Tim Burchett

The conversation opens on reports that this could be the week of some kind of government UFO disclosure. The guest, who says he is due to be briefed by phone the next day at three o'clock by someone he believes is one of Hegseth's senior people, says he has "no earthly idea" what will come out and warns listeners not to get their hopes up. He says President Trump has always been straight with him, but he doubts the president knows the right questions to ask or the right people to talk to, given a cover-up he dates to at least 1947.

this thing's been covered up at least since 1947

He bases his skepticism on what happened before. He says he predicted that a much-hyped release would arrive weeks late and so heavily redacted that it would look as though "somebody shot it with a dadgum 12 gauge," and that this is what happened: a report he thought held some information new to the public was hit and covered up. He expects the same this time, saying the material is "going to get so sanitized and it's going to get cleaned up." As an example of officials backtracking, he cites Barack Obama saying there are aliens and then, in an interview the guest says he saw about a week ago, walking that back.

Trump, by the guest's account, said in an interview that Obama should not have spoken because the subject is classified, but added that he himself might declassify it. The guest says he urged the president to keep peeling it back, describing the process as "layers of an onion." The two speakers agree that Trump may be the only one with the nerve to do it because he is not beholden to the people who have tried to bury him.

The guest traces his interest to childhood in East Tennessee. He says his parents let him ride his bike to the library about a mile from home, where at seven or eight he picked up a book on UFOs. He kept following the topic through magazine articles and went out at night hoping to see something. He says he never did, except in what he has been shown in briefings.

He lays out his time in government as 16 years in the Tennessee legislature, eight years as county mayor and eight years in Congress. Asked when he first got inside information, he first says "probably six years ago, five or six," then corrects himself to about eight years ago, during Trump's first administration. He also clarifies that the TMZ interview the host took to be recent was in fact seven or eight years ago, and that it was what "started at all." After that interview, he says, people began calling him.

Asked what made him suspect a cover-up, the guest does not point to any specific trigger. He says he simply does not trust the government, even after spending most of his life in it, and that the subject "kind of pursued me." His early questions were basic: what is this, and where are you seeing these things. He says he got the runaround.

He says public reaction has been supportive. Doctors, lawyers, engineers, military personnel and members of Congress have stopped him to thank him, though he says a few "bullies" in Congress mock the issue. He cites a figure that over 55% of Americans believe we are not alone.

Over 55% of the American population feels like we're not alone.

The guest frames his openness to non-human life through faith and the size of the universe. He describes looking at stars at 3 a.m. while letting his dogs out, noting that their light left before the time of Christ and that some of those stars no longer exist. He calls humanity "one grain of sand on a billion beaches" and says he doubts humans are "the best that God can do."

He says some Christians criticize him and describe the phenomena as demons. He rejects that reading, saying he is "good with Jesus" and doubts demons would need to fly around in a craft.

The guest describes a meeting in his office with people he calls nationally known. Later, a group declined to meet at his D.C. office and came to his house instead. They connected a computer to his television and showed him objects flying at speeds he says nothing compares to. He qualifies this by noting he is "not an astrophysicist by any stretch" of the imagination. He says the objects made turns that would kill a human pilot, and that "we have no capability of any of it." Asked why the group showed him the material, he says they thought he should know because he was asking the right questions. He says no one told him to keep it secret.

He also says he is wary of how agencies present the subject. In one briefing by what he calls an "alphabet agency," the closing answer to why there was not more information was a lack of funding. He suspects agencies are reading the polling and using public interest to "shake loose the money tree," and he says he warns people about this.

we just don't have the funding for that, Congressman.

Based on what he says he has been told in many briefings, the guest describes a pattern of suppression. Missions are scrubbed because of these objects and participants are told to stay quiet. Pilots who report sightings are pulled off the flight line and given a psych evaluation and an eight-hour "debriefing." He says officers involved told him this is really an interrogation, and that the mark it leaves on a pilot's record discourages further questions. He recounts one pilot who said he smashed the recorder in an older aircraft with his right knee so the encounter would not end up on his record.

It's really just an interrogation.

He then describes going to Florida with Luna and Matt Gaetz after Gaetz was told pilots had seen things and had photographs. By his account, officials first briefed them on Chinese and communist infiltration around Florida and in the ocean but would not produce the pilots. Gaetz pushed back hard, and the guest says he threatened subpoenas. He says he noticed nervous men in suits he took to be military intelligence or CIA, whom he calls "spooks." After Gaetz made a call to senior Air Force officials, the group was put in a room for about an hour. He says the room had microphones under the desk, which Luna unplugged. The pilots were then brought in, still in flight gear.

According to the guest, these pilots, whom he calls top military people, described craft hovering for extended periods and then shooting straight up at speeds beyond U.S. capability. He notes that these accounts have since been reported publicly.

The guest addresses the usual alternative explanations. If the objects were Russian, he argues, Russia would not have been tied up in Ukraine for years, and Putin would flaunt the technology. If they were Chinese, China would "own us." Against the idea that they are secret American craft, he points to the large effort to rescue a pilot downed over Iran. He argues the government would not let something fly around a "half a billion dollar aircraft" and endanger trained crews if the objects were its own, yet he says they were "buzzing cockpits."

He says the encounters are not routine and cluster in certain areas, which ties into his earlier remarks about deep-water bases. He says he was "sort of misquoted" on that point and was only repeating what he was told. The claims he relays include underwater craft detected on sonar at over 200 miles an hour and as large as a football field, with no heat signature. He contrasts this with U.S. capability, which he puts at "maybe upper 30 mile an hour," and he flags that figure with "I don't know."

we've seen craft underwater that do something over 200 miles an hour

The guest describes what he calls a "deep throat moment" in a Capitol tunnel. A friend asked whether he really needed to push the UFO issue, warning that it could upset the religious community and that some things might be better left unknown. He says he rejected that.

The government has no right to decide what I can and cannot understand or handle or see.

He compares his two-page disclosure bill with Chuck Schumer's, which he believes ran about 60 pages and was modeled on the Kennedy assassination records release. He notes that process is more than 60 years old and still incomplete. His own bill went nowhere. He says a member of leadership told him the intelligence community was unhappy with his work. He also says a former Trump staff member called and told him "you need to get some bodies around you," which he says he does not know how to interpret. He plays down any threat with self-deprecating humor, calling himself "the 435th most powerful member of Congress."

When the host raises reports of missing and dead scientists, the guest calls them "100%" real. He admits it is "a little dangerous to throw these things out," then offers an analogy. A mob-connected family that owns a famous restaurant fears its star chef is talking to rivals, so instead of killing the chef, it roughs up a few busboys to send a message. He argues that the timing, with hearings and a president promising releases, is "uncanny." He adds that "nobody disappears in this country unless they want to disappear," given how many cameras there are.

Timing is everything, and nothing happens by accident in Washington, D.C.

The host suggests a common thread: the scientists were working on alternative energy sources. The guest agrees that this is what ties them together. He dismisses a spouse's statement that one scientist never worked on UFOs, arguing that people in this field do not talk about it, even at home.

To show how secrecy works, the guest tells a story from campaigning door to door. He describes himself as coming from a family of public educators and funded mostly by $25 donations. In Farragut he met an older man who had worked at Oak Ridge. The man said his wife worked on the timer for the atomic bomb, and that he never knew what she did during the whole time they both worked there.

That's called compartmentalization, and that's what you have here.

He then sets out his theory of where the material is. FOIA lets him request records from federal agencies but not from private companies such as Ford. He believes whatever was recovered, whether craft, material or possibly bodies, was handed early on to four or five major defense contractors. He links those contractors to missile defense, new metallurgy and new propulsion, and says they are too far removed from government for him to reach. He adds that everyone involved in the Roswell era is now dead, calling that "the best secrets you can keep if you tell somebody and they die."

He dismisses calls to visit Area 51, arguing that any announced visit would give time to move things out. He says real disclosure will require a scientist to walk out of one of the labs. He closes the point with a sardonic remark implying that whistleblowers risk being killed and having it staged as suicide.

There ain't nothing at freaking area 51.

The guest says George Knapp, whom he grew up watching, now visits his office, and he calls meeting him a big honor. Both speakers praise Knapp's caution and documentation. The host describes him as even-keeled and not hyperbolic, and as someone who was a regular journalist until Bob Lazar contacted him.

He's not trying to sell T-shirts, really.

The host says the Bob Lazar episode is the podcast's most-viewed on YouTube, with 65 to 66 million views. The host describes Lazar's account of reverse-engineering craft at S4, near Area 51, in 1988–1989. He also describes a new documentary, S4, that uses CGI, models of the craft and de-aging technology to recreate Lazar's experience. He says he watched it with Lazar and the filmmaker, Luigi, and that Lazar became emotional. Both speakers note that Lazar has not cashed in. The host says he runs United Nuclear and dislikes attention.

The speakers recount the efforts to discredit Lazar. They say officials denied that he worked at Los Alamos, although he appeared on the employee roster, and the guest thinks he even produced check stubs. They say Lazar first spoke anonymously in silhouette and went public only after his home and car were broken into and he was shot at on the highway, believing publicity might protect him. They stress that his story has not changed in close to 40 years. They mention a documentary in which an analyst concluded he seemed truthful.