74-Year-Old UFO Tape Finally Breaks Open

Show Transcript

The government dropped its sixth batch of UFO files on Friday. And for once, the interest is not on a new video. It is a 70-year-old tape the Air Force buried. Hey, UFOlogers, I'm Christina Gomez, and this is your UFO News Update.

Batch 6 holds more than 70 records dated from 1952 to 2025. Roughly 15 videos, dozens of documents, and one audio recording. The files dropped on Friday, the media headlines call it progress, but people who pushed for files like this for years say it's actually a very slow pace. And yet, two items in this batch really stand out.

The first is the 1952 tape, and it exists in public today because one congressman refused to let it disappear. It records Air Force Captain Edward Ruppelt, the officer who ran Project Grudge, Project Sign, and assisted Project Blue Book. Back in May, Congressman Eric Burleson sent a formal letter to MIT Lincoln Labs, a federally funded research center, naming a specific reel-to-reel recording cataloged as AFATIC Film 03-52. And it was labeled, in the language of the time, a flying saucer talk.

Burleson demanded the lab confirm the reel still existed, preserve it, digitize it, and then hand it to the National Archives. In his words, if they want to hide something from Congress, you do not need to put it in a government file cabinet. You hand it to a private contractor. So he pointed his investigation straight at the contractor that hold federal research.

Names like Rand, MITRE, Aerospace Corporation, and Lincoln Labs, arguing they cannot serve as private vaults. For records, the public is owed. The lab's attorneys actually agreed to comply within 30 days, but then months of pressure later, the reel is now out. Actually, it's finally out, and it took much longer than 30 days.

And in it, Ruppelt tells a room of scientists what the Air Force was seeing. Here's a clip from that one-hour reel. Take a listen. We've gone through these reports and come up with the fact that about 20% are very good reports.

offered by very reliable people, and there are just absolutely no conclusions can be drawn. And one in five of roughly 800 cases could not be explained after technical review. These cases come from military pilots, commercial pilots, and other trained observers, not just your casual, everyday witness. The reports clustered around the country's most sensitive locations, such as Los Alamos, Oak Ridge, Albuquerque, White Sands, These are places tied to nuclear weapons.

And here is what Jordan Flowers said on NBC News that addressed what people report today. The sightings are concentrated around sensitive national security and nuclear weapons installations. The objects they're observing are anomalous. They have anomalous flight characteristics.

They're silent. They have speeds of up to 3,500 miles per hour. So I really think it's worth the public's time to listen to this audio to understand how seriously the government has taken this and how long it's been a serious topic for. Those top speeds came from radar and were never confirmed.

The batch also carries newer video. One clip from 2025 filmed over the Middle East from a military platform. showing six small round objects flying together and then changing direction, estimated by the person who filed the report at about 480 miles an hour. Now, that is nearly 63% of the speed of sound, with no sonic boom whatsoever.

Four more videos came from local police in Colorado in October of 2023, showing silent lights that flashed red, blue, and green during a run of drone sightings across the state. which we have covered in significant detail over the years because that took place right before the New Jersey drone incident. Colorado went through the exact same thing in 2019 and then parts of 2023. Keep in mind, there is a Lockheed Martin facility there as well that does specialize in drone activity.

But the next piece didn't come from the files at all. It came from a member of Congress. In late 2025, something entered the aerospace over sensitive military sites in the southwestern U.S. The Disclosure Foundation believes it may have been White Sands Missile Range, but they're not sure.

And Congressman Burleson, who was briefed on it, says the government built a controlled scenario to draw these objects in and record them up close. He described a plan that actually worked. And then you have Congressman Eric Burleson confirming that, yes, this luring operation happened. And not only did it happen, but that it was, quote, very successful.

So we're in this bizarre position of certain parts of the government denying that there's a there there with this. versus members of Congress having received classified briefings about successful UFO luring operations. The word luring is a very interesting word to choose because the file doesn't use it. The documents describe an exercise and they confirm an FBI 302, which is a form any agent uses to record a witness interview.

They confirm a written statement from a senior official at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence. and they confirmed photographs and heat-based videos of the orbs, and the record only notes that a redacted file ran a successful test earlier that day. The luring label comes from Burleson and Advocates, not the paperwork. So if the government can stage an event and pull these objects in and record it, why is the public still handed grainy film from the 1950s?

Well, over the weekend, two of the field's best-known figures take up that frustration. Investigative journalist Ross Coulthard and former Pentagon investigator Lou Elizondo discuss this. Here is what Ross said on NewsNation about it. No, there's a noble effort by the Air Force in some of the cases to try and play them down as seagulls.

I laughed at one memo which recorded the Air Force admitting in one memo, we'll say these are seagulls. And then they were admitting that they couldn't actually say they were seagulls because they were too bright to be birds. But nonetheless, that's what they said they would tell the public if they were asked. The deceit, frankly, that has been going on for the last 74, 75, 80 years on this whole issue of UAPs continues to this day.

Elizondo says records he handled at the Pentagon were under a court order to be preserved and were deleted anyway. The deletion surfaced when a researcher filed a FOIA request, the public's tool for forcing records out of the government. And the Pentagon came back and said, oh, guess what? We deleted Lou's files.

So imagine that. So now do I think they actually were deleted? No, absolutely not. There's always a record somewhere in some backup server of every email, of every record, of every report.

The question is, why are people, and I think we're beginning to see why now, why are people willing to go to extreme lengths and break the law, by the way, to delete files so you, the public, can't see them? Word spread that the Trump administration might give Elizondo an official transparency role, possibly a seat on the National Security Council, which advises the president from inside the White House. And remember, earlier this year, he did write a letter to the White House that Trump needs to appoint a UAP czar. Ra said on his own program that many insiders resent this idea that Elizondo might have been picked.

He alleged that Elizondo once held a role inside the legacy crash retrieval and reverse engineering program. in a counterintelligence capacity, and that a former director of national intelligence, James Clapper, used Elizondo as a frontman to manage what the public was allowed to know. Ross said he had spoken to people in that program who knew Lou, but Elizondo denied it. He said he never claimed to work for any legacy program.

He also explained his limits. With a security clearance, he said, You cannot confirm or deny a classified program, even one you had no part in. So silence is not an admission. His supporters note that he went to the Inspector General, to Congress, to the FBI, and to the public and nearly died pursuing it.

Ross later said he never stated it as fact, only that Elizondo avoided confirming or denying it and that a day should come from when he's able to say more. Really, underneath that conflict is a real split about the overall goal. One camp wants controlled disclosure, a release managed from the top. The other wants full transparency with someone in power to enter facilities, compel witnesses, and follow records wherever they move.

Some in the second camp want the job to go to David Grush. The whistleblower who swore in testimony started much of this momentum because he knows how the program works. were broken apart and where the files went, allegedly. In 2024, journalist Michael Schellenberger told Congress about an alleged secret effort called Immaculate Constellation, described as a hidden vault of high-quality images of these types of UFOs.

And the program details were written by Matthew Brown, who gave them to Jeremy Korbel, and then Korbel gave them to Schellenberger, to share at the 2024 hearing. The Pentagon says it has no records of any such program, but this search reaches into the White House, the Intelligence Director's Office, and the FBI. Six files in, there is still no image, no file, and no trace of the Immaculate Constellation either. The field's two biggest voices agree the releases are theater, while they distrust each other over who should lead.

and the program that would prove the case still cannot be found. So, if the people fighting for the truth cannot agree on who to trust, does that make you more skeptical of the government, or more skeptical of them? Let me know your thoughts in the comments. I'm Christina Gomez, that is it for today.

I will see you again tomorrow at 12pm PST for another UFO News update. Be safe, and remember, keep your eyes on the skies.