Transcription
Hey everybody, welcome to Drop Dead Serious and the Vermont Outpost. Uh, thank you so much for being here and please hit subscribe. Super big favor. I'd appreciate it so much and thank you if you've already subscribed and also thank you if you're a member. I really appreciate you.
Uh, little different today. You know, I do true crime, right? But I also do mystery. And I'm telling you that whenever I see a story about UFOs, to me that is mystery with a capital M. And there is a story about a mysterious disappearance uh in the United States right now that I got my eye on. I don't know if you've heard about retired Air Force Major General William Neil McCasslin. Um he has seemingly vanished in New Mexico and his disappearance is really gripping everybody across the nation because it just doesn't feel like it's any other missing person investigation. It's not the run-of-the-mill and I'll tell you why in a second.
Um, so General McCassland is kind of a critical character in the world of UFO lore, right? And the story that I'm about to tell you really sits at the intersection of two very different stories. One is the confirmed missing person's case, right? That law enforcement in the state of New Mexico is working on right now and very actively. But the other story is the very big wave of speculation that has taken over online because of who General Neil McCassland is. And he's William Neil McCasslin, but he goes by Neil. Um what he did during his military career is a BFD. Big deal. And the people that he was later connected to after retirement also very important.
So I want to start with the confirmed facts in his case. According to the Bernalo County Sheriff's Office, uh, General Neil McCassel was last seen on Feb 27 about 11:00 in the morning in the area of Quail Run Court Northeast. That's in Albuquerque. Uh, the authorities say that he left his home on foot, but that he left his phone and his watch behind. That's weird. So, not unlike what happens when elderly citizens disappear, a silver alert was issued. Um, because he had some unspecified medical concerns and investigators have been asking the public, if you know anything, please call in. They need tips. And let me just start by saying, if you know anything with regard to Major General McCasslin's disappearance, here are some critical numbers for you. And I'd love it if you'd put this out on your social media. Um, you can call tips to the sheriff's office at 505468770. Again, 505-46870 or you can text um and the number to text is 847411. So text 847411 and then uh text the uh letters BCSO and your tip.
So, General McCasslin's wife has said that search efforts have included some pretty vast groups, right? Um, there are official teams, there are friends, there are neighbors, there are people on horseback, there are drones, there are helicopters, three different kinds of search dogs are out there. Um, they're canvasing the neighborhood. They're checking for ring cams and wildlife cam footage. Investigators have even gone much wider than the immediate neighborhood where the Maclons live. There is reporting this week that says authorities have contacted more than 600 homeowners in the entire area near where Neil McCassland and his wife live asking for security cam footage, any kind of Ring doorbell camera, uh, you know, doorbell cams, any kind of information that could help reconstruct where the general went after leaving his house.
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The FBI is involved in this case. And that's not weird, right? Because in Nancy Guthri's case, the FBI is involved. In a lot of missing persons cases, the FBI could be involved. But what's interesting about General McCasslin's case is that Kirtland Air Force Base is also involved. Sheriff's Office says that as of now, investigators have uncovered no evidence of foul play, but they are still considering all possible scenarios. And that's really where the case stands. You know, the general is still missing right now. Authorities are still looking for footage and tips and asking the public and asking witnesses everything, right? Um they're trying to figure out what happened after he left home on Feb 27.
But the reason this case has jumped beyond the local news so quickly is because General Neil McCassland is not just any retired official. A major general is a big deal, right? But he's also a unique big deal. According to his Air Force biography, he graduated from the Air Force Academy with a degree in astronautical engineering and later earned a graduate degree from MIT uh and then served in a series of highlevel roles including space research acquisition operations and special programs. He commanded the Philips site of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Kirtland. He served as director of space acquisition and then as director of special programs at the Pentagon and later became commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright Patterson. Remember that name, Wright Patterson. That's going to feature prominently in the interview I'm about to do with uh one Ben Hansen, UFO Discovery, guy who knows everything there is to know about anything UFO related in America and beyond. So wait for it.
So the resume of General McCassland is what has driven so much public fascination with his disappearance because once his disappearance became public, people immediately began looking not only at his military service but also at the UFO and UAP conversations that have surrounded parts of his postretirement life. And that's where Ross Colehart comes in. And you know Ross, right? Ross Colehart, also sort of the guru of all things um UAP and UFO. And in a recent podcast segment, he argued that General Neil McCassland is one of the most significant figures to ever be linked to the disclosure conversation around unidentified aerial phenomena. The disclosure conversation is, you know, like is the government at some point gonna spill the beans, tell us all about what's real and what's not when it comes to aliens among us or not, right? So, the disclosure conversation, Ross Khart says, uh, the general was very involved in this potentially.
Ross described the general as someone who has served at the highest levels of the Air Force and defense world with oversight of classified aerospace and special programs. And Ross is questioning why the general's disappearance isn't getting a lot more national coverage. And I get it. We're, you know, America's at war with Iran right now. Nancy Guthri's case has really just absorbed so many headlines. But in the meantime, for the last couple of weeks, you know, General McCassland has been gone. and there haven't been a lot of national headlines about it. So Ross Kohart's argument is that if somebody with Neil McCasslin's background vanishes, this should not be treated as a local missing person's case. This should be a matter of broader national concern, like the broadest. He also zeroed in on several details that in his view make the disappearance of General McCassland especially difficult to dismiss as ordinary. In his telling, Neil McCassland was physically fit, familiar with the area, and not the kind of person who would simply vanish on a neighborhood trail without some kind of an explanation. Ross Colart also raised the fact that Neil McCasten left his phone and his watch behind. And he openly speculated about whether that meant the general may have gone to meet someone or maybe did not want to be tracked wherever he was going. Again, that's not law enforcement saying that. It's Ross Coldart saying that um but laying out the questions that he thinks the public maybe should be asking. And the reason that Ross Coldart puts so much weight on Neil McCasslin specifically is because of the role that he believes McCasten played in the early disclosure world around Tom Dong and the broader UAP conversation. I'm going to dig deep into that in just a hot minute.
Neil McCasslin's wife, Susan McCasslin Wilkerson, has confirmed that her husband did have a brief association with the UFO community after retirement. According to her statement, which was posted on Facebook, she says that he worked with Tom Dong for a period um as an unpaid consultant on military and technical matters in order to lend realism to Tom Dong's fiction and and media projects. But she also said that uh that connection later faded and should not be exaggerated into something that it wasn't. That point is important because Neil McClasslin's wife has now publicly addressed what she called misinformation around this missing person's case. She said very very clearly that her husband does not have dementia and was not confused or disoriented. She went even further than that. She said in her statement, she said that although Neil had access to highly classified programs during his career, he retired nearly 13 years ago. And she says it seems highly unlikely that anyone would take him to extract what she called very dated secrets. I'm going to get into that in a moment, too. She also rejected rumors about um a phone call, right? This is apparently a phone call from Friday morning uh to a relative. Um she says that call and anything that anyone's ascribing to it is just fabrication. She said she does not believe that Neil was abducted for classified information or because of his brief association with the UFO community. She also addressed one of the most repeated online claims directly, saying he does not have special knowledge about extraterrestrial bodies or Roswell debris supposedly stored at Wright Patterson. And at the end of her statement on Facebook, she said this. Maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mother ship. However, no sightings of a mother ship hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported. Obviously, uh that sounds sarcastic, but you can tell that she's either pissed about something or annoyed or maybe both. Um and I'm going to discuss that statement as well, uh because I think it's important what she said.
So, I called someone I turn to all the time for all things UFO, Ben Hansen. Uh you probably already know who Ben Hansen is, but if you don't, let me just give you the quick onetwo on him. So he is a television host. He's got shows on uh the Travel Channel, on the History Channel. He was so famous um obviously for UFO Discovery, which is still airing. Um and he also is a former federal agent with the FBI, so he knows a thing or two, not only about how the federal government works, but also how the UFO world works. And so he's the guy I called to ask all things about the missing general. Here's our conversation.
So Ben, what do you make of this extremely mysterious disappearance of General McCassland?
>> Well, I think it is extremely mysterious. Um, that kind of sums it up. There's a lot of people out there right now who are speculating. The conspiracies of course are coming out. Um, here's what we have. I mean, first off, um, this this gentleman, patriot, you know, major general, air force, if you look at his credentials, uh, a lot of people pointed out, I don't think you could have a more senior person in so many aspects of research and development, special programs, um, within the Pentagon. And if if you were to say, "Hey, who could I talk to who would might know secrets about uh UFOs and and crash retrievals, as Ross Colart pointed out, this guy's top of the list, right? So when someone like that goes missing and you pair it with the timing, which is what a lot of people are pointing out, the timing of uh President Trump's announcement that he's going to start releasing uh UFO files. Um that's what makes it suspicious. Now, in itself, um we'll say none of that. And you just had this this older gentleman and he goes missing. They put out a silver alert. Um, you know, you still might get some resources like sheriff's department obviously um you know, and search and rescue teams out looking for him, but one of the questions people are bringing up is, okay, well, why all the federal agencies? Why have we got the Air Force special investigations? Why do we have the FBI? And and and that can be explained really simply. um when somebody has top secret SCI, you know, compartmented uh security clearances for that many years, you have a lot of knowledge in your in your head. You have a lot of things that um we don't want foreign adversaries to have. And so you're kind of looking I I I call it playing offense and defense. If someone like that goes missing, we're not only worried about did they voluntarily leave and go meet up with somebody to transfer information that's classified and they shouldn't, but we're also worried about the defense. Did somebody take them, right? Someone who wanted that information. And so that's where we can get into all the details of of the mystery of how he disappeared.
So, like you said, um, Ross Khart described the general, and I'll use his words, as someone who had served at the highest levels of the Air Force and defense world with oversight of classified aerospace and special programs. And Ross was saying that this should be treated a lot less like a local disappearance and something far bigger and and should have far more headlines. Do do you think the response is appropriate?
>> Uh, well, as far as the Well, two things, right? you got the media response which we're caught in this media cycle where I don't know if you could have many more things going on. Um so it's kind of hard to squeeze in another story that people are going to follow detail detail but the other response from the different agencies and who's involved. I do think it is appropriate and he makes a great point there. Um UFOs aside, right? If you had just been in the director, he was the director of research and development at Wright Patterson, right? Um all of the uh space weapons and things projects that he was working on, special access programs within the Pentagon, he's a director over special programs, all of that. Um, it doesn't matter if you left last month or 10, 15 years ago, a lot of that technology is still highly classified. So, um, each one of those agencies are going to want to know, is there a motive here from him? Is he purposely going out, um, take take for example the the fact that he left his phone and his watch? Okay, these are deliberate in my mind deliberate things. Who who of us leaves the house without our phone knowing that you're going to be gone for more than like 10 minutes,
>> right? Depend on that,
>> right? We'll turn around and go back and drive. I will drive a half an hour to go back to my house if I know I'm going to be at my phone for the day. Right? So, he's an avid cyclist, a runner. I don't know if he normally carries his phone, but I'd imagine so. Right? You can be out there and something could could happen. You twist an ankle, uh, you know, whatever. You got to pay for something with your phone or watch. So, the fact that he left it there and um that that we could go down a whole other road of speculation here because um not not to don't judge me here getting into the mind of a criminal, but if you're going to commit a crime, right, you you don't turn your phone off, right, for tracking. You leave it at the house, right? uh for you future criminals out there because you want to show that there was nothing out of the ordinary um you know, that the phone could be tracked by cell phone pings and everything historically later it could show where it was if you're concerned about the phone being used as um wiretapping where it could be activated and you could hear what's going on. So let's say I have a secret meeting with somebody and I I want to leave my phone at home. That's another thing that you could do, you know. And then finally, um, well, related to the tracking, there are people who, um, in the secret squirrel world, you're you're called to a a meeting or you've got to deploy overseas. You do not bring your personal phone. You leave that there at home. Everything that identifies you if you're traveling undercover, you leave all of that at home and then you get a burner phone. You get a phone um, and new credentials and everything. So, but the problem with that theory is that even though there's a lot you have to keep from your spouse who doesn't have that access, you would at least going to tell your spouse, I'm gone for work and you might be able to, you know, I can't tell you where I'm going, but I'm leaving my phone and stuff here. Usually, there's a a third party emergency number. You can get a hold of them if you have to, right? So, if you're kind of we're trying to guess why that would happen, I I just find at the very least it's very suspicious that someone would just leave their phone. I would not leave my phone unless I was like, "Hey, I the garbage man's coming. I got to take the garbage out." And I leave it right just for that moment. Then, but then what? You're probably in your your robe or your pajamas and you're not ready for the day. So, where is he? Well, I could see I could see someone maybe it's unusual, but maybe going out for a run without their phone because it's a big brick. Um, but generally speaking, you would want something usually your watch to keep an eye on the time or the miles that you're going or you'd want to track your run or something. Um, so I do think that is is very strange, but you know, it's it's and this is a tough one too because you don't want to, you know, cast dispersions on someone who could honestly be a victim here. But this potential that maybe there was a contestant meeting that he was going to take. Um, and it's just impossible to note. Maybe he didn't share it with his wife or if he did share it, she's not uh sharing publicly.
But let's let's go to the issue of the Wright Patterson Air Force Base and the significance of his connection to it and why in the UFO community this is everything.
So, yeah, for those who who aren't as as well verssed in into this, and I I've been looking at it since I was a kid, a little little nerd, uh, eight years old or so, the the lore, um, I call it lore, but that is is now backed up by plenty of evidence that what happened, um, the 1947 Roswell crash, shortly after that, we're talking within months, we had several things established. We had the NSA um the beginnings of the CIA. The Air Force was created. It was the Army Air Force before then. And Wright Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio became the center, the headquarters for the new Air Force. And when uh the Roswell uh 1947 crash happened, we have plenty of evidence of the pilots who actually flew the debris picked it up. Now, you can debate all day long about whether it was man-made, foreign, or extraterrestrial, but we know where it went and where it stopped at, you know, Texas. And then part of it went one way and part of it, we definitely know went to Wright Patterson because that was home of the uh foreign technology division or at the time, I believe it was called the Air Material Command. I don't know if foreign technology was around till a little bit later. This is where you took everything that crashed. If you had a a Russian or um Chinese craft, anything um you bring it there. We back engineer it. We try to figure out how it works. Then later, a couple years later in um you know the 50s was when project blue book, the Air Force's official investigation into UFOs was headquartered. Right. Then you had the research and development which is headquartered there still. So just about everything that the uh the air force does with technology testing back engineering um all of that happens at Wright Patterson. So he was um as I understand it he was the director of research uh and development you know there at Wright Patterson and and also represented um I believe it was Phillips or one of the contractors you he was in charge of all the programs there you know with their development. So a lot of things that he was privy to. Uh, as a side note, my my own grandfather um went there on temporary duty assignments in the 60s. And when he would leave, he would tell my my grandma, he's like, "Hey, can't tell you where I'm going. They're going to come pick me up in a car." And he'd be gone for one to two weeks. He was working uh underground. There's an extensive underground um uh system of hangers and tunnels, which they still deny to this day, which is kind of funny.
>> But your grandpa told you.
>> Well, yeah. Um he it's it's uh when he was dying of cancer, he came to my father because my father's pretty upset. He's like, "When you go on these assignments, um you're gone for weeks. We can't get a hold of you by phone and where are you?" And he he told him, "Not everywhere I I work has a phone because I've been underground." So it was very frustrating to my father. Um didn't know when he'd come home, but that's another story for another day. But we we feel like we connected him to possibly some of these UFO crash alleged crashes that took place where they would then take the debris. Um because we have witnesses who said uh yes that stuff went to Wright Patterson.
So >> you have a timing that that connects him >> a timeline. You said >> like do you have a timeline that connects your grandfather to these particular?
>> Yeah. um he didn't keep an extensive journal, but um my father remembers things like he didn't show up. He was out of town for like a really important basketball game that my dad had and he really wanted him to be there. And my dad has this impeccable, you know, memory for dates and things. And so we lined that up like, "Oh, wow. That was the week of the Kexsburg UFO crash in the 1960s, you know, and there witnesses who said they brought that debris to the back field and grandpa gets a call the next morning, get on a plane, come out here, right? And he had told my um uh my father that he was basically at 12, 13 years old, he was to be in charge when he was gone because he was part of a team. He said that had to be called at a moment's notice. So, I mean, we'd love to speculate. Yeah. I I love grandpa that on his deathbed I wish he would have divulged something to us but at the end of it he uh he did say we're not alone and don't be afraid.
>> So um >> that is a topic for a whole other and I am going to ask you to sit with me to tell me grandpa's stories for an entire episode. Will you do that?
>> For sure. For sure.
>> Holy cow. No wonder you're in the field you're in. Ben, I had no idea you had that in your background. That's amazing.
>> And we didn't know either. Yeah, I had an interest in this well before I knew my grandpa could have been involved. But so to answer the question, right, Patterson is kind of ground zero for all research development um very key to the Roswell and every crash retrieval pretty much that um you know followed for decades would have had some involvement there. So, General McCassland as head of research would have known pretty much everything or do they have silos even within um that you know Wright Patterson Air Force Base uh program?
>> I think absolutely. Um it's very compartmentalized. When my grandpa worked there, he only talked to people by their uh he only knew their first names. And what they would do is they'd bring people in across the country from different parts instead of just using their own talent and employees there on base because they didn't want him talking, you know, when this was all over. So he worked alone uh quite often. He would come in for a few weeks, do his thing, he would leave, and then you wouldn't know how to contact each other. You were encouraged not to really associate with others. Now, somebody such as the the general here who was the director, um I I would think and it depends on the years that he served and what was going on. But you got to know not only what's currently on your base and what secrets need to be protected, but also what came before you, right? You got to, I believe, got to know some of that. So, it's all speculation. And that's why his wife Susan I think was trying to put the kibos on some of this. But let's face it, and Ross makes a great point, some others do, too. Um that's not something you're going to tell your spouse anyways. You know, things that I worked on, um the details of which I could be general and say, "Hey, you know, we're working on a international kidnapping case." but your spouse is not get going to get to know or shouldn't know any of the details that the the normal public does not. And so, um, it that's what baffles me is like that's great and I feel really bad for her and her family, but at the end of the day, we just don't know what he knew and if that has anything to do with the disappearance.
Well, Lyn, let me pull on that thread because again, there will be a lot of people watching this right now who know everything about Wright Patterson, about Project Blue Book. Uh they know all about General McCasslin. Uh but there'll be people who listen who are listening who don't. So, what are some of the prevailing theories right now from those who do follow uh the general and and his body of work as to what might have happened to him?
Well, I think his wife addressed some of that on Facebook where um it was probably getting to her and the family because the the rumors have gone rampant, but one of them uh I guess to the disappearance was did he suffer from dementia? And and she pretty quickly said he he did not he had a medical condition. They don't say what, but it was not dementia or Alzheimer's. Um he was of sound mind. I think Ross Coldart also has a lot of people who know him and the his running group that he's a part of. He's he's very um sharp. He's he's very um uh active. You know, he just did a 60-mile bike ride, I think, not too long before he he disappeared. So, that not being a factor, okay, then why would somebody of sound mind wander away from the house? And I think the prime theories are one, he was going to meet somebody. Maybe he didn't expect that he wouldn't return. Um or two, he was taken, right? And so by force and and that's why um sheriff's department I believe was the agency that did it just recently put out a call to everybody uh I think over 500 or so different citizens in that neighborhood asking them to please uh voluntarily turn over their footage from any cameras that they have ring cameras um house surveillance cameras because we don't at this point at least the public for what I've seen we don't even know if he wandered out the door on foot or if a car picked him up. Right. And and so that's kind of where you have to start.
>> right. And
>> and they and they've canvased uh several hundred um people and asked for their uh their video and and let's hope that the topography and the neighborhoods are more yielding to this kind of video than the Nancy Guthrie case because that neighborhood was just very difficult and and any doorbell cams don't necessarily go out to the road simply. So maybe there will be something that they can get a a trail at least going or with license plate readers follow a vehicle if there is one. But but overall there are a lot of people who who believe that you know General McCasslin would be a would be a target for some people uh who
>> well and and and maybe let let's just say um it was Russian intelligence right or or Chinese or North Korean whatever country adversary you want to insert there if they were wanting they're watching the news as well and they probably have more information than we do about these rumors that Trump was going to release files of something of the UFOs. So if um they too are involved in this game, if you want to call it that, and and people believe there is a race for technology going on, why have is it not been if multiple countries are privy to an alien intelligence or back engineering, why haven't one of them come forward and just done it, right, and disclosed it? And there's this idea that maybe we're at a stalemate and that um because of the implications of of how this might go down for society or other reasons that no one themselves has done it yet and if they believe that Trump is now at the point where he wants to do that. So the theory goes right that they want to be up um and have the upper hand, right? They either want to stall that, they want to slow it down or prevent it from happening at all. And so, let's say that this general um was on that short list of people who who may have been um slated to come forward, then you go and pick him up and nab him and and do whatever to get the information or just keep him back or, you know, heaven forbid something worse, right? So, that's one of the theories.
>> Will we not know that by now? Um, and I only say that because if you know Donald Trump had planned some kind of very wholesome disclosure, uh, it seems that he had something up his sleeve. Um, wouldn't we already know if General McCassland was part of all of that?
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>> Not necessarily. Um, you know, a lot of the legislation, if people have been following it, there there were in the National Defense Authorization Act, the last one, they gutted it and took out this whistleblower protection, right? And and I think if that's the route that Trump wants to go, he wants it to be more than just an executive order. A lot of people may not trust that, right? They want it codified in an act of Congress so that it becomes law so that they get protections. So let's say he was holding back. Let's say he had a lot to say and maybe he was waiting for the right time where he at least had those protections in place. And that's one of the other rumors is that he was going to do this under um Hillary Clinton's um uh you know prospective presidency when she was thought to be the one that would be the next president. that this discussion with Podesta is, you know, they were gearing up. Podesta, of course, was their their guy in the street, you know, to go and and um push forward the disclosure. And so they were hoping perhaps that was going to take place in her presidency. Um and when it didn't, um maybe he got kind of shelved for a moment. He's like, "Well, I still need the president's backing. I still need these asurances, you know, for my safety and everything else." And so, um, we wouldn't necessarily know what he knows yet. I mean, that again, I'm just repeating what people are saying, but we have to look at each of these with with some open-mindedness.
>> But don't we think it's odd that as many men and women like your grandfather had these secrets and took them to their deathbed that they didn't package them up and put them in a safety deposit box for someone at some point? Uh I just I just find it so strange that over the decades the number of people who would have been exposed to these secrets that somebody hasn't told his grandson.
>> Well, they have. They have. A lot have. Um I've talked to a lot of them that have. Um but you're right. We we almost tore his house apart. We're still looking for things. You know, maybe he hid it somewhere. Was this secluded? It can drive you crazy. But we we had a different time period then, too. You remember that what we call patriots today is a little bit different than what patriots were like then.
>> Um they they trusted their government a whole lot more than we do if you look at the surveys,
>> right? And even if you were asked to do something you didn't believe in, you at least believe that your your government in the long term or the high level uh perspective knows what it's doing and you would keep your oaths, you know, to your deathbed. And um I think my grandfather was one of those men, but I have uh a lot more examples of people who did let it slip at the end and they said, you know, forget it. I need to tell my son uh as I'm lying here, not only did I work on these projects, but here's some details of what we know. Um if people want to look up, uh Black Mack McGrder, uh you can look that up. Mark McGrder was his son and uh he he was a colonel in the Air Force um which well in World War World War II wasn't the Air Force but he flew for the Marines and anyways his second career when he left was to go back and they consulted with him on the problem that they had with the crash retrievalss, the bodies, the craft that they had at Wright Patterson and on his deathbed he spilled it pretty much everything that he could for his kids and they're like writing it all down, you know. So, it does happen. Um, but I think we will see more and more of that um coming forward that some of them are just waiting for the right time and they're they're wanting to make sure that canary in the the mind is still singing. You know, what's happening to other people before I come out?
>> Well, yeah. And of course, as you mentioned earlier, that with all the silos and the individualistic work that they were all doing, one person spilling his guts at his deathbed is just one piece of a very big puzzle. And uh do you have any idea what President Trump was referring to when he talked about the big disclosures that are coming? Like do you know what part which like a comprehensive disclosure or a piece here and there? Like do you have any idea or does anyone have any idea?
>> Well, I mean this is fun. It's it's very frustrating because I'm I'm reading the tea leaves just like everybody else. Um in fact just yesterday um I I would have to look and see exact it came from a few sources that the one of the main people promulgating that I guess you could call it a rumor that he had a speech prepared on the anniversary of Roswell. He feels like now that he was fed disinformation his supposed inside sources have gone cold on him. Um, and if that's the case, it's really sad because the the point of that would be to to maybe get us to what I'd say disclosure exhaustion, you know, or disclosure um uh yeah, something akin to that. Just we're we're just done with it because our chain has been jerked so many times and we're promising and nothing happens. So, um, rumored that he was going to come out in July, but then, um, we we'll go to all these things because I'm sure some of your your listeners have, uh, remember a couple weeks ago, Obama had come out and said that aliens are real, but they're not kept at Area 51. And that, you know, exploded with people say he the president, former president said aliens are real. What does that mean? And then the rebuttal from Trump was um all this let's move up the timeline if if that's what it was right.
>> Well, he also Trump if I remember correctly and I'll have to just paraphrase said well if he did that he'd be revealing classified information which made everybody think so you're saying it's true and classified.
>> Yeah. And then he I think he replied something to the fact of well I'm not I don't know if they exist or not but he shouldn't be saying those things because it's classified information. So, it's kind of like, well, yeah,
>> why would one president know and not another one?
>> Exactly. So, but I mean, you try to get in into the president's head. Um, I don't know. I it it seems to me that it could have been kind of like looking at that like, well, okay, Obama, are you trying to steal my thunder? I'm interested in this topic, too, so let's get ahead of it and, okay, let's talk about it. I'm going to release more files. and suddenly became an item agenda. And now people are wondering, well, where is where is that? Where is that coming from? Um, where are the files? And and I would argue if he really has an intent to do this and he's doing it properly and he's listening to his advisors, this is not going to be an overnight thing. It definitely will not. This has to be methodical. It's got to be planned out. There's a lot of moving parts. you just don't release uh decades worth of of secrets to that degree overnight, it could be catastrophic. So, we got to have some patience.
>> Yeah. So, obviously, right, and I was thinking, um because we've all been, you know, in the true crime world, we've been following the Nancy Guthrie case for six weeks and I think in week two, uh the president just sort of blurted it out on Air Force One. Uh we're we're this is going to resolve soon. we've had something happen that we're going to have a a resolution to the case. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but that was effectively his message
>> and here we are six weeks later and that is absolutely not the case. So, um
>> yeah,
>> does that bode terribly for the notion that um there's this overture to release decades and decades of secrets um that maybe shouldn't be released in that way? Th this might I might have some people angry at me and I don't really care because I don't really I I see that I don't have an agenda. I want to know the secrets just as badly as anybody else. But I also when I was at Georgetown um my my I convinced them to allow me do my thesis in emergency and disaster management on the subject of uh ET disclosure and I got no push back and it was great. But what I learned and what I feel I learned is the safest way to do this would actually be what we call the slow drip method. And I'm not worried about the speed. I am worried about the speed if someone were to come out and just um randomly do it overnight and come to the pulpit, you know, the the podium and just say, "Look, here's all the information we know." That could be very scary for society. But the fact that um we're given promises and then they're kind of retracted and um things don't pan out, it might look like we're taking steps further back, but I believe it's um to get technical, we call this hazard intrusiveness. So the more that somebody talks about, let's say, hurricanes or earthquakes in the household, they found the better prepared those people are,
>> right? because they're mentally going there and then you might actually take proactive steps to prepare against one. So, we just have to raise the temperature, if you will, and talk about the subject before I think we're really ready for the information. That it's my opinion.
>> Well, to that end, um the general's wife, I think her name is Susan McCasslin Wilkerson, posted something on Facebook that I'm a bit uh bewildered by. I don't really understand why she might write this, but I think she's upset about a lot of um people who are postulating about what may have happened to her husband. Uh the theories that are out there, and I understand that, but she again, he's missing. And all eyes uh are better on that case, on a missing person than no eyes. And she posted this, maybe the best hypo and this is these are her words. Maybe the best hypothesis is that aliens beamed him up to the mother ship. However, no sightings of a mother ship hovering above the Sandia Mountains have been reported. I mean, I know she's she's being sarcastic. Um but you know with his connections to these programs and to project blue book and to the right Patterson Air Force Base and the research programs um it only stands to reason that people would think maybe there's some connection to his dis his mysterious disappearance to his former work. Is it is it not plausible that it could be connected?
I I think we we have to keep an open mind to it and like I've said I don't think we have any of that connective um you know tissue if you will to it. There's there's nothing substantive that would indicate that yet. However, I find that comment um as you did very stark and just kind of like
>> not helpful.
>> Is that really the the right timing? Now people grieve in different ways and we have to remember like victims um if she is a victim of her husband being you know lost that um she could use humor and things to kind of get over this. She's had a lot of time to think about it but it wouldn't be my way of doing it. So I I don't want to put my my opinions on her feelings like the way that she's feeling right now. But I'll tell you one thing. If I said that, if my wife went missing and and I was joking about it and it's like, well, some people think she was taken by aliens because of the type of work that I do. Well, there aren't any aliens around here. That is not where my mind is at all. I'm grieving. Um, I'm probably not going to be on social media much at all, and I'm definitely not making jokes because if she shows back up and she sees what I wrote about her, oh, she would kill me, right? So, I don't know. I think that comment seems out of place. I don't want to um imply that maybe they didn't have a a great relationship or anything like that. Um she's probably just dealing with it in her way with humor, but she does address the fact that uh people are wanting to make that connection of him being abducted for the knowledge that he may have had. And I do think we can't just brush it off and just say, "Well, we can't talk about that. this is just a missing person's case. Um, at the very least, the intelligence agencies, I'd say FBI, it looks like Air Force intelligence, uh, um, is involved. Those guys are there because of that aspect of, yeah, they want to bring him back for sure, but they're there also because number one, they want to know, is he going out and sharing secrets or number two, is someone trying to harm him for his secrets?
>> Yeah,
>> if that makes sense. So that's that's pretty much their involvement at this point I believe.
So I mean it's not that people are just guessing at this. There there's there are reasons for for people to believe that, um, there might be something else.
The controversy is not that he had secrets, right? Because they could maybe he had, uh, let's just, I'm I'm speculating here, maybe while he was at the Air Force, he knows about the latest F-35, you know, onboard sensors and technologies that we're using right now and more, right? He's got all that information in his head and it could be something totally unrelated to UFOs, most likely, in fact, but it's related to weapon systems and things like that. And and someone takes him for his information. Um, hopefully he's not harmed.
An Iranian sleeper cell.
Yeah, it could be any of that. Um, so what we don't know is if that is the motive and he and he was taken, then, uh, what is the information that he has that is so valuable? Is it valuable to sell to to tell someone else about or is it valuable for them to try and force it from him? That's what we don't know.
You mentioned Chinese, you mentioned the Russians. Is there any scenario in which you see a possibility that Americans are involved that he was grabbed by Americans who don't want him to either tell the president what he knows or, um, don't want him to argue against?
It's possible. I mean, if you talk to people, and again, I have no way to substantiate this at all, but the rumors of some of the whistleblowers who've come out, um, you know, we we got David Grush, you know, and Barber, and each one of them has some sort of a story, whether a full-on threat on their life or kind of odd things that have happened to them where they feel like they're they're shadow groups that are meant to intimidate, to silence, or or possibly worse, you know, but I find it kind of unlikely because he's been out of this game supposedly for over 13 years or more with his clearances. And if he was really a threat, he could have disclosed that at any time, right? Um, so is it possible that as we're getting closer to disclosure, he's not playing the game they want him to play, right? Maybe they don't want him to go forward with Trump. And so there's that theory that like he was playing along and okay, I'm going to do what you say, but then all of a sudden we have a president who wants this to come forward and so let's pick him up and and snatch him so he can't do anything about it, you know. So we got to treat it like a criminal case at this point. Um, I think is is where you want to focus and and look for foul play.
There's this other um connection that that his his wife Susan mentioned, um, she said he'd been working with Tom Dong for a period as an unpaid consultant and, uh, on on military and technical matters to help him with to help Tom Dong with his um, his fiction and his media projects. Is there anything, uh, that he, I mean, is there anything that anyone should make of the fact that he was working with someone who had a media project or would he have kept his secrets to himself and helped where he could have in the project and and and therefore this is probably unrelated?
Well, probably just give a little bit of background to your listeners too because this is it's kind of esoteric for nerds like me. But Tom Dong, right?
By the way, I see this a lot. Talk to me like I'm five. I think it was.
So Tom Dong, the lead singer of Blink 182, um, and Angels and Airwaves, and, um, he came out, you know, this was years ago, kind of stunning the world when they they were very key in in helping get the Navy tic tac video and and other videos released, right, with Lu Alzando and Chris Melon. So when that, uh, to the stars academy was founded, was his organization that was part entertainment, um, you know, non-fiction, I think they wanted to do some films and and the books he wanted to write, uh, fiction books, and then also, um, actual disclosure and getting things coming forward. So he he would always talk to, um, somebody, people, I think Joe Rogan was one of them, where he talked about one of his his key advisors, he just called the general, and, and Ross Kohhart does a good job explaining this better than me. But the general, we now know, was General McCasslin, right? And, um, so behind the scenes, and we know that because of the Podesta, John Podesta leaks, but behind the scenes, they were working with Hillary Clinton's, uh, administration with John Podesta. And it would seem, don't know, but it may have actually been sanctioned at least by some parts of the government that they wanted disclosure to come out in this way. So, if that's true, if he was key to that and you get this rock star, which it's kind of hard to comprehend, but but I mean, if that's the way we want to go to get the youth involved and to get some cred and to have him come out with some of these videos and disclosure, then would Neil, uh, the general, would he be one of the people that would be the insider because he had all of this information allegedly to come out and be part of that disclosure? But then it was shelved. And why was it shelved? Well, again, the theory was they all believed that it was a shoe-in for Hillary, uh, to assume the presidency, and then that didn't happen. So then you got to work through the next administrations.
I want to wrap this up by getting you to repeat to me what it was your grandfather said on his deathbed.
Sure. So, uh, just take you back just a little bit. My my grandfather, he died, um, of cancer. I believe it started in his pancreas, uh, went eventually to his brain, and, and he was under chemo and all sorts of treatment, radiation for several years. So as he was getting sicker, my grandfather, um, would often go with my father to the gym, um, to try and keep his stamina the best he could. And the other thing they liked to do is watch, uh, TV shows like, um, uh, Unsolved Mysteries was one of his favorites. And he would, my dad would bring him lunch and bring it into the room for him. And he's like, "Hey, what do you think about this, Dad? I mean, you were there talking about Roswell, but this is Wright Patterson. You used to go there quite a bit." And he would just kind of nod and h that's interesting, you know, or sometimes he'd say, "That's ridiculous." And it was kind of his way of like, I think, letting my dad know whether they were on the right trail or not. Well, this went on for a little bit till he got really sick, and one day they were at the gym, and, um, my dad looked him in the eyes and he said, "You know, Dad, Ben, I don't know if my other siblings, they definitely weren't into it like I was, but he says, Ben and I really want to know, and we know you're at Wright Patterson. Um, we know the rumors, the things that you were doing underground, the things you were working on. Are we alone? Is this real?" And my grandpa stood up and he got very kind of upset and he said, "I think it's time that we leave." They were joking. They were having fun, and then he changed his tone, and it was like when grandpa looks you in the eyes and says, "That's enough. It's over." And they left. It wasn't until, um, I believe it was at least a year later on his deathbed, and I was I was actually on a date that night, and I was going to go visit him at the hospital, and I called my dad, and he said, "I'm sorry, he just passed away. You just missed him, but we had a very interesting conversation I need to tell you about." And, um, it was a very long time afterwards. He told me he was holding his hand, and, um, he was going in and out of consciousness. You know, that that point where they're not even awake, and his eyes open up, and he had this moment of lucidity, and he looks at my dad and he turns to him and he says, "Son, I know you've been asking me." And he said, "You need to know that we're not alone. Take care of your mother. Don't be afraid." And he passed away. And my dad knows that this wasn't a discussion about life after death. They he already believed that. He knew my grandpa believed in that. It wasn't anything about being alone in that sense. It was specifically related to the question that he had asked him so many times. And he in so many ways was trying to tell him, on my way out the door, you know, that I saw things and I'm telling you, I'm privy to it. I'm not going to tell you what how I know this, but we are not alone.
But he did say you're going to be okay.
Yeah. Um, you know, and and I'm I'm writing a book at the moment, too, about this because, you know, like when we have so little to go off of, we we love to analyze things to death. And looking at that one statement, I'm wondering what what did he mean by don't be afraid? You know, was it don't be afraid because I know that the alien races or whatever we've contacted with are friendly? Was it, you know, don't be afraid that, um, maybe they're not friendly, but you're going to get, you know, you're going to be okay at the end of it that we have control over it? I have no idea. Um, or maybe he just he knew that there wasn't anything that we could do. So, it's kind of like you're just comforting your son. It's like, hey, you know, it it's going to be okay. Don't worry.
It is so good to talk to you. And we are going to do that other podcast of all of Grandpa's secrets that you could get out of them anyway, and all the conversations you had, Ben Hansen. Thank you so much for this.
Thanks, Ashley.
So, this is where we stand. I'm going to keep my eye on General McCasslin's story and on the case and on the investigation, and we'll see if they come up with any signs, tips, information, leads, all the above. Thank you so much for watching. Thank you for listening. Don't forget to subscribe if you haven't already. And remember this, truth isn't just serious, it's drop dead serious.