving open the possibility that there could be even
faster aircraft, maybe some of which have been tested out
there at Area fifty one, just like the SR seventy
one and the U two had been. Back during the
nineteen nineties, when Area fifty one probably reached its all
time peak interest, there was a lot of speculation about

(29:51):
another secretive aircraft known as Aurora, that some had even
claimed to have seen, and there were a lot of
aviation journalists like Bill Sweetman and others who were huddle
the trail trying to find out the myth versus the
reality involving any secretive successor spyplanes to the SR seventy one.
So if something like Project Aurora actually did exist, it

(30:13):
still remains unacknowledged, although of course Lockheed Martin has also
said in recent years, but they're still potentially going to
be building a successor to the SR seventy one. Guess
what they want to call that. That's right at the
SR seventy two, the son of Blackbird. The problem, of course,
is that way back in twenty thirteen, or maybe it
was twenty eleven, but around that time they announced that

(30:34):
Lockheed Martin Skunkworks was working on this aircraft, and since
that time we've heard virtually nothing about it. And one
of the reasons that that's probably the case involves the
simple fact that the US military they want affordable and
adaptable aircraft, and when it comes to affordability and adaptability,
unmanned aial vehicles are always going to be more formidable

(30:56):
and generally better options in today's military environment. And that's
why instead of the SR seventy two, most recently we
have seen Lockheed Martin roll out its development, which apparently
is already underway, of what it calls the Vectus UAV platform.
So yes, it's building a new stealth drone rather than
a stealth supersonic aircraft successor to the SR seventy one,

(31:19):
And with little doubt you can rest assured that any
forthcoming tests of the Vectus platform is of course going
to be taking place out there at Area fifty one
as well. However, that program was only recently announced, and
my understanding is that it's really in the early developmental phases,
so I kind of doubt that anything related to that
might have gone down in the desert out there near
Area fifty one. But in any case, all the data

(31:42):
currently in hand seems to point to a unmanned aerial
vehicle of some kind crashing out there in the desert.
But now, of course, this still leaves the questions of
why this material of unknown origin was placed out there
at this crash site, as somebody playing a joke, or
is there something else going on. We'll dive a little
deeper into this mystery when we return right here on

(32:02):
the Micah Hanks program.

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Speaker 1 (34:22):
Host incident tampering at an Area fifty one crash signed
Welcome back. It is the Micah Hanks Program. This story
just keeps getting weirder, and of course we always try
to track developments when it involves stories like these each
week here on this program. Don't forget, of course, if

(34:42):
you like what you hear on the Micah Hanks Program.
Every week additional content is made available to X subscribers,
and for just seven dollars a month you get a
weekly additional podcast and of course those monthly specials known
as enigmas. You can find those at micah hanks dot
com forward slash x a link as always to that
in the show notes, so you can sign up and

(35:04):
support the work of yours truly, your friendly neighborhood podcaster.
So where we left off with this investigation, there are
some really strange things happening out there in the desert
near Area fifty one, and some of the questions I
think that remain on my mind are what was the
aircraft first and foremost that went down in the desert.
We may not ever find out really what this aircraft was.

(35:27):
But then, of course the question of the foreign materials
that were placed at the site, this inert training bomb body,
which at least to me, sounds like a really strange
thing to leave out there at an area where a
drone reportedly went down. Furthermore, some sort of aircraft paneling
of an aircraft of unknown origin that also is a
weird thing for somebody to just go out there and

(35:48):
place at a crash site. And furthermore, if the Air
Force had anything to do with these objects being placed there,
the last thing you would imagine would be that the
Air Force would make a public announcement about these discoveries,
let alone reveal the fact that the Air Force Office
of Special Investigation was looking into it, as well as
the FBI. So what's going on? Is this a prank?

(36:11):
Could this even point? I mean, it's fair to ask
to some kind of disinformation. I mean one reason for that,
and we'll speculate more about this a little later, But
one reason here might be that if this story was
getting a little too much attention, some sort of a
strange element might be introduced to distract away from the
attention being placed on the suspected drone that went down,

(36:33):
and to try and introduce these elements that caused the
public to wonder what else is going on. Why was
this weird material found out there? I don't know, something
like that at least could potentially be the case. Now,
as I mentioned, of course, we have this update that
appeared at the Dreamland Resort website where, following his own investigations,
mister Jorg Arnu, the webmaster there at Dreamland Resort, posted

(36:56):
I believe, on October tenth, some of what is known
based on his own investigations, As he notes, an unknown
classified UAV crashed in Tikabu Valley, about eleven miles from
the Area fifty one perimeter on Tuesday, September twenty third,
twenty twenty five. He said this happened at about twelve
thirty five am. He also acknowledges the official US Air
Force response that said that this was associated with an

(37:18):
aircraft that took off from Creech Air Force Base with
a unit that operates notably General Atomics MQ nine Reapers
and the Lockheed Martin RQ one seventy UAV. However, as
mister Arnew notes, Area fifty one security radio traffic had
been intercepted immediately after the crash, which he said indicated
a connection of the misshapp aircraft to a hangar at

(37:41):
the Area fifty one north ramp. Mister Arnew goes on
to discuss that at the time of the accident, there
had been a very large scale night mission being carried
out there over the region. This involved, he said, several
flights of B fifty two that had apparently come from
Whiteman Air Force Base. There were several US Navy FAS
eighteen G growler jammers, several tankers were involved. He also

(38:05):
said that there were aircraft that he believed came from
Area fifty one operating under call signs SABER forty one
and Saber forty two. He said there were several electronic
intelligence platforms operating, several tankers were involved, and also several
flights of four or more unmanned aerial vehicles. So he
said this was one of the largest missions observed in
the airspace in recent memory. He would of course be

(38:27):
someone who would know, being that he also monitors that region,
not just in terms of the radio traffic, but also
any other kinds of signs of aircraft appearing in the
airspace out there over northern Nevada.

Speaker 3 (38:38):
Well.

Speaker 1 (38:39):
In any case, he said that about twelve thirty seven am,
presumably after this accident had occurred. There was a sudden
termination of the mission at one o six am, he
said Area fifty one security radio traffic seemed to indicate
that an event prompting the immediate lockdown of the base occurred.
Shortly after that, there was radio dispatch traffic that ap

(39:00):
aparently said we just had an asset go down or
something like that, and then a minute later it was
a UAV unmanned aircraft with ordnance is what reportedly was
overheard during these radio communications, so that, according to the
posting there at Dreamland Resort on October tenth, seems to
be where the information involving a UAV going down actually
came from. Arnew also revealed that there was later radio

(39:22):
traffic that evening again actually the early morning hours on
September twenty third, that seemed to indicate that the crash
site was a few miles south of the intersection of
Groom Lake Road and Highway three seventy five. And in
that video he posted online, he actually goes out there
near Highway three seventy five and he's showing the area
where the clean up after the crash had initially been
taking place, in fact actually there. On the posting there

(39:45):
at his website, he mentions he traveled out there and
found the entire Groom Lake Road and part of Mailbox
Road blocked off by heavily armed security and Lincoln County
Sheriff's deputies. On satellite imagery later made available, he also
said he was able to locate the crash site. That area,
which was about t two point two miles south of
the intersection of Groom Lake Road by Highway three seventy five,
is not easily visible from any accessible part of Tekaboo Valley.

(40:08):
Of course, taking all those factors into consideration, again the
general remoteness of the area a very tightly controlled retrieval operation.
And again not to confuse this with UFO lore about
retrieval of downed UAPs or alleged craft of unknown origin
that supposedly are being kept in hangars by secret government
programs and what have you. Again, we are talking about

(40:31):
the retrieval of an aircraft that obviously was part of
this military operation that mister Arnu describes in that updated
as website. But considering how well controlled that effort was
to get out there and retrieve whatever went down, it
is quite strange that this development involving new material of
unknown origin turning up at the site has been added

(40:51):
into the mix. It's a really bizarre addition to something
that was already a pretty strange story to begin with,
that has now admittedly gotten just a whole lot stranger now.
As I mentioned earlier, there's already been some controversy associated
with the Dreamland Resort website and its webmaster because a
few years back there was a raid carried out on

(41:12):
mister Arnu's home. In fact, I'm looking at the article
here about this, which appeared at Air Force Times the
date November seventeenth, twenty twenty two. In this article by
Ken Ritter, he reports a Nevada man who operates a
website focusing on the remote, formerly top secret US military
base Area fifty one, along an object of UFO and
space alien lore, said Thursday that military and federal investigators

(41:35):
raided his homes in what he called a bid to
muzzle him. I believe the search, executed with complete unnecessary
force by overzealous government agents, was meant as a message
to silence the Area fifty one research community. Jorg Arnu
said of the November third raids at his homes in
Las Vegas and in the tiny desert town of Rachel.

(41:55):
I am not a spy, mister Arnu said in an
email to the Associated Press follow bowing the incident. I
and the vast majority of members of my website support
the military, and we understand the need for secrecy to
keep our country safe. Now, on that note, again, I
think that really the position mister Arnu seems to advance
here is there should be transparency, There should be accountability,

(42:18):
and information that can be legally obtained or that is
publicly accessible should be something that people are allowed to
discuss when it comes to even highly classified locations like
Area fifty one. Really, again, the same thing applies to
the broader UAP debate, and I agree on all those points.
Mister Arnou also says I support the military, and I

(42:40):
do not think that we need to reveal all the secrets.
We understand that sometimes things are kept classified for good reason.
There is national security interest behind the withholding of some
secrets from the public. Yet again I agree there too,
and it's a fine line that we walk when it
comes to a research community built around some of the
most highly sensitive secrets held by our military in this

(43:02):
case Area fifty one, but again obviously with Area fifty
one's unique relationship to the UAP subject, and there are
a lot of different dimensions to that, one of course
being people's speculations about US technologies that are being developed
at Area fifty one having to do with UFOs, and
some of that has probably been promoted, some of that belief,

(43:24):
in other words, has been helped along by disinformation agents
over the years. In fact, that very controversial Wall Street
Journal article that came out a while back essentially said
that very thing, Air Force officials had gone out to
the little town of Rachel, where as you heard, mister
jord Arnu has residence apparently one of the two that
was rated. But yes, Air Force officials went out there

(43:46):
and they planted disinformation because this helped to foster a
belief that things happening out there around Area fifty one
involved aliens and not secret aircraft technologies being developed by
the US. So for someone like mister Arnu, he seems
to kind of walk that very fine line between promoting
transparency and government accountability but also respecting national security and

(44:08):
the necessity for secrets at times. With that in mind,
I want to also quote briefly from the press release
that he posted shortly after that rate occurred back in
twenty twenty two, and this appeared at Dreamland Resort. He said,
last week, Thursday, November third, twenty twenty two, in the
early morning, my homes in Rachel, just outside of Area
fifty one, and in Las Vegas were searched by a

(44:29):
joint force of FBI and Air Force Office of Special Investigations,
essentially the same two organizations now investigating this crash that
occurred last month.

Speaker 5 (44:39):
He said.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
This happened without any warning. The doors were broken open,
and I in Rachel and my girlfriend in our Las
Vegas home were detained and treated in the most disrespectful way.
My girlfriend was led out into the street barefoot and
only in her underwear, in full view of our neighbors.
I was let outside handcuffed and only in T shirt
and sweats and sub freezing temperatures. Each home was searched
by f fifteen to twenty agents in full riot gear,

(45:02):
causing further damage in both homes besides the broken front doors.
Despite my repeated requests for an explanation, I was only
told that the search was related to images posted on
my Area fifty one website. He went on to say,
I was very surprised how forceful the search warrant was
executed and how rough we both unarmed senior citizens were treated.
I have to believe that someone gave them bad information

(45:25):
about us. All my laptops, phones, backup drives, camera gear,
and my drone were seized. With the equipment. I lost
all my medical records, financial and tax records, passwords, email
and phone contacts, photos, etc. Even my phone was taken,
leaving me and Rachel with two broken doors and no
way to communicat or call for help. Maybe just a

(45:45):
little excessive, wouldn't you say, he said, not counting my
expected legal expenses. My losses so far include over twenty
thousand dollars in equipment that were taken and over five
thousand dollars in damage. Further, he said there were forty
pages missing from the search warrant that he received, and
the case records are sealed and so he couldn't even
look up the reason for the search. And as he

(46:07):
added in the press release on his website, I don't
want to speculate. I left several messages with the FBI
agent in charge, but he's not returned to any of
my calls. At this point, I have no choice but
to take legal action and to try and get my
equipment back and to seek reimbursement for the damage. So,
despite the fact that this happened to him back in
twenty twenty two, mister arn who of course still has
been reporting on the incident that occurred last month involving

(46:29):
this crash, he traveled out there to the crash site
just after officials finished up and actually posted a video
of that on his YouTube channel, as he clarified in
the press release. However, from twenty twenty two, in an
effort to diffuse that situation, he said, I've removed some
material from my Dreamland Resort website, although I believe that
it was legally obtained and legal to publish. I'm not

(46:50):
sharing anything on my website that cannot be found on
dozens of other websites and news outlet publications. I will add, though,
of course, that really a lot of the information that
appeared on his website about this recent incident was fairly
exclusive to Dreamland Resort, and it's a good example I
think of a citizen journalist who is providing sometimes better
information than some of the mainstream media outlets who reported

(47:13):
on that recent crash. But there was an article, by
the way, just an update following the raid at our
news home. This of course an article from KLAS News
by George Knapp, where, sixteen months after the initial raid,
apparently NAP reports no charges were filed and neither Arnw
nor his attorney have been told what prompted more than

(47:33):
twenty four federal agents to take action. Our news attorney,
convinced they will never know, agrees that the incident is
most certainly related to our news Area fifty one based website,
but apparently he was never officially told. Furthermore, when his
girlfriend was interrogated at one of the locations where the
raids occurred, MAP reports that apparently she had been told

(47:54):
at that time that Ournew was a fugitive and on
the run somewhere, and this apparently was told to her
to try and coachs are into revealing the names of
Arnw's friends and associates. So it was a really bizarre
situation and mister Arnu, who along with his website where
the apparent target of that search, have still been provided
very little information in terms of what prompted it. Maybe

(48:14):
he and his attorneys speculate they'll never actually know. But
when we come back here in a moment, is we're
wrapping things up, I want to take a little bit
deeper dive into the operations of some of these agencies
that are investigating the crash that has taking a turn
for the weird. We'll get into that and more as
we wrap things up right here in a moment on
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Speaker 1 (51:00):
Area fifty one crashes, mystery raids and of course ongoing
secrecy involving one of the most highly classified air bases
in the United States. Of course, with so many questions
that still remain about the raid that occurred at Arnew's home,
one has to wonder was it really necessary? Did those

(51:21):
officials find what they had gone looking for? Also, should
he be compensated for losses? Thinking along the lines of
that five thousand dollars in damages to property, there are
photographs that are available online in fact of the doors
just being kicked in at both those residents, and again
he described the people showing up in riot gear. Furthermore,

(51:41):
I guess the questions that this sort of helps to underscore, though,
does the nature of a raid like this point to
the ongoing level of secrecy still associated with Area fifty one,
and now with the most recent developments, including some of
the findings in arnw's own investigation, which were posted there
recently at the Dreamland Resort website. I mean, could there
actually be more to this story than the US Air

(52:03):
Force is letting on And despite numerous inquiries, presently, as
of today, Monday, October thirteenth, I haven't seen any additional
updates from anybody any of the investigative bodies who are
currently involved in trying to find out who put these
weird items out there at this crash site, which the
Air Force now refers to as tampering. But I want

(52:25):
to go in the direction of one of those agencies
that's involved in these investigations. As we know, the FBI,
of course, has been involved with UAP investigations fairly recently.
They've actually provided briefings to some members of Congress. From
those who have spoken about these briefings to what extent
they can, they seem to be pretty impressed with the
FBI's investigations. But the other agency tasked with investigation into

(52:48):
this incident out there in near Area fifty one is
the Air Force Office of Special Investigations, this of course
being an agency that has a very unique role in
the history of this subject and of course the subject
known as UAP or UFOs. But what is exactly the
Air Force Office of Special Investigations or THEFOSI. They are

(53:09):
essentially an independent federal law enforcement and counterintelligence agency of
the United States Air Force, and I believe they also
operate on behalf of the Space Force. But their mission
is to identify, investigate, and neutralize criminal, terrorist, or espionage
threats affecting the Department of the Air Force. AFOSI operates
both inside and outside the continental United States, working closely

(53:31):
with the Department of Defense, the FBI, the CIA, INCIS,
and other intelligence and law enforcement agencies.

Speaker 5 (53:38):
As a friend of.

Speaker 1 (53:38):
Mine who was once in the Air Force explained it
to me in very layman's terms, the AFOSI are not
the kind of guys you wanted to meet when you
were serving in the Air Force. They aren't the kind
of guys you wanted to come and chat with you
about anything. Everybody was kind of worried about the AFOSI
when they would show up. Use your imagination you can
probably imagine why. Although the agent d C scope is

(54:01):
fairly broad, they handle everything from fraud and cybercrime, which
I guess happens a lot these days, but they look
into homicides, counterintelligence, espionage, and technology protection related to sensitive
or classified Air Force programs, and hence the reason probably
for their involvement in this investigation into what's happening out
there in Nevada right now. AFOSI has field investigations, regions

(54:23):
and squadrons located worldwide, including in Europe and the Pacific
and the Middle East, and they have civilian special agents
alongside active duty, reserve and Air Force civilian personnel. Now,
as far as their unique history, during the Cold War,
AFOSI played a really important role in uncovering espionage activities
that targeted air force and defense technologies, especially those involving

(54:45):
Soviet intelligence networks that were constantly trying to infiltrate our
military activities here in this country at that time. More recently,
in post nine to eleven era, THEFOSI is somewhat shifted
toward the counter terrorism and counterintelligence side of things, with
agents being embedded in combat zones such as Iraq and Afghanistan.
Its agents often operating alongside Air Force special operations and

(55:08):
security forces conducting battlefield forensics, interrogations, and threat assessments. And
so given its purview and the kinds of areas of
investigation that it mostly operates in, the AFOSI has been
heavily involved in the investigation of spycases, think along the
lines of the John Walker espionage ring. It's also participated
in inquiries into classified aircraft incidents like those related to

(55:31):
unmanned aerial systems and advanced technology testing. So here again,
if a UAV crashed somewhere out there in the Nevada Desert,
AFOSI agents are precisely who you would imagine are going
to be the frontline investigative arm out there leading investigations
into an incident like that. But that brings us to
the history of UFOs, and this is a fascinating chapter,
in my opinion, for someone who loves the history of

(55:52):
this subject, because many decades ago, in the nineteen fifties
and sixties, the US Air Force had its famous Project
Blue Book, which was actually operated by the Air Technical
Intelligence Center at Right Patterson Air Force Base, And so
the Air Force Office of Special Investigations was by no
means the primary UFO investigating body, but there were times
where it would assist Bluebook by gathering field reports where

(56:15):
it may engage in interviewing witnesses. It seems feasible that
they also would have been involved in protecting classified Air
Force projects from public exposure, especially in cases where such
things might have been mistaken for genuine UFOs, And so
using your imagination a bit, you can probably see how
AFOSI involvement in some of those investigations, interrogations, and things

(56:38):
along those lines might have given rise to some colorful
mythology that we still associate with UFOs to this day. Namely,
I'm thinking of stories involving the men in black weird
visits from people sometimes dressed like officials, sometimes literally wearing
plane clothes or black suits, but in any case, people
who show up and they interrogate UFO witnesses. The AFOSI

(56:59):
is ocasional involvement in these investigations in the Blue Book
era might have helped give rise to some of the
MiB mythology. Now, when Project Bluebook formally ended at the
end of nineteen sixty nine, or really at the beginning
of nineteen seventy, although public UFO investigations under the Air
Force officially ceased, the AFOSI did continue to monitor UFO

(57:20):
related reports, yet again because on occasion there might have
been concerns involving unauthorized access to classified aircraft or radar
anomalies related to test programs, or any other things. In fact,
another concern had been that some people claiming to be
UFO researchers might have been using that as a front
for trying to obtain top secret information about US Air

(57:41):
Force projects and similar things our military was working on,
and by pretending to be interested in UFOs, they were
actually trying to acquire that information so that they could
sneak it off to the Soviets. And so there were
actually some instances where UFO researchers had been the targets
of inquiries and investigations based on the concerned that they
might not have really been looking for information about UFOs.

(58:04):
We just look at some of the programs during the
nineteen fifties, sixties, seventies and eighties that we mentioned earlier,
the U two, the A twelve, the ox Cart, the
F one seventeen night Hawk, the B two Spirit or
stealth bomber, and once again, all these aircraft being tested
out there at Groom Lake Area fifty one were at
the nearby Tanapa Test Range, and so in an effort

(58:24):
to protect operational security by diverting attention from such programs.
At times, here again the AFOSI gets involved, and at
times might also have allowed certain UFO rumors to flourish
as what at the time was viewed as a sort
of benign misdirection tactic to help distract public attention away

(58:45):
from real classified systems. Again, I'll refer to that portion
of the Wall Street Journal report from earlier this year
that enraged the UFO community, many saying there's no evidence
this actually ever happened, whereas in fact, those who have
studied the history of dissemb information with relation to the
UFO subject are well aware that government officials, and specifically

(59:06):
those associated with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations
have very much engaged in this kind of activity, especially
during the Cold War, and for all the aforementioned reasons. Now,
although it is so often mentioned that it almost goes
without saying, we really must yet again talk here for
a moment about Paul Benowitz, the electrical engineer and businessman

(59:27):
from Albuquerque, New Mexico, who initially innocuously enough as a
UFO researcher and one who I'll add, was also pretty
heavily dipped in the idea that UFOs were aliens. These
aliens had nefarious intentions, They might have even been gearing
up for an invasion. And so when he initially begins
filming and monitoring what he believes are UFOs and alien

(59:50):
communications that are underway near Kirtland Air Force Base in
the nineteen seventies, he goes to the base officials and
informs them, I think we've got a national security problem here.
Guys have aliens monitoring your communications, and I think that
they're up to no good. Well, it certainly was taken
seriously as a national security concern because those Air Force
officials were well aware of what was actually happening. Mister

(01:00:13):
Benowitz had captured some signals in activity, but they were
related to classified Air Force projects at Monzano Weapons Storage
Area and Coyote Canyon. He was not detecting actual evidence
associated with UFOs well, So, in nineteen eighty enter Air
Force Office of Special Investigations Officer Richard dodi who was
assigned at the time to Kirkland Air Force Base. Dodie

(01:00:34):
goes and he meets with Paul Benowitz and, according to
later accounts notably. Of course, I'll refer the listener to
Greg Bishop's excellent book Project Beta, which talks all about this.
But apparently Benowitz was fed false information that did help
to encourage his belief that UFOs of extraterrestrial origin were
doing some weird things out there around Kirkland Air Force Base,

(01:00:57):
and that alleged misinformation campaign served to deflect attention away
from the real classified programs Benowitz was inadvertently monitoring. The problem,
of course, is that we cannot directly associate what Benowitz
was misled to believe or helped along. He already kind
of believed these things, but he was given disinformation that

(01:01:18):
helped him to believe these things. While that much seems true,
we can't really provide any documentation that clearly explicitly says
that this was an official Air Force Office of Special
Investigations program and that he was a target of this
disinformation program. All we really know is that Richard Doty,

(01:01:38):
a special agent with the AFOSI at the time, went
out there. He said that he was instructed to give
this information to Paul Benwitz. But of course, anyone who
has followed the strange and sordid history of Richard Doty
and his involvement in UFO lore will know that he
is a very mixed bag, a very enigmatic character. He'll
famously say one thing here, after a little time passes,

(01:02:01):
he'll say something completely different or contradictory, and so we
don't really know to what extent the AFOSI was actually
directing special Agent Dodie versus how much Dody might have
just been kind of getting into character and enjoying the
game of espionage, getting to play secret agent man and
beginning with things that perhaps he was actually tasked with.

(01:02:22):
But the more he gets into character over time, it
turns into a case of rogue agent Dody. He's doing
things that weren't officially authorized, and again there's still remains
some question about really exactly what was going on. What,
of course, is well known famously and tragically is the
level to which Paul Benowitz's mental health deteriorated after he
became convinced of an alien presence and a government conspiracy.

(01:02:46):
But it didn't stop with Benowitz. You know, this carried
over because by the late nineteen eighties, researchers like William
Moore and Lynda Moulton Howe would also come forward saying
that Dody and the Air Force Office of Special Investigations
had used them to disseminate fabricated documents think for instance,
like the MJ twelve materials, and all of that yet
again part of a broader UFO disinformation effort that was

(01:03:08):
allegedly underway at the time. To be clear, the Air
Force Office of Special Investigations never officially confirmed that there
were any such operations, but there are several declassified documents
that seem to confirm not only the monitoring of Benowitz's
activities and also the assertion that he was seen at
the time as a potential security risk due to his

(01:03:29):
proximity to these sensitive facilities. Furthermore, during the FBI's investigations
into the leak of the NJ twelve documents, they were
initially tasked with trying to find out if these were
indeed illegally leaked US government documents, and it was conveyed
to the FBI. Now, according to records that are available,
that indeed the Air Force had been aware of these

(01:03:49):
documents and that they weren't concerned with them. And although
that does of course leave some things open to interpretation,
it strongly suggests that there had been some degree of
awareness on part of the US Air Force m more
specifically the AFOSI regarding those documents, the fact that they
weren't real, and therefore the fact that they might have
been part of something a little more clandestine. So this,

(01:04:13):
of course remains one of the biggest controversies in ufology
from over the years. So much more could be said
about that. Maybe we'll dive into some of it for
ex subscribers, but for the time being, there's a strange
story unfolding right now out there in the Nevada Desert,
one of many that we can add to the growing collection.
All right, guys, that's all for now, as always, take

(01:04:34):
care out there, and until next time, stay strange. We'll
talk to you again soon