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Short filmTranscript
00:00Throughout time, governments and the people who work for them have done strange and even
00:11terrible things in the name of national interest.
00:14Tonight, we look up.
00:17Imagine an intelligence agency stealing a fighter jet in broad daylight.
00:22He risks being blown out of the sky at any instant.
00:27And can we ever know with certainty what happens at Area 51?
00:32This is actually responsible for more than half of all reported UFO sightings in the
00:361950s.
00:38This is pure evidence that the government is hiding something big.
00:43It's time to bring these secrets of the skies back down to earth.
00:57It's fall, 1954.
01:01In Burbank, California, aerospace manufacturer Lockheed is designing a top-secret aircraft
01:08whose very existence will ignite one of history's greatest conspiracy theories.
01:13This plane is cutting-edge technology, but it's kind of weird.
01:28It uses advanced materials like titanium that's strong and lightweight, but it also has these
01:33strange features like it's gangly and the landing gear is lined up like bicycle wheels.
01:40This is a curious looking bird.
01:42This plane has 130-foot long wings that droop at their length to the point that they actually
01:47will hit the ground when the plane is grounded.
01:51Most unusually, though, for a plane produced by a fighter jet company, this aircraft isn't
01:55going to carry a single weapon.
01:58The reason for this plane's extreme design is its extreme mission.
02:03It's being made for the U.S. government to fly at record-breaking altitudes on top-secret
02:08reconnaissance missions over Soviet territory.
02:13In the 1950s, the Americans are worried about the technology that the Soviets have.
02:19The rumor at the time is that the Soviets had developed a bomber capable of flying from
02:24Moscow to the United States.
02:27So the CIA comes up with this ingenious plan to find out if it was true.
02:33We don't have much of a spy network operating in the Soviet Union in the 1950s.
02:39The Soviets are protected behind an iron curtain.
02:42If you can't go through the iron curtain or sneak behind it, you might have to fly over
02:48it.
02:51To avoid detection, the CIA decides to build a state-of-the-art spy plane.
02:57Any aircraft that are flying over Soviet territory might be susceptible to air defense, including
03:02sophisticated missiles, and they might be accused of violating international law.
03:09The solution is to create an aircraft that flies twice as high as the Himalayan peaks.
03:1670,000 feet and above.
03:20No plane has flown so high for so long.
03:23To achieve it means developing brand-new technology.
03:29So the government tasks Lockheed to build this spy plane, and their solution is essentially
03:34to make a giant glider and to stick a jet engine on it.
03:40Flying at the altitude that it is presents all sorts of new challenges.
03:42For instance, traditional jet fuel just won't work.
03:45They need to invent an entirely new type of kerosene fuel that doesn't boil off at low
03:51pressure.
03:53Lockheed's engineers call its new creation the Angel, as it flies so close to heaven.
03:59The government designates it Utility Aircraft 2, or the U-2.
04:04But building this incredible plane is only half the battle.
04:12When the U-2 is complete, the government needs to figure out how to test it, and most importantly,
04:17where to test it.
04:20Building a plane in secret, that's doable, because it's done inside of a hangar.
04:25But testing a plane in secret, that's a lot more difficult.
04:31For decades, the location of the U-2's testing site remains one of the government's most
04:36closely guarded secrets.
04:38But conducting so many flights of this classified plane has a strange side effect.
04:45When they start testing the U-2, UFO sightings go up tremendously.
04:50The public sees it, they have no idea what they're looking at.
04:53Their traffic controllers and professional pilots, they don't know either.
04:57They see the shimmering in the sky, they don't know what it is.
05:00It's really high up there, therefore they think it's a UFO.
05:05Rather than confess that they're testing a top-secret new plane, which might alert the
05:09Soviets to their plan, the CIA launch a cover-up.
05:12They claim the sightings are due to natural phenomena, so understandably, the conspiracy
05:17theories go nuts.
05:20There are some people who argue that the U-2 in its early stages of development is
05:26actually responsible for more than half of all reported UFO sightings in the 1950s.
05:31In 2013, the U.S. admits for the first time what many have long suspected.
05:36The name of U-2's secret test base is Area 51.
05:47One of the reasons that Area 51 is so important and so secret is that it's near the Nevada
05:52Proving Grounds, and no one in their right mind is going to want to go into an area where
05:57they're testing nuclear bombs.
06:00They specifically purchased the land for testing the U-2.
06:04Were it not for the U-2, there would be no Area 51, and we would have lost our most iconic
06:10UFO conspiracy location.
06:14Until Area 51 becomes the most notorious UFO site in the world, the U-2 plane becomes
06:20one of America's most vital intelligence tools.
06:25Between 1956, the first operational flight, July 4th, through May 1st of 1960, the U-2
06:31program dispelled the missile gap and the bomber gap.
06:35There was none.
06:36We were still ahead of the Soviets, even though they were saying they were ahead of us.
06:42Over the next four years, 30 flights photograph almost 15% of the USSR.
06:48This provides 90% of the CIA's hard intelligence on its fiercest rival.
06:53The CIA thought it had a shelf life of two to four years.
06:57Well, other than the B-52, the U-2 spy plane is the longest flying airplane in the U.S.
07:04Air Force's arsenal, and it's still flying today.
07:09The U-2 isn't the only synchronous aviation project to fly into the record books.
07:14A decade later, the world's first supersonic plane prepares for its maiden flight.
07:19But this isn't the Concorde in London or Paris.
07:23This is in Moscow, and this aircraft is named TU-144.
07:34The maiden flight of the TU-144 is a massive engineering and propaganda win for the Soviet
07:40Union over the West.
07:42Up until that point, the only planes to fly over the speed of sound are military jets.
07:49No one has ever built a large-scale plane like this that can carry passengers because
07:55the immense technical challenge of it all.
08:00The Soviet designers are on cloud nine.
08:04The creators of the Concorde are in shock.
08:11In 1962, Britain and France entered into an agreement to share resources to develop and
08:16build a supersonic passenger jet called the Concorde and get it in the sky before the
08:20Soviet Union.
08:22The fact that the TU-144 beats Concorde into the sky is a surprise.
08:28And more shocking, it has the same design.
08:32Both planes have got the same sleek nose, the same delta wing shape, and the same after-burning
08:39turbojet engine.
08:41The TU-144 is so similar that the Western press, they called it the Concordeski.
08:47The Soviets insist their craft is 100 percent Russian ingenuity.
08:53But Western engineers point to a series of suspicious events during Concorde's development.
09:01Right from the onset, the Soviets showed an incredible amount of interest in the Concorde
09:05program.
09:06Could there also be a mole within the organization, someone within the trust of the Concorde program
09:12giving secrets away?
09:15Rumors of industrial espionage remain just that.
09:19Then in 1992, a Russian bureaucrat walks into the British embassy in Latvia with a
09:25bold offer.
09:27A disillusioned KGB worker named Vasily Mitrokhin said that he had scores of documents that
09:34he would willingly hand over in exchange for asylum.
09:39When MI6 agents get to Mitrokhin's house in Russia, they find a treasure trove of material,
09:44more than 25,000 pages.
09:46In total, it's about six trunks worth of material.
09:50During his time at KGB, Vasily was actually hand copying notes that he had access to as
09:55an archivist.
09:56This discovery would turn out to be the largest single source of information ever collected
10:01during the entire history of the Cold War.
10:04Buried in this vast intelligence stash is evidence of a spy codenamed Ace.
10:11Agent Ace seems to be a British engineer who was leaking information to the Soviets.
10:16This is how the TU-144 got in the sky before the Concorde.
10:20Agent Ace was the mole that the UK and the Concorde program suspected from the very beginning.
10:26For 20 years, the identity of Agent Ace remains a mystery.
10:31But in 2023, a British professor pieces together clues from Mitrokhin's archive to crack the
10:37case.
10:40Agent Ace's real name is Ivor Gregory James, and he is a Hong Kong-born engineer who went
10:44to work in Britain in the 1970s.
10:47It was discovered that Agent Ace had actually supplied the Soviets with more than 90,000
10:52pages of documentation related to new aircraft designs over more than a decade.
10:58And inside that supply of information were details related to the Concorde program.
11:04The theft of the Concorde secrets is one of the largest industrial espionage operations
11:10of all time.
11:11But for all its initial success, there's a good reason you've probably never heard of
11:16the TU-144.
11:23At this prestigious Paris airshow, both the Concorde and the revised 214 are the star
11:30attraction.
11:31The TU-144 flies at the Paris airshow.
11:36And initially it looks great.
11:37It takes off fine.
11:38It flies for a few minutes, but then it stalls and crashes.
11:47It all breaks apart in flames.
11:57It is a massive embarrassment for the Soviet Union, and the plane's reputation never recovers.
12:03The TU-144 only ever completes 100 domestic flights.
12:07The rumors are this sonic jet ends its days shipping mailbags in Siberia.
12:20It's 1967, and a mysterious light in the sky over a key American missile base is about
12:26to set off alarms and ignite a long-running mystery.
12:39On March 24th, Robert Salas arrives for his shift overseeing 10 nuclear missiles at Malmstrom
12:46Air Force Base.
12:49As a young missileer, his job is to serve as the first line of defense as part of America's
12:55nuclear arsenal.
12:58In the late 1960s, the Minuteman ICBMs are really the centerpiece of the U.S. nuclear
13:03arsenal.
13:05Malmstrom is one of multiple sites that houses 1,000 nuclear missiles.
13:11Each one is in its own silo, and 150 of them are at Malmstrom.
13:17Those missiles are kept on alert and ready to fire on very short notice in the event
13:22of a nuclear exchange.
13:26Salas' work is critical to national security, but it also gets a little repetitive.
13:32I actually had a chance to serve at Malmstrom Air Force Base as a nuclear missile officer,
13:36and when you're there, you don't feel very important.
13:39You're just one of about 1,000 other people who are all there taking turns going underground
13:44and monitoring these missiles.
13:46But in reality, you really are carrying the weight of nuclear deterrence on your shoulders.
13:51This particular shift at Malmstrom is anything but routine.
13:56Salas is in his command headquarters, and suddenly he gets a call from the gate personnel
14:03at the entrance to Malmstrom.
14:05And the guard reports that there's some sort of strange light that's flying, moving in
14:09strange pattern over the actual base itself.
14:11This is an area that's restricted from aircraft and restricted from commercial travel.
14:15So what is this light that's flying overhead?
14:16They don't seem to be engaged in threatening action, but it is a little disconcerting to
14:21see unexplained lights above the base.
14:23A few minutes later, Salas gets a second call.
14:27This time, the guard calls Salas in a cold panic.
14:30There's a glowing orb of red light that's hovering right above the gate to Malmstrom.
14:37Needless to say, nobody knew what this was, and Salas, who's 100 feet underground, has
14:41no idea how to make any sense of this at all.
14:44Salas orders the gate personnel to not allow anything to pass the gate.
14:49And then, within just a few seconds, all 10 missiles under Salas' command go dark.
14:56These Minuteman missiles are the most sophisticated, technologically advanced nuclear weapons
15:00in the American arsenal.
15:03The idea that 10 of them could suddenly all malfunction at the same time is unthinkable
15:08to Salas.
15:0910 missiles actually covers about 15 square miles of location, all controlled by a single
15:15launch control capsule where Salas was actually sitting.
15:20With no explanation, the red orbiting light disappears.
15:25The missiles reactivate, and it's almost as if nothing happened at all.
15:34Was this a Soviet spy craft sent to disrupt America's defenses?
15:38Or some unidentified aerial phenomenon?
15:42To find out, the Air Force sends a team from an ongoing secret investigation known as Project
15:48Blue Book.
15:51Project Blue Book was a U.S. Air Force program that started in the early 1950s and ran for
15:56about 15 years to track and classify all unidentified aerial phenomena and see if any of them were
16:02a threat to national security.
16:05Investigators from Project Blue Book look into this incident at Malmstrom, and they
16:09don't think it's an alien spacecraft, but they also can't find any other logical explanation.
16:15The official word is that the government doesn't know why those missiles shut down.
16:20Malmstrom is instantly classified like many other Project Blue Book sightings.
16:26Salas signs a nondisclosure agreement, and he's sworn to secrecy about the events that
16:30occurred.
16:32He's convinced that if he tells anybody what he saw, he's going to face prosecution and
16:37probably be put in prison.
16:40The Blue Book investigation ends three years later, and its findings are made public.
16:45The government concludes that UFOs pose no danger to America's defenses.
16:51There's nothing to hide.
16:52There's nothing to hide at all.
16:53And no credible evidence exists for extraterrestrial technology or vehicles.
17:00Problem is, Robert Salas knows what he saw.
17:06Decades later, in 2010, he decides to tell his story to the world.
17:11In 1967, I was a first lieutenant stationed at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana.
17:16When Robert Salas came out with his story, UFO theorists and the community really seized
17:21on it and said, this is pure evidence that the government is hiding something that happened
17:25out there.
17:27The UFO community starts to believe that Project Blue Book is designed to just debunk UFO conspiracies
17:33instead of actually investigating them.
17:35I think the U.S. government does know more about some of these UFO sightings than it
17:41lets on, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they're alien spacecraft.
17:46A mystery is in some ways just as challenging as an actual secret.
17:51Still today, the U.S. government is just as likely to classify its ignorance as it is
17:58its knowledge.
17:59It's 15 years into the Cold War.
18:02Controlling the skies is vital to defending the land.
18:07One idea of an ambitious U.S. general involves a fleet of covert nuclear bombers that circle
18:13the enemy nonstop.
18:16But on a winter's night in 1961, this plane was up in flames over North Carolina.
18:24It's just before midnight on an unusually warm evening in the small town of Goldsboro.
18:30Some of the residents are still awake when suddenly their rooms start to glow with a
18:35strange red light.
18:38They see this giant B-52 bomber with just a single wing on fire passing over their homes.
18:44I can only imagine being one of the residents of Goldsboro.
18:47You hear this loud crash, this boom outside.
18:49It's a B-52 blowing up right over your head, more or less.
18:54It had to be a horrific moment.
18:58The plane explodes, scattering debris across two square miles of cotton farmland.
19:03The plane is hit by a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a
19:10B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a
19:14B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a
19:18B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52, a B-52.
19:20Militia helicopters start to descend upon the scene quite instantaneously just about.
19:23Next thing they know, a voice on a loud speaker is yelling at everyone to evacuate.
19:32The residents of Goldsboro are told this crashed plane has scattered deadly cargo.
19:39two 3.8-megaton thermonuclear bombs,
19:43each 200 times more destructive
19:45than the one that leveled Hiroshima.
19:49What the world doesn't yet know is that this crashed bomber
19:52is part of a classified national security initiative
19:56named the Airborne Alert Program.
20:03The Airborne Alert Program
20:04is the brainchild of General Power,
20:06and the idea is that the U.S. Air Force
20:08is going to be ready to deliver a nuke
20:11to the U.S.S.R. at any time.
20:16General Power comes up with this idea
20:18to fly B-52s 24 hours a day,
20:21because we want to make sure
20:22that we are able to strike Russia at any time
20:25should they launch these missiles at us.
20:28For a brief shining moment,
20:29the Soviet Union pulled ahead of the United States
20:33in the Cold War nuclear standoff.
20:35They had that first-strike advantage.
20:39So it seems absolutely batty and insane,
20:43but undoubtedly many in the 1960s were thinking,
20:46this is exactly how we ensure that the United States survives
20:50should the Cold War give way to a hot war.
20:53No one has ever tried to keep a fleet of nuclear bombers
20:56in the air 24-7.
20:59So General Power and his planners
21:02developed these routes
21:04that will go along the Soviet border and come back out.
21:08These were grueling missions
21:09that are testing the limits of human endurance.
21:12The reality was that they're circling in a B-52
21:15over the Arctic Circle, waiting to start a nuclear war.
21:21They have to be refueled while in flight,
21:24and that's very dangerous
21:25because these planes are carrying a nuclear payload.
21:29You have an American strategic bomber
21:32thundering through the sky at 40,000 feet
21:35with a bomb bay full of thermonuclear weapons
21:39trying to receive kerosene from another airplane
21:41while they both bounce around in turbulent air.
21:44What could possibly go wrong?
21:47You just wrap your head around it, think about that.
21:50There are at least two nukes on every plane.
21:54But General Power and our military
21:56think it's worth the risk.
22:00After the Airborne Alert Program
22:01has been in secret operation for years,
22:04General Power decides to make it public
22:07on January 18th, 1961.
22:10He wants to use its existence as a deterrent to the Soviets.
22:15But exactly one week after his announcement,
22:18one of his bombers springs a fuel leak.
22:21And the residents of Goldsboro end up running for their lives
22:24from two unexploded nuclear bombs.
22:28Shortly before this mission was undertaken,
22:30Boeing realized that there was a mechanical issue
22:32with the B-52s.
22:33And essentially, they were doing a callback.
22:36But this B-52 had yet to make the list.
22:39That's when trouble strikes.
22:43The military evacuate locals, cordons off the area,
22:46and brings in a crack team of bomb disposal experts.
22:51One of the bombs is very easy to find.
22:53Safely hanging from a tree,
22:55ready for the government to take it away.
22:58Now, the second bomb, that one's a bit harder to get to.
23:02The second bomb experiences a failure to deploy
23:05of its retarding parachute.
23:07And the result is it slams into the surface of the Earth,
23:10going 700 miles an hour,
23:12and digs itself in to a depth of 180 feet.
23:16The authorities dig for seven days and nights
23:19under floodlights, in rain and snow,
23:21to try and find the bomb.
23:23One wrong move and it could all go boom.
23:27So, finally, they decide that further digging
23:29represented a greater danger
23:31than just isolating the device and leaving it alone.
23:36They realize the better thing to do is to seal it up
23:41and call it a day.
23:42They leave the bomb in place,
23:44and they just buy the field from the farmer for 1,000 bucks.
23:47The deed to this land forever states
23:49that the owner is not to go more than five feet into the ground.
23:53Forty-five years later,
23:55the Air Force releases a never-before-seen document
23:58detailing the crash.
24:00Compiled by a senior nuclear weapons safety officer,
24:04it reveals a shocking secret
24:06and the paper-thin margin between near-miss
24:09and nuclear apocalypse.
24:12This document that comes out decades later
24:14reveals that the first bomb,
24:16of its multiple nuclear weapons,
24:19reveals that the first bomb,
24:22of its multiple redundant security devices,
24:26all but one are compromised.
24:29As if by miracle, it's stopped at the final stage.
24:33We're one tiny electrical sequence
24:36away from a thermonuclear explosion in North Carolina.
24:42As for the second nuke,
24:43the one that is buried deep in the soil of Goldsboro,
24:46it's been half a century, it hasn't blown up,
24:48so I guess we're doing okay, and fingers crossed.
24:56In the 60s, the Soviets released one of the most formidable,
25:00most agile, and most lethal fighter jets ever made.
25:04But this must-have weapon to rule the skies
25:06is not for sale to Russia's enemies.
25:09So, for the young nation of Israel,
25:12stealing its secrets might tip the balance of a war.
25:19In the 1960s, the Soviet Union created
25:21a brand-new, cutting-edge fighter jet
25:24that had the entire Western world on edge.
25:28And it's a game-changer.
25:30It's so fast and agile
25:32that it becomes the biggest-selling fighter in history.
25:36It is also designed to be simple to make and cheap to produce,
25:39which means air forces could have lots of them.
25:42It's called the MiG-21.
25:44And for one fledgling nation, Israel,
25:47this nimble new fighter plane spells disaster.
25:51Israel is surrounded on all sides by hostile neighbors.
25:56Islamic countries that were buying MiG-21s
25:59from the Soviet Union.
26:02What the Israelis want to do is study the MiG-21.
26:06They want to know its potential weaknesses
26:10and ensure their own ability to use them.
26:13And ensure their own ability to maintain air superiority.
26:17Israel's primary concern was this new fighter jet
26:20could tip the scales of power for any future war
26:23that might break out in the region.
26:25If the Israelis lose air superiority,
26:28they'll lose the war.
26:30If they lose the war, they'll cease to exist.
26:35The commander of the Israeli Air Force
26:37tells the head of Israeli intelligence agencies,
26:40Meir Amit,
26:41if you can bring me a MiG,
26:43you'll have done me a good day's service.
26:47Meir Amit accepts the challenge
26:50and hatches a covert plan
26:52to steal a MiG-21
26:54from right under the noses of Israel's neighbors.
26:57The first step?
26:59Finding a pilot.
27:01The Israelis started to make approaches
27:05to pilots in a lot of different countries.
27:08The Israelis identify an Iraqi pilot named Muneer Redfa.
27:11And they identify this pilot because in an Islamic country,
27:14he himself is Christian.
27:18They orchestrate a meeting in a hotel room.
27:22It's such an important mission.
27:24The agency's top spy chief
27:26even watches the entire meeting covertly through a peephole.
27:32Redfa is a deputy commander of an Iraqi MiG squadron.
27:36And he's not happy
27:37because he's just been passed over for promotion.
27:42He believes it's because he's a Catholic,
27:44which is pretty unusual in Iraq.
27:46He's also very unhappy
27:48about being ordered to join a bombing campaign
27:51against Kurdish tribesmen on the Iraqis' northern border.
27:56In all the cases I've ever worked,
27:58in all the spies I've ever recruited,
28:00it was a deep, real relationship between us and them.
28:03Just because you have differing political idealizations
28:06doesn't mean that you aren't human beings together.
28:09All you have to do is think in terms of,
28:11what can I do to inspire them to feel safe with me
28:14and solve that action they need solved in their lives?
28:17It's a very delicate process to create a defector,
28:20to turn a patriot into a traitor.
28:23And every defector comes with their own interests, their own needs.
28:27Sometimes it's education, sometimes it's finances.
28:30But in every case, all a defector is looking for
28:33is to have some sort of control over their future.
28:37Redfa is offered $1 million, Israeli citizenship,
28:41and safe passage for his entire family,
28:44if he agrees to fly his MiG-21 to Israel.
28:48Redfa goes for the deal.
28:50But there's one significant setback.
28:54Fuel.
28:56As a Christian, Redfa is subject to a lot of scrutiny.
29:01His movements are tightly controlled,
29:04so he's rarely allowed to fly with a full fuel tank.
29:07This keeps him close to home.
29:10Even if Redfa has a full tank,
29:12a journey to Israel takes him through hostile Jordanian airspace.
29:16He risks being blown out of the sky at any instant.
29:21It's two full years before Redfa gets his chance.
29:27Eventually it happens.
29:29He's told that he'll be part of a formation flight with a full tank of gas.
29:36Mid-flight, he breaks away from his formation and heads for Israel,
29:42powering over Jordanian airspace.
29:45The Jordanians scramble two jets to give chase,
29:48but they can't match the MiG-21's speed.
29:52Redfa hits his afterburners,
29:54sometimes flying as low as 700 feet to avoid missiles
29:58locking onto his plane.
30:00After a 65-minute flight of sheer terror,
30:05he reaches a base deep in the desert on his last drop of fuel.
30:19Thirty years later, details of this daring state-sanctioned heist
30:23are revealed to a journalist writing a history of the Mossad.
30:27And it's now seen as a turning point in the Arab-Israeli conflict.
30:33The ending of this story is the Israelis discover the MiG's weaknesses,
30:37and in the event that they have to fight it, they're better prepared.
30:42This operation underscores just how good Mossad is
30:47at understanding their adversaries and exploiting opportunities.
30:51An intelligence organization that belonged to a small country
30:54that was less than 20 years old
30:56was now capable of carrying out one of the biggest heists in history.
31:03The arms race to control the skies
31:05has had governments everywhere investing in groundbreaking secret projects.
31:10So maybe it was only a matter of time
31:12before the most enduring design in science fiction gets a shot.
31:16The flying saucer.
31:18Meet 1959's Avrocar.
31:24The Avrocar.
31:26It's effectively what you would get
31:28if you mixed a flying saucer with a hovercraft.
31:31Project Avrocar is the brainchild of a British engineer
31:35named John Carver Meadows Frost.
31:38He's a big dreamer.
31:40And he's already got a project in mind
31:42to begin to think about the next generation of aerospace design.
31:48Frost begins to study this interesting aerodynamic phenomenon
31:52known as the Coanda Effect.
31:55He shows that a jet engine's exhaust
31:57can be routed around to underneath the object
32:01where it forms an air cloud that allows it to lift off the ground.
32:06So basically he's designed a literal flying saucer.
32:12His lab work convinces the Canadian government
32:14that this is actually a possibility.
32:16And they're willing to support his work for about two years.
32:21And for Frost, this becomes his personal passion
32:25to take this flying saucer from a blueprint to reality.
32:30But after a year,
32:32the project's astronomical price tag
32:34forces the Canadians to pull the plug.
32:37Frost needs a new backer to realize his dream.
32:41Luckily for him,
32:43a rich neighbor to the South
32:45is in the market for a flying saucer.
32:48In the early 1950s,
32:50the U.S. military is looking for planes
32:52that can vertically take off and land.
32:54They're known as VTOL planes.
32:56Governments are beginning to think about
32:58what fighting World War III would actually look like.
33:01So they are focused on developing planes
33:04that can take off vertically,
33:06that don't need long runways.
33:09Also, the military has been rocked
33:11by a series of newspaper articles
33:13claiming that the Soviets are developing similar tech.
33:15Apparently, Nazi engineers had secretly developed
33:18a working flying saucer during the Second World War,
33:21and they were now working for the USSR.
33:24So if there's even the smallest chance
33:26that the Soviets are developing
33:28a game-changing VTOL aircraft,
33:30the U.S. thinks they need one too.
33:34The story goes that when Frost gets wind
33:36of the U.S.'s interest in saucers,
33:38he spots a visiting delegation from the Air Force
33:41and intercepts them with his Avrocar prototype.
33:45Frost apparently shows them work so secret,
33:49even his bosses don't know about it.
33:51And shortly after, the U.S. Air Force agrees
33:54to fund a million-dollar feasibility study
33:57into his flying saucer research.
33:59For Frost, this is magic.
34:02In an instant, his project has gone
34:04from a side hustle of the Canadian government
34:06to accessing the largest, most powerful
34:10military and budget in the world.
34:12We'll never know what Frost said to get funding,
34:15but a clue lies in a remarkable document
34:17made public in 2012.
34:19In it, Frost makes some extraordinary claims
34:22about his flying saucer,
34:24now codenamed Project 1794.
34:28Frost claims that his saucer
34:30will far exceed any jet fighter of the age.
34:34That it's going to be able to go
34:36up to four times the speed of sound,
34:38fly to the edge of the Earth,
34:40fly to the edge of space,
34:42travel between continents.
34:44These are bold claims.
34:47If you're an Air Force general,
34:49this is a machine you definitely want in your hangar.
34:52Progress is anything but supersonic.
34:55After eight years, in 1959,
34:58Frost's team finally has a prototype
35:01ready for its first-ever test.
35:03And by this point, the U.S. Army also wants in.
35:07The U.S. Army has come out of the Korean War
35:10interested in having basically a flying jeep.
35:14They see this flying saucer
35:16as perhaps their answer to moving equipment,
35:19moving troops, and even fighting.
35:21So Frost has both the Army and the Air Force,
35:24two bosses, both pushing him for results.
35:28Everything hangs on the Avrocar's first test.
35:31The million-dollar question is,
35:33will this thing fly?
35:36In the Avrocar's first test flight,
35:38it doesn't go completely as planned.
35:45Frost's design has some fundamental problems.
35:48It doesn't have the control surfaces
35:51that an airplane has to ensure stability,
35:54and it has no thrust, like the thing can't go fast.
35:58It's riding on a cushion of air,
36:01but as it goes up, the air dissipates,
36:04so it loses its lift.
36:07It's just bad all the way around.
36:14After promising supersonic flight at the edge of space,
36:17Frost delivers a wobbly 30 miles an hour
36:20three foot from the ground.
36:23Unsurprisingly, the military pulls the plug.
36:27The project has canceled a complete disappointment
36:30for everyone, including, presumably, John Frost.
36:35Before it's grounded, the Avrocar racks up
36:38over $100 million in costs in today's money.
36:42A reminder that when it comes to the national interest,
36:45no idea is too crazy to try.
36:49The prototypes are quickly dumped into storage
36:52as a very obvious embarrassment.
36:56In the 1980s, decades of press censorship
36:59were crumbling in the USSR.
37:02And with this new freedom, Soviet newspapers
37:05focused their attention on a topic that really sells,
37:08UFOs.
37:12During the Cold War, the Soviet government
37:15is very much against any stories
37:18that are at all subversive or unorthodox,
37:21and a UFO sighting is both.
37:24The media would be viewed as admitting
37:27that there was some sort of power out there
37:30stronger than the Soviet Union itself.
37:33And to do so would be not only risking your career,
37:36but also risking your freedom and ending up in jail.
37:39The media can't really report on this story at all
37:42until the government kind of lets up on these rules.
37:45In 1985, things start to change.
37:48In this era of glasnost and perestroika,
37:51it was like the floodgates were opened.
37:54All of a sudden, Russia just kind of went crazy for UFOs.
37:57Many scientists inside the Soviet Union
38:00question the truth of these stories.
38:03Soviet authorities try to explain away the sightings,
38:06saying that it's a natural phenomena like ball lightning
38:09that can give the impression of a large glowing orb
38:12that people say they saw.
38:15Ball lightning presents itself in a circular form,
38:19and people report as UFOs where they talk about
38:22flying saucers or balls of light in the sky.
38:25Others say that this is just mass hysteria,
38:28that people got one story and they just fed into each other
38:31and got really excited.
38:34It's easy to chalk this up as hysteria,
38:37sightings by an uninformed public.
38:40But then in 1991, a whistleblower
38:43from deep within Soviet military circles steps forward.
38:46I want the man to be taken seriously.
38:49Marina Popovich is one of the USSR's
38:52most decorated and well-respected aviators.
38:55She's the first Soviet woman to break the sound barrier.
38:58She holds a hundred aviation records
39:01and she's known in the Soviet Union as Madam Meg.
39:04The changes gave Marina the opportunity
39:07to talk about her experiences and what she had seen
39:10as a pilot in the USSR without the worry of repercussions.
39:13Through her experiences and media interviews
39:16and her own writings, she begins to make
39:19some pretty fantastical claims.
39:22Popovich says she has multiple experiences with UFOs.
39:25In 1982, she says she was in Siberia
39:28when she saw what looked like a giant glowing orb.
39:31At a press conference in the Russian consulate in San Francisco,
39:34she claims that the Russians have been able to retrieve
39:37five different downed UFOs,
39:40creating a sort of hybrid breeding program,
39:43breeding humans with aliens.
39:46And then in this very dramatic moment,
39:49she produces a photo that she says
39:52is a 15-mile-wide alien spacecraft.
39:55She says it is a UFO that has either
39:58captured or destroyed Soviet space probes.
40:01Scientists explain it away as the picture being
40:04very consistent with the launch of a spacecraft.
40:08The UFO community starts to back her,
40:11saying that she's the only one telling the truth,
40:14and the government is covering up the real explanation.
40:17Her claims obviously create an incredible amount of interest.
40:20I mean, you can imagine the press would go crazy
40:23over stories like this, especially at that time in history.
40:26Marina Popovich isn't the first government whistleblower
40:29to cry cover-up, but she's one of the most influential.
40:32Popovich becomes probably the best example
40:36that we have on the Russian side of a phenomenon
40:39that's actually pretty common.
40:42These so-called UFO whistleblowers,
40:45government workers, pilots, intelligence officers
40:48who come forward and say that they have
40:51privileged knowledge or have seen hidden evidence.
40:54The whistleblowers will keep coming forward with stories,
40:57but until someone has really verified evidence
41:00that can be shown publicly, it's just hearsay.
41:04But still today, we don't know the truth
41:07of what a lot of these mystery sightings end up being.
41:10Our world and our universe is still weirder today
41:13than we can imagine.
41:20For every covert mission we discover taking place
41:23in the skies, many more remain hidden
41:26until someone brings these secrets to light.
41:29I'm David Duchovny.
41:32You're watching Secrets Declassified.