Secrets Declassified with David Duchovny 1x1

1. - Throughout time, governments and the people

2. who work for them have done strange and even terrible

3. things in the name of national interest.

4. Tonight we look up.

5. Imagine an intelligence agency stealing a fighter jet

6. in broad daylight.

7. - He risks being blown out of the sky at any instant.

8. - And can we ever know with certainty

9. what happens at Area 51?

10. - This is actually responsible

11. for more than half of all reported UFO sightings

12. in the 1950s.

13. - This is pure evidence that the government is

14. hiding something big.

15. - It's time to bring these secrets of the skies

16. back down to Earth.

17. It's fall 1954.

18. In Burbank, California, aerospace manufacturer Lockheed

19. is designing a top secret aircraft

20. whose very existence will ignite

21. one of history's greatest conspiracy theories.

22. - This plane is cutting-edge technology,

23. but it's kind of weird.

24. It uses advanced materials like titanium

25. that's strong and lightweight,

26. but it also has these strange features.

27. Like its gangly, and the landing gear

28. is lined up like bicycle wheels.

29. - This is a curious-looking bird.

30. This plane has 130-foot-long wings

31. that droop at their length, to the point that

32. they actually will hit the ground

33. when the plane is grounded.

34. - Most unusually, though, for a plane produced by

35. a fighter jet company, this aircraft isn't

36. going to carry a single weapon.

37. - The reason for this plane's extreme design

38. is its extreme mission.

39. It's being made for the U.S. government

40. to fly at record-breaking altitudes

41. on top secret reconnaissance missions

42. over Soviet territory.

43. - In the 1950s, the Americans are worried

44. about the technology that the Soviets have.

45. The rumor at the time is that the Soviets

46. had developed a bomber capable of flying from Moscow

47. to the United States.

48. So the CIA comes up with this ingenious plan

49. to find out if it was true.

50. - We don't have much of a spy network operating

51. in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.

52. The Soviets are protected behind an Iron Curtain.

53. If you can't go through the Iron Curtain

54. or sneak behind it, you might have to fly over it.

55. - To avoid detection, the CIA decides to build

56. a state of the art spy plane.

57. - Any aircraft that are flying over Soviet territory

58. might be suscepted to air defense,

59. including sophisticated missiles,

60. and they might be accused of violating international law.

61. The solution is to create an aircraft that flies

62. twice as high as the Himalayan peaks.

63. - 70,000 feet and above.

64. - No plane has flown so high for so long.

65. To achieve it means developing brand-new technology.

66. - So the government tasked Lockheed

67. to build this spy plane.

68. And their solution is essentially

69. to make a giant glider

70. and to stick a jet engine on it.

71. - Flying at the altitude that it is

72. presents all sorts of new challenges.

73. For instance, traditional jet fuel just won't work.

74. - They need to invent an entirely new

75. type of kerosene fuel

76. that doesn't boil off at low pressure.

77. - Lockheed's engineers call its new creation

78. The Angel, as it flies so close to heaven.

79. The government designates it Utility Aircraft 2,

80. or the U-2.

81. But building this incredible plane

82. is only half the battle.

83. - When the U-2 is complete, the government needs

84. to figure out how to test it and, most importantly,

85. where to test it.

86. - Building a plane in secret, that's doable,

87. because it's done inside of a hangar.

88. But testing a plane in secret, that's a lot more difficult.

89. - For decades, the location of the U-2's testing site

90. remains one of the government's

91. most closely guarded secrets.

92. But conducting so many flights

93. of this classified plane

94. has a strange side effect.

95. - When they start testing the U-2,

96. UFO sightings go up tremendously.

97. The public sees it.

98. They have no idea what they're looking at.

99. Air traffic controllers and professional pilots,

100. they don't know either.

101. - They see the shimmering in the sky.

102. They don't know what it is.

103. It's really high up there.

104. Therefore, they think it's a UFO.

105. - Rather than confess that they're testing a top secret

106. new plane, which might alert the Soviets to their plan,

107. the CIA launch a cover-up.

108. - They claim the sightings are due to natural phenomena.

109. So understandably,

110. the conspiracy theories go nuts.

111. - There are some people who argue that the U-2

112. in its early stages of development

113. is actually responsible for more than half of all

114. reported UFO sightings in the 1950s.

115. - In 2013, the U.S. admits for the first time

116. what many have long suspected.

117. The name of U-2's secret test base is Area 51.

118. - One of the reasons that Area 51 is

119. so important and so secret is that it's near

120. the Nevada proving grounds.

121. And no one in their right mind

122. is going to want to go into an area

123. where they're testing nuclear bombs.

124. - They specifically purchased the land

125. for testing the U-2.

126. Were it not for the U-2, there would be no Area 51,

127. and we would have lost our most iconic UFO conspiracy location.

128. - While Area 51 becomes the most notorious UFO site

129. in the world, the U-2 plane becomes one of America's

130. most vital intelligence tools.

131. - Between 1956, the first operational flight

132. July 4 through May 1 of 1960,

133. the U-2 program dispelled the missile gap

134. and the bomber gap.

135. There was none.

136. We were still ahead of the Soviets,

137. even though they were saying they were ahead of us.

138. - Over the next four years, 30 flights photograph

139. almost 15% of the USSR.

140. This provides 90% of the CIA's hard intelligence

141. on its fiercest rival.

142. - The CIA thought it had a shelf life

143. of two to four years.

144. Well, other than the B-52,

145. the U-2 spy plane is the longest-flying airplane

146. in the U.S. Air Force's arsenal,

147. and it's still flying today.

148. - The U-2 isn't the only secret

149. aviation project to fly into the record books.

150. A decade later, the world's first supersonic plane

151. prepares for its maiden flight.

152. But this isn't the Concorde in London or Paris.

153. This is in Moscow,

154. and this aircraft is named Tu-144.

155. - The maiden flight of the Tu-144 is a massive

156. engineering and propaganda win

157. for the Soviet Union over the West.

158. Up until that point,

159. the only planes to fly over the speed of sound

160. are military jets.

161. No one has ever built a large-scale plane

162. like this that can carry passengers,

163. because the immense technical challenge of it all.

164. - The Soviet designers are on cloud nine.

165. The creators of the Concorde are in shock.

166. - In 1962,

167. Britain and France entered into an agreement

168. to share resources to develop and build

169. a supersonic passenger jet called the Concorde

170. and get it in the sky before the Soviet Union.

171. - The fact that the Tu-144 beats Concorde

172. into the sky is a surprise.

173. Even more shocking, it has the same design.

174. - Both planes have got the same sleek nose,

175. the same delta wing shape, and the same

176. afterburning turbojet engine.

177. The Tu-144 is so similar that the Western press,

178. they called it the Concordeski.

179. - The Soviets insist their craft is

180. 100% Russian ingenuity,

181. but Western engineers point to a series

182. of suspicious events during Concorde's development.

183. - Right from the onset, the Soviets showed

184. an incredible amount of interest

185. in the Concorde program.

186. Could there also be a mole within the organization,

187. someone within the trust of the Concorde program

188. giving secrets away?

189. - Rumors of industrial espionage remain just that.

190. Then, in 1992, a Russian bureaucrat

191. walks into the British embassy in Latvia with a bold offer.

192. - A disillusioned KGB worker

193. named Vasili Mitrokhin said

194. that he had scores of documents

195. that he would willingly hand over in exchange for asylum.

196. When MI6 agents get to Mitrokhin's house in Russia,

197. they find a treasure trove of material—

198. more than 25,000 pages.

199. In total, it's about six trunks' worth of material.

200. - During his time at KGB, Vasili was actually

201. hand-copying notes that

202. he had access to as an archivist.

203. This discovery would turn out to be the largest single

204. source of information ever collected during

205. the entire history of the Cold War.

206. - Buried in this vast intelligence stash

207. is evidence of a spy codenamed Ace.

208. - Agent Ace seems to be a British engineer

209. who was leaking information to the Soviets.

210. This is how the Tu-144 got in the sky before the Concorde.

211. - Agent Ace was the mole that the UK and the Concorde program

212. suspected from the very beginning.

213. - For 20 years, the identity of Agent Ace

214. remains a mystery.

215. But in 2023, a British professor

216. pieces together clues from Mitrokhin's archive

217. to crack the case.

218. - Agent Ace's real name

219. is Ivor Gregory James,

220. and he is a Hong-Kong-born engineer

221. who went to work in Britain in the 1970s.

222. - It was discovered that Agent Ace had actually

223. supplied the Soviets with more than 90,000 pages

224. of documentation related to new aircraft designs

225. over more than a decade.

226. And inside that supply of information

227. were details related to the Concorde program.

228. - The theft of the Concorde secrets

229. is one of the largest industrial espionage operations

230. of all time.

231. But for all its initial success,

232. there's a good reason you probably

233. never heard of the Tu-144.

234. - At this prestigious Paris Air Show,

235. both the Concorde and the revised Tu-14

236. are the star attractions.

237. - The Tu-144 flies at the Paris Air Show.

238. And initially, it looks great.

239. It takes off fine.

240. It flies for a few minutes.

241. But then it stalls and crashes.

242. - It all breaks apart in flames.

243. - It is a massive embarrassment

244. for the Soviet Union,

245. and the plane's reputation never recovers.

246. - The Tu-144 only ever completes

247. 100 domestic flights.

248. The rumors are the sonic jet ends its days

249. shipping mailbags in Siberia.

250. - It's 1967,

251. and a mysterious light in the sky

252. over a key American missile base

253. is about to set off alarms

254. and ignite a long-running mystery.

255. - On March 24, Robert Salas arrives for his shift,

256. overseeing 10 nuclear missiles at Malmstrom Air Force base.

257. As a young missileer,

258. his job is to serve as the first line of defense

259. as part of America's nuclear arsenal.

260. - In the late 1960s, the Minuteman ICBMs

261. are really the centerpiece of the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

262. - Malmstrom is one of multiple sites

263. that houses 1,000 nuclear missiles.

264. Each one is in its own silo,

265. and 150 of them are at Malmstrom.

266. Those missiles are kept on alert

267. and ready to fire on very short notice

268. in the event of a nuclear exchange.

269. - Salas's work is critical to national security,

270. but it also gets a little repetitive.

271. - I actually had a chance to serve

272. at Malmstrom Air Force base as a nuclear missile officer.

273. And when you're there, you don't feel very important.

274. You're just one of about 1,000 other people

275. who are all there taking turns going underground

276. and monitoring these missiles.

277. But in reality, you really are carrying

278. the weight of nuclear deterrence on your shoulders.

279. - This particular shift at Malmstrom

280. is anything but routine.

281. - Salas is in his command headquarters, and suddenly...

282. He gets a call from

283. the gate personnel

284. at the entrance to Malmstrom.

285. - And the guard reports that there's

286. some sort of strange light that's flying,

287. moving in a strange pattern over the actual base itself.

288. This is an area that's restricted from aircraft

289. and restricted from commercial travel.

290. So what is this light that's flying overhead?

291. - They don't seem to be engaged in threatening action,

292. but it is a little disconcerting

293. to see unexplained lights above the base.

294. A few minutes later, Salas gets a second call.

295. - And this time the guard calls Salas in a cold panic.

296. - There's a glowing orb of red light

297. that's hovering right above the gate to Malmstrom.

298. - Needless to say, nobody knew what this was,

299. and Salas, who's 100 feet underground,

300. has no idea how to make any sense of this at all.

301. - Salas orders the gate personnel

302. to not allow anything to pass the gate.

303. - And then within just a few seconds,

304. all 10 missiles under Salas's command go dark.

305. - These Minuteman missiles are

306. the most sophisticated,

307. technologically advanced nuclear weapons

308. in the American arsenal.

309. The idea that 10 of them

310. could suddenly all malfunction at the same time

311. is unthinkable to Salas.

312. - 10 missiles actually covers about 15 square miles

313. of location, all controlled by a single launch

314. control capsule where Salas was actually sitting.

315. - With no explanation,

316. the red orbiting light disappears.

317. - The missiles reactivate,

318. and it's almost as if nothing happened at all.

319. - Was this a Soviet spy craft

320. sent to disrupt America's defenses

321. or some unidentified aerial phenomenon?

322. To find out, the Air Force sends a team

323. from an ongoing secret investigation

324. known as Project Blue Book.

325. - Project Blue Book was a U.S. Air Force program

326. that started in the early 1950s

327. and ran for about 15 years

328. to track and classify all unidentified aerial phenomena

329. and see if any of them were a threat to national security.

330. - Investigators from Project Blue Book

331. look into this incident at Malmstrom,

332. and they don't think it's an alien spacecraft,

333. but they also can't find any other logical explanation.

334. - The official word is that the government doesn't know

335. why those missiles shut down.

336. - Malmstrom is instantly classified

337. like many other Project Blue Book sightings.

338. - Salas signs a nondisclosure agreement,

339. and he's sworn to secrecy

340. about the events that occurred.

341. He's convinced that if he tells anybody what he saw,

342. he's going to face prosecution and probably be put in prison.

343. - The Blue Book investigation ends three years later,

344. and its findings are made public.

345. The government concludes that UFOs pose no danger

346. to America's defenses.

347. - There is nothing to hide.

348. - There's nothing to hide at all.

349. - And no credible evidence exists

350. for extraterrestrial technology or vehicles.

351. Problem is, Robert Salas knows what he saw.

352. Decades later, in 2010,

353. he decides to tell his story to the world.

354. - In 1967, I was a First Lieutenant

355. stationed at Malmstrom Air Force base, Montana.

356. - When Robert Salas came out with his story,

357. UFO theorists and the community really seized on it and said,

358. "This is pure evidence that the government is hiding

359. something that happened out there."

360. The UFO community starts to believe

361. that Project Blue Book is designed to just

362. debunk UFO conspiracies

363. instead of actually investigating them.

364. - I think the U.S. government does know more about

365. some of these UFO sightings than it lets on,

366. but that doesn't necessarily mean

367. that they're alien spacecraft.

368. A mystery is in some ways just as challenging

369. as an actual secret.

370. Still, today, the U.S. government is

371. just as likely to classify its ignorance

372. as it is it's knowledge.

373. - It's 15 years into the Cold War.

374. Controlling the skies is vital to defending the land.

375. One idea of an ambitious U.S. general

376. involves a fleet of covert nuclear bombers

377. that circle the enemy nonstop.

378. But on a winter's night in 1961,

379. this plan goes up in flames over North Carolina.

380. - It's just before midnight on an unusually warm evening

381. in the small town of Goldsboro.

382. Some of the residents are still awake

383. when suddenly their rooms start to glow

384. with a strange red light.

385. They see this giant B-52 bomber with just a single wing on fire

386. passing over their homes.

387. - I can only imagine being one of the residents of Goldsboro.

388. You hear this loud crash, this boom outside.

389. It's a B-52 blowing up right over your head, more or less.

390. It had to be a horrific moment.

391. - The plane explodes, scattering debris

392. across two square miles of cotton farmland,

393. igniting fields of crops.

394. - Military helicopters start to descend upon the scene

395. quite instantaneously, just about.

396. - Next thing they know, a voice on a loudspeaker

397. is yelling at everyone to evacuate.

398. - The residents of Goldsboro are told this crashed plane

399. has scattered deadly cargo.

400. Two 3.8 megaton thermonuclear bombs,

401. each 200 times more destructive

402. than the one that leveled Hiroshima.

403. What the world doesn't yet know is that

404. this crashed bomber is part of a classified

405. national security initiative

406. named the Airborne Alert Program.

407. - The Airborne Alert Program is the brainchild

408. of General Power, and the idea is that

409. the U.S. Air Force is going to be ready

410. to deliver a nuke to the USSR at any time.

411. - General Power comes up with this idea

412. to fly B-52s 24 hours a day,

413. because we want to make sure that we are able to strike

414. Russia at any time, should they launch these missiles at us.

415. - For a brief, shining moment, the Soviet Union

416. pulled ahead of the United States

417. in the Cold War nuclear standoff.

418. They had that first strike advantage.

419. - So it seems absolutely batty and insane.

420. But undoubtedly, many in the 1960s were thinking,

421. this is exactly how we ensure that

422. the United States survives should the Cold War

423. give way to a hot war.

424. - No one has ever tried to keep a fleet

425. of nuclear bombers in the air 24/7.

426. - So General Power and his planners

427. developed these routes that will go along the Soviet border

428. and come back out.

429. - These were grueling missions that are testing

430. the limits of human endurance.

431. The reality was that they're circling

432. in a B-52 over the Arctic Circle,

433. waiting to start a nuclear war.

434. - They have to be refueled while in flight.

435. And that's very dangerous, because these planes are

436. carrying a nuclear payload.

437. - You have an American strategic bomber

438. thundering through the sky at 40,000 feet

439. with a bomb bay full of thermonuclear weapons,

440. trying to receive kerosene from another airplane

441. while they both bounce around in turbulent air.

442. What could possibly go wrong?

443. - You just wrap your head around it.

444. Think about that.

445. There are at least two nukes on every plane.

446. - But General Power and our military

447. think it's worth the risk.

448. - After the Airborne Alert Program

449. has been in secret operation for years,

450. General Power decides to make it public

451. on January 18, 1961.

452. He wants to use its existence as a deterrent to the Soviets.

453. But exactly one week after his announcement,

454. one of his bombers springs a fuel leak,

455. and the residents of Goldsboro end up running for their lives

456. from two unexploded nuclear bombs.

457. - Shortly before this mission was undertaken,

458. Boeing realized that there was a mechanical issue

459. with the B-52s,

460. and essentially, they were doing a callback.

461. But this B-52 had yet to make the list.

462. That's when trouble strikes.

463. - The military evacuate locals, cordons off the area,

464. and brings in a crack team of bomb disposal experts.

465. - One of the bombs is very easy to find,

466. safely hanging from a tree,

467. ready for the government to take it away.

468. Now, the second bomb,

469. that one's a bit harder to get to.

470. - The second bomb experiences a failure to deploy

471. of its retarding parachute.

472. And the result is it slams into the surface of the Earth,

473. going 700 miles an hour,

474. and digs itself in to a depth of 180 feet.

475. - The authorities dig for seven days and nights

476. under floodlights, in rain and snow,

477. to try and find the bomb.

478. - One wrong move, and it could all go boom.

479. - So finally, they decide that further digging

480. represented a greater danger than just isolating the device

481. and leaving it alone.

482. - They realized the better thing to do

483. is to seal it up and call it a day.

484. - They leave the bomb in place and they just buy the field

485. from the farmer for 1,000 bucks.

486. - The deed to this land forever states

487. that the owner is not to go more

488. than five feet into the ground for any purpose.

489. - 45 years later, the Air Force releases

490. a never before seen document detailing the crash,

491. compiled by a senior nuclear weapons safety officer.

492. It reveals a shocking secret

493. and the paper thin margin between near-miss

494. and nuclear apocalypse.

495. - This document that comes out decades later

496. reveals that the first bomb,

497. of its multiple redundant security devices,

498. all but one are compromised.

499. - As if by miracle, it stopped at the final stage.

500. We're one tiny electrical sequence away from

501. a thermonuclear explosion in North Carolina.

502. - As for the second nuke,

503. the one that is buried deep in the soil of Goldsboro,

504. it's been half a century.

505. It hasn't blown up.

506. So I guess we're doing OK.

507. And fingers crossed.

508. - In the '60s, the Soviets released

509. one of the most formidable, most agile,

510. and most lethal fighter jets ever made.

511. But this must have weapon to rule the skies

512. is not for sale to Russia's enemies.

513. So for the young nation of Israel,

514. stealing its secrets might tip the balance of a war.

515. - In the 1960s, a Soviet Union created a brand-new,

516. cutting edge fighter jet

517. that had the entire Western world on edge.

518. And it's a game changer.

519. - It's so fast and agile that it becomes

520. the biggest selling fighter in history.

521. It is also designed to be simple to make

522. and cheap to produce, which means air forces

523. could have lots of them.

524. - It's called the MiG 21.

525. And for one fledgling nation, Israel,

526. this nimble new fighter plane spells disaster.

527. - Israel is surrounded on all sides by hostile neighbors.

528. - Islamic countries that were buying

529. MiG 21s from the Soviet Union.

530. - What the Israelis want to do is study the MiG 21.

531. They want to know its potential weaknesses

532. and ensure their own ability to maintain air superiority.

533. - Israel's primary concern was this new fighter jet

534. could tip the scales of power for any future war

535. that might break out in the region.

536. - If the Israelis lose air superiority,

537. they'll lose the war.

538. If they lose the war, they'll cease to exist.

539. The commander of the Israeli Air Force

540. tells the head of Israeli intelligence agencies,

541. Meir Amit, "If you can bring me a MiG,

542. you'll have done me a good day's service."

543. - Meir Amit accepts the challenge

544. and hatches a covert plan to steal

545. a MiG 21 from right under the noses

546. of Israel's neighbors.

547. The first step?

548. Finding a pilot.

549. - The Israelis started to make approaches to pilots

550. in a lot of different countries.

551. - The Israelis identify an Iraqi pilot named Munir Redfa,

552. and they identify this pilot because in an Islamic country,

553. he himself is Christian.

554. - They orchestrate a meeting in a hotel room.

555. - It's such an important mission.

556. The agency's top spy chief even watches the entire meeting

557. covertly through a peephole.

558. - Redfa is a deputy commander of an Iraqi MiG squadron,

559. and he's not happy, because he's just been

560. passed over for promotion.

561. He believes it's because he's a Catholic,

562. which is pretty unusual in Iraq.

563. He's also very unhappy about being ordered to join

564. a bombing campaign against Kurdish tribesmen

565. on the Iraqis' northern border.

566. - In all the cases I've ever worked,

567. in all the spies I've ever recruited,

568. it was a deep, real relationship

569. between us and them.

570. Just because you have differing

571. political idealizations

572. doesn't mean that you aren't human beings together.

573. All you have to do is think in terms of,

574. what can I do to inspire them to feel safe with me

575. and solve that action they need solved in their lives?

576. - It's a very delicate process to create a defector,

577. to turn a patriot into a traitor.

578. And every defector comes with their own interests,

579. their own needs.

580. Sometimes it's education.

581. Sometimes it's finances.

582. But in every case, all a defector is looking for

583. is to have some sort of control over their future.

584. - Redfa is offered $1 million, Israeli citizenship,

585. and safe passage for his entire family

586. if he agrees to fly his MiG 21 to Israel.

587. - Redfa goes for the deal,

588. but there's one significant setback: fuel.

589. - As a Christian, Redfa is subject to a lot of scrutiny.

590. His movements are tightly controlled.

591. - So he's rarely allowed to fly with a full fuel tank.

592. This keeps him close to home.

593. Even if Redfa has a full tank, a journey to Israel

594. takes him through hostile Jordanian airspace.

595. He risks being blown out of the sky at any instant.

596. - It's two full years before Redfa gets his chance.

597. - Eventually, it happens.

598. He's told that he'll be part of a formation flight

599. with a full tank of gas.

600. - Mid-flight, he breaks away from his formation

601. and heads for Israel,

602. powering over Jordanian airspace.

603. The Jordanians scramble two jets to give chase,

604. but they can't match the MiG 21's speed.

605. Redfa hits his afterburners,

606. sometimes flying as low as 700 feet to avoid missiles

607. locking onto his plane.

608. - After a 65-minute flight of sheer terror,

609. he reaches a base deep in the desert

610. on his last drop of fuel.

611. - 30 years later, details of this daring,

612. state-sanctioned heist are revealed

613. to a journalist writing a history of the Mossad.

614. And it's now seen as a turning point

615. in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

616. - The ending of the story is that the Israelis discovered

617. the MiG's weaknesses, and in the event

618. that they have to fight it, they're better prepared.

619. This operation underscores just how good

620. Mossad is at understanding their adversaries

621. and exploiting opportunities.

622. - An intelligence organization that belonged to

623. a small country that was less than 20 years old

624. was now capable of carrying out one of the biggest

625. heists in history.

626. - The arms race to control the skies

627. has had governments everywhere

628. investing in groundbreaking secret projects.

629. So maybe it was only a matter of time

630. before the most enduring design in science fiction

631. gets a shot: the flying saucer.

632. Meet 1959's Avrocar.

633. - The Avrocar.

634. It's effectively what you would get

635. if you mixed a flying saucer

636. with a hovercraft.

637. - Project Avrocar is the brainchild

638. of a British engineer named John Carver Meadows Frost.

639. - He's a big dreamer, and he's already got a project in mind

640. to begin to think about the next generation

641. of aerospace design.

642. - Frost begins to study this interesting

643. aerodynamic phenomenon known as the Coanda effect.

644. - He shows that a jet engine's exhaust can be routed around

645. to underneath the object,

646. where it forms an air cloud

647. that allows it to lift off the ground.

648. - So basically, he's designed a literal flying saucer.

649. - His lab work convinces the Canadian government

650. that this is actually a possibility,

651. and they are willing to support his work

652. for about two years.

653. And for Frost, this becomes

654. his personal passion

655. to take this flying saucer from a blueprint to reality.

656. - But after a year,

657. the project's astronomical price tag

658. forces the Canadians to pull the plug.

659. Frost needs a new backer to realize his dream.

660. Luckily for him, a rich neighbor to the south

661. is in the market for a flying saucer.

662. - In the early 1950s, the U.S. military

663. is looking for planes that can vertically take off and land.

664. They're known as VTOL planes.

665. - Governments are beginning to think about

666. what fighting World War III would actually look like.

667. So they are focused on developing

668. planes that can take off vertically

669. that don't need long runways.

670. - Also, the military has been rocked by a series

671. of newspaper articles claiming that the Soviets

672. are developing similar tech.

673. Apparently, Nazi engineers had secretly developed

674. a working flying saucer during the Second World War,

675. and they were now working for the USSR.

676. - So if there's even the smallest chance that

677. the Soviets are developing a game-changing VTOL aircraft,

678. the U.S. thinks they need one too.

679. - The story goes that when Frost gets wind of

680. the U.S.'s interest in saucers,

681. he spots a visiting delegation

682. from the Air Force and intercepts them

683. with his Avrocar prototype.

684. - Frost apparently shows them work so secret

685. even his bosses don't know about it.

686. And shortly after, the U.S. Air Force

687. agrees to fund a million-dollar

688. feasibility study into his flying saucer research.

689. - For Frost, this is magic.

690. In an instant, his project has gone from a side hustle

691. of the Canadian government to accessing

692. the largest, most powerful military

693. and budget in the world.

694. - We'll never know what Frost said to get funding,

695. but a clue lies in a remarkable document

696. made public in 2012.

697. In it, Frost makes some extraordinary claims

698. about his flying saucer, now code named Project 1794.

699. - Frost claims that his saucer will far exceed

700. any jet fighter of the age.

701. - It's going to be able to go up to four times

702. the speed of sound, fly to the edge of space,

703. travel between continents.

704. These are bold claims.

705. - If you are an Air Force general,

706. this is a machine you definitely want in your hangar.

707. - Progress is anything but supersonic.

708. After eight years, in 1959, Frost's team

709. finally has a prototype ready for its first ever test.

710. And by this point, the U.S. Army also wants in.

711. - The U.S. Army has come out of the Korean War

712. interested in having basically a flying Jeep.

713. They see this flying saucer as perhaps

714. their answer to moving equipment,

715. moving troops, and even fighting.

716. - So Frost has both the Army and the Air Force, two bosses,

717. both pushing him for results.

718. - Everything hangs on the Avrocar's first test.

719. The million dollar question is, will this thing fly?

720. - In the Avrocar's first test flight,

721. it doesn't go completely as planned.

722. Frost's design has some fundamental problems.

723. It doesn't have the control surfaces

724. that an airplane has to ensure stability,

725. and it has no thrust.

726. Like, the thing can't go fast.

727. It's riding on a cushion of air, but as it goes up,

728. the air dissipates, so it loses its lift.

729. It's just bad all the way around.

730. - After promising supersonic flight at the edge of space,

731. Frost delivers a wobbly 30 miles an hour,

732. 3 foot from the ground.

733. Unsurprisingly, the military pulls the plug.

734. - The project is canceled.

735. A complete disappointment to everyone,

736. including, presumably, John Frost.

737. - Before it's grounded, the Avrocar racks up

738. over $100 million in costs in today's money—

739. a reminder that when it comes to the national interest,

740. no idea is too crazy to try.

741. - The prototypes are quickly dumped into storage

742. as a very obvious embarrassment.

743. - In the 1980s, decades of press censorship

744. are crumbling in the USSR.

745. And with this new freedom, Soviet newspapers

746. focus their attention on a topic that really sells:

747. UFOs.

748. - During the Cold War, the Soviet government

749. is very much against any stories that are

750. at all subversive or unorthodox,

751. and a UFO sighting is both.

752. - Discussing UFOs would be viewed as admitting that

753. there was some sort of power out there stronger

754. than the Soviet Union itself.

755. And to do so would be not only risking your career,

756. but also risking your freedom and ending up in jail.

757. - The media can't really report on this story at all

758. until the government kind of lets up on these rules.

759. - In 1985, things start to change.

760. - In this era of glasnost and perestroika,

761. you have the opening up of all of these incredible

762. hidden stories that had been taking place

763. inside the Soviet Union.

764. - It was like the floodgates were opened.

765. All of a sudden, Russia just kind of went crazy for UFOs.

766. - Many scientists inside the Soviet Union

767. questioned the truth of these stories.

768. - Soviet authorities tried to explain away the sightings,

769. saying that it's a natural phenomena like ball lightning

770. that can give the impression of a large glowing orb

771. that people say they saw.

772. - Ball lightning presents itself in a circular form,

773. very similar to what people report as UFOs

774. where they talk about flying saucers

775. or balls of light in the sky.

776. - Others say that this is just mass hysteria,

777. that people got one story,

778. and they just fed into each other

779. and got really excited.

780. - It's easy to chalk this up as hysteria,

781. sightings by an uninformed public.

782. But then in 1991, a whistleblower

783. from deep within Soviet military circles

784. steps forward.

785. A pilot with a résumé so decorated,

786. her claims demand to be taken seriously.

787. - Marina Popovich is one of the USSR's

788. most decorated and well-respected aviators.

789. - She's the first Soviet woman to break the sound barrier.

790. She holds 100 aviation records,

791. and she's known in the Soviet Union

792. as Madame MiG.

793. - The changes gave Marina the opportunity

794. to talk about her experiences

795. and what she had seen as a pilot in the USSR

796. without the worry of repercussions.

797. - In press conferences and media interviews

798. and her own writings, she begins to make

799. some pretty fantastical claims.

800. - Popovich says she has

801. multiple experiences with UFOs.

802. In 1982, she says she was in Siberia

803. when she saw what looked like a giant glowing orb.

804. - At a press conference in the Russian consulate

805. in San Francisco, she claims that the Russians

806. have been able to retrieve five different downed UFOs,

807. and she also claims that there's evidence

808. of some sort of hybrid breeding program,

809. breeding humans with aliens.

810. - And then in this very dramatic moment,

811. she produces a photo that she says

812. is a 15-mile-wide alien spacecraft.

813. - She says it is a UFO that has either captured

814. or destroyed Soviet space probes.

815. Scientists explain it away as the picture

816. being very consistent with the launch of a spacecraft.

817. But because Popovich is so respected,

818. the UFO community starts to back her,

819. saying that she's the only one telling the truth

820. and the government is covering up the real explanation.

821. - Her claims obviously create

822. an incredible amount of interest.

823. I mean, you can imagine the press would go crazy

824. over stories like this,

825. especially at that time in history.

826. - Marina Popovich isn't the first

827. government whistleblower to cry cover-up,

828. but she's one of the most influential.

829. - Popovich becomes probably the best example that we have

830. on the Russian side of a phenomenon

831. that's actually pretty common,

832. these so-called UFO whistleblowers.

833. Government workers, pilots, intelligence officers

834. who come forward and say that they have privileged knowledge

835. or have seen hidden evidence.

836. - The whistleblowers will keep coming forward with stories.

837. But until someone has really verified evidence

838. that can be shown publicly, it's just hearsay.

839. - But still today, we don't know the truth

840. of what a lot of these mystery sightings end up being.

841. Our world and our universe is still weirder today

842. than we can imagine.

843. - For every covert mission we discover

844. taking place in the skies, many more remain hidden

845. until someone brings these secrets to light.

846. I'm David Duchovny.

847. Thanks for watching "Secrets Declassified."