Bob Dean: It is the most important issue in my view in human history. It's not merely that we're not alone but we have never been alone. ...It's lucky like I said that I didn't end up in jail because I drove my friends up the wall. I pushed my security clearance to the limit. I use to get into classified file cabinets, sort through material and look for photographs and reproduced things that should not have been reproduced. ...If there had been a threat from these guys (pointing upwards) whoever they were, it would have been over a long time ago. As one of our old Generals use to say, "they could have cleaned our clock from the beginning". ...Because when we started shooting at them they had a unique way of eliminating all of the electrical systems in our aircraft. ...But these guys could be walking up and down the corridors of SHAPE headquarters or the Pentagon or the White House.

Kerry Cassidy: Were they?

Bob Dean: I have always suspected that yes, they have been. ...How do you tell Christian Fundamentalists that that lovely man from Galilee two thousand years ago was a part of that program? ...He tapped me and he went over to the vault and pulled this thing out and he threw it on my desk and he says, "Hey, this will wake you up. Read this." It was "The Assessment". He said when the old man read that story, or that report, The Assessment, he said it hit him like a truck, hit him like a ton of bricks. He told me the General threw his hat across the desk and he says, "Do you know what the hell this means? Everything we've got, everything we've done, everything we've had... doesn't mean a damn thing." ...Monumental aggravation and frustration that the government had continued over all these years to lie to the people.

Kerry Cassidy: You're a real hero, you know, a real hero in a lot of people's eyes because you came forward at a time and said, "I've signed a note but you know, it doesn't matter, come get me. I'm going to tell the truth because people need to know."

Bob Dean: You said it, and I'll say it again, and I shared it with Bill downstairs: I believed from the beginning, and I still hold deeply in my heart, that this is the greatest story in human history. This is a story of who we are, how we came to be here, what kind of a species we are and where we're going. It is the most important issue in my view in human history. It's not merely that we're not alone, but we have never been alone. We have had what I have shared many times. We have had an intimate interrelationship with advanced extraterrestrial intelligence from the beginning of human history. And that is dynamite. I've tried to share what I've learned. And I told Bill earlier I will tell you what I've seen, what I've learned and what I've concluded. This will probably be, I really sincerely believe, that this will be my last interview. So I will share with you things that I strongly believe and strongly hold that even today, it's the greatest story in human history. It involves who we are; it involves what we are as a species. It involves how we came to be. Now for many, many years, I held to the view that once we could get this out, many of us who are military would say what we've seen, we've learned, what we concluded. Experiences we've had personally and I kept naively thinking, ah, once we get it out, the public is going to clamor for more. "Oh tell us more, tell us more, tell us more". Then the government would respond by opening up and telling the public the truth. Well, forgive me; I certainly have learned my lesson. That didn't happen and I believe it isn't about to happen because the story is simply too big. This involves our origins as a species, as a race. I've almost reached the point where I am sympathizing with the government for not telling the truth. To a point where I sympathize with the government by saying that the masses of people out there probably are NOT ready for the truth. That the masses of people probably couldn't handle the truth, because the truth is incredible. It's dynamite. I use an analogy about Pandora's box, and I know you're familiar with the old Greek legend. This alien issue, this extraterrestrial presence issue, is like Pandora's box. You can't open it just a tiny bit. You cant just open the lid and let a little bit out because if you open the box... BOOM... everything is going to come out. The masses of people are going to demand more, more, more and more. Which I believe they have a right to, but that mass of information is going to be earthshaking, literally earthshaking.

K: Wouldn't you consider yourself something of an ordinary person? I mean obviously you?e fairly extraordinary.

B: I've always thought of myself as a typical ordinary guy, yes.

K: All right, and you handle it. So why...

B: Not easily

K: Not easily... really.

B: No.

K: Can you tell me what it was like?

B: Let me tell you that....

K: When you first found out....

B: I've known this for over 40 years.

K: Right.

B: When I first began to get some information of what was involved, that to me was like a drug addict. You know I've never taken drugs. Well, I smoke a little, and I drink coffee, and I have a little bourbon now and then.

K: (Laughing)

B: But I tell you, I've never taken hard drugs.

K: Right.

B: It was almost like an addict, once I learned, officially, from government documents what was taking place. My God, I couldn't get enough! I couldn't learn enough. I was voracious to get more and more and more. I became a nuisance to my friends. It's a wonder I was able to retire honorably without ending up in Fort Leavenworth, which is a disciplinary barracks, by the way. It's a prison, military prison. It's amazing that I've gotten to this point in my life without going to jail.

K: Okay... were you highly respected at the time when you discovered this information? Would you say that in your career as a military...

B: Yes, I had been given a Cosmic Top Secret document.

K: Right.

B: Which was and still is the highest security classification that NATO has.

K: Okay, but... Cosmic Top Secret. Did that mean to you that you were going to be able to be let in on the secrets of our extraterrestrial relations with other planets?

B: No, it simply meant that I was given access to a military document, a study that NATO conducted from 1961 to 1964. When I got to SHAPE in Paris in 1963, I learned of a study that was underway. I'd had a Top Secret clearance when I arrived, which you had to have to get to that particular assignment. It was a rather choice assignment, by the way, Paris in those days. I took my family, my kids went to high school in Paris. It was a choice assignment, and not everybody got that assignment. You were selected and you were analyzed and you had to have so many little pluses in your box to get that.

K: I know but, Top Secret way back then? I mean were you naive? Did you have no idea...

B: No, no, no.

K: ...when you first came across this information?

B: I had some suspicions, and I was curious about the extraterrestrial issues.

K: So you had some suspicions way back in....

B: Oh yes. Oh yes.

K: ...in the 60s.

B: Well, I went into the Army in 1950.

K: Right.

B: I paid attention, and I used to read a lot, and I always had a nagging suspicion that there was something more going on out there than we were being told.

K: Did you know about underground bases at that point?

B: No, not at that time. Now being exposed to this SHAPE study in 1964 was simply the appetizer for me. It opened my mind to the point that, Oh my God, this is real! Not only did I see reports and studies and analysis, and photographs, there were autopsy reports that I was able to study. Because there had been crashes and retrievals of bodies, and all the rest of it.

K: So how many pages were in the report?

B: Oh, the study itself was about an inch and a half thick.

K: Oh, so it was like a book?

B: Yes. Well, it was supplemented, supported by about 10 inches of appendices and, what do they call them... annexes.

K: Oh, really.

B: There were ten of them. So the study had laid out the problem, as any military study will do. It laid out the problem, purpose and the meaning of the study and some of the conclusions of the study. And then it referred to the annexes, which were the ones that had all the details.

K: I see.

B: For example, there was an annex on retrieval of bodies and autopsies - with photographs. So once I got a chance to go through this thing with my Cosmic clearance, that allowed me the access to it, in the vault.

K: At any time you can go back in there?

B: Well any time I was on duty in SHOC. SHAPE is Supreme Headquarters of Allied Forces in Europe. SHOC is the Supreme Headquarters Operations Center. It was a war room. I worked in there regularly. I ran duty rosters. I was a Senior NCO at the time, I was a Senior Master Sergeant at the time, and my clearance allowed me... I had a desk in SHOC. I had a desk in the operations center over in the corner, and I ran the duty rosters and I was in charge of giving assignments and all to all of the lower enlisted men. I even ran a duty roster for the controllers, which were O-6 rank. Colonels, Captains in the Navy. We were in the middle of a bloody cold war.

K: Okay, so it was during the Cold War.

B: This was the 1960s. I arrived in 1963. The study was completed in 1964. The Warsaw Pact and NATO were lined up along a divided Europe. We were bristling with arms. We had fifty divisions here. The Soviets and the Warsaw Pact had a hundred divisions here. World War III was just moments away. That's how close it was. Young people today like yourselves cannot imagine what that would be like.

K: So this is a serious desk that you'd got. In other words it's a lot of responsibility.

B: Yeah, I worked in the War Room. I had access to the vault and my clearance allowed me there.

K: So we're in the middle of what's called the Cold War, and you're reading about our relationships and interactions with alien races.

B: Well, let me give you some reason first of all why this study was concluded. In February of 1961 there was a massive flyover of unidentified objects, coming out of the East from the Soviet Warsaw Pact area, flying towards the West, coming over our lines, over NATO lines, over Germany, over France. These objects were very high, very fast, in formation, obviously under intelligent control.

K: Did you see this?

B: They were circular disc shapes.

K: Did you see it?

B: I didn't, no. I wasn't there in '61.

K: Oh, was it filmed?

B: Oh yes, we had film of it.

K: Really. How many were there?

B: The point is Gordon Cooper, whom I'm sure you're familiar with, one of our famous astronauts from the old years, Gordon's gone now. But Gordon shared with me one time and he shared it publicly. He said, "When I flew over Germany in the 50s, we'd see these things all the time. We wondered what they were because it was obvious they were under intelligent control. They would fly over our lines or they'd come out of the Soviet sector flying west". As I said, over Germany, France, England. They'd turn north over the southern coast of England, and then they would disappear off of NATO radar over the Norwegian sea.

K: Okay and I know, or I assume the government figured they weren't Soviet, it that right?

B: The government didn't know from the very beginning - at least NATO didn't - what they were. We thought they were Soviets for a time. We learned that the Soviets thought they belonged to us.

K: Right.

B: But they were very high, very obviously under intelligent control and in formation and they would come sometimes en masse. The flyover in February of '61 was a couple of hundred of them... they couldn't count them. And they thought, oh my God! World War III has started here.

K: Exactly. Didn't the base at that point aim and shoot?

B: Everybody got on alert. We didn't have the capability to shoot because they were too high, and they were too fast. And in those days we did not have the aircraft nor the weaponry to deal with this. And they were obviously always under intelligent control.

K: So this is why the study was put into effect?

B: The study was initiated in '61. I arrived in '63. It was concluded and published in '64. And that is, as I said, what changed my life.

K: Okay, what was the conclusion? You said they came to some conclusions?

B: The study was designed initially to determine if there was a threat to Allied Forces in Europe. It was a military study... a simple beginning. What the hell is going on? Is there a threat here?

K: Is there? Was there?

B: They concluded after three years, apparently not. No threat.

K: Really?

B: That's right. Now the reason they concluded that is first of all, the technology that they had been exposed to, the technology that had been repeatedly demonstrated to our military, to the Soviets, to everybody, was so far beyond anything we had or even could imagine, that the technology was out of this world. No pun intended. So if there had been a threat from these guys, whoever these guys were, it would have been over a long time ago. As one of our Generals use to say, "they could have cleaned our clock from the very beginning." Because they demonstrated, repeatedly, technology that we couldn't even begin to touch.

K: Okay this in the ?60s? But didn't Eisenhower have a meeting or make a treaty with these people long before that time?

B: Let me get back here and tell you that this study was the beginning for me.

K: Okay.

B: It opened the doors of my mind, so to speak. I could never leave it, I could never lay it down, I could never walk away from it after that. And I kept over the years learning more and studying more and as I said, it's lucky I didn't end up in jail. Because I drove my friends up the wall, I pushed my security clearance to the limit. I used to get into classified file cabinets and sort through material and look for photographs, and reproduced things that I should not have been reproduced. I was a damn nuisance, I'm sure.

K: So where is this stuff that you reproduced?

B: You see, I knew just this much (indicating with fingers) but I wanted to know this much (holding arms apart).

K: I understand.

B: And over the years I learned this much (holding arms wide apart).

K: Okay, but what happened to all that stuff you photocopied or whatever?

B: Oh my God.

K: Is that a secret? Is that part of the reason you haven't been...

B: The material that I photocopied I don't have any more because being somewhat intelligent, I knew that having classified material in my possession that I was not authorized to have, meant jail. And as I jokingly said, going to Fort Leavenworth for 30 years. So I destroyed it, but I put it here (pointing to his head).

K: Right.

B: And I remembered, and I memorized, and I kept notes for years and years. I had a whole series of notes.

K: Okay, to get back to my question though... Eisenhower had a meeting theoretically with aliens. Truman had given a shoot down order years before you ever read the studies.

B: Eisenhower never gave that order. It was given by an Air Force General. I can't remember the year, but I believe it was in the early ?60s that an Air Force General gave an order to shoot them down. That order was revoked within 90 days. We lost something like 30 aircraft. Because when we started shooting at them, they had a unique way of eliminating all of the electrical systems in our aircraft. They didn't shoot bullets at us. We shot bullets at them, and missiles and everything else. But if we attacked them, they had an incredible scientific procedure where they could literally nullify all of the electrical operations in our aircraft. Now if you're flying a high performance jet, and you're at 30,000 feet going 400-500 mph and all of a sudden everything goes dead. Jet pilots used to share that flying one of those 100 series planes was like flying an anvil. They had no glide capability. They were heavy, they were overly armed and they were heavy aircraft. The only thing keeping them in the sky was a powerful jet engine that kept them going. So if they lost all of their electrical controls, they couldn't even steer, for God's sake. The plane - as I said - just fell like an anvil. Well, we lost a lot of aircraft, a lot of guys got out, they bailed out in time. A lot of planes were lost. We lost a few pilots. Now that order to shoot them down was revoked within 90 days.

K: Right.

B: And they never issued that again because they learned their lesson. Don't mess with these guys.

K: Okay, but you're telling me that you read a report in which the military states that their technology is not up to par so they can't compete with people that are flying over invading their airspace, etc, etc. I'm assuming they didn't know what their MO [modus operandi] was, they didn't know what they were there to do, right?

B: Let me tell you briefly what the conclusion of this three year study was. They concluded that apparently there was not a threat involved, because their repeated demonstrations of technology was so beyond anything we could do or match. If they were angry at us or wer hostile, it'd be over.

K: Okay, but the logic of that is not, it doesn't fit...

B: Let me continue.

K: Just because you can't compete doesn't mean it's not a threat. It could still be a threat.

B: Let me go on.

K: It could be an implied threat.

B: This three year study did not find any example of overt hostility on their part. (points upwards)

K: Okay.

B: They were not shooting our planes down. We would shoot at them but they would pooh-pooh, it's like throwing little pebbles at somebody, see? They concluded after the three year study that we were dealing not with one group. We were dealing with at least four separate groups. Photographs of crashes, retrievals, landings and contacts, where they had landed and contacted people, indicated that they were humanoid, all four different groups. Out of the four different groups, all humanoid, one group was so human looking, just like us - it could sit down next to us in a restaurant, they could sit next to you in a theater, and you would never know. That's the ones that bothered the Admirals and the Generals the most: that these guys could be walking up and down the corridors of SHAPE headquarters or the Pentagon or the White House.

K: Were they?

B: I have always suspected that yes, they have been.

K: Okay... had you met any?

B: I met a couple that I am convinced were from somewhere else, yes.

K: Okay.

B: But that's another story, and we'd be here until midnight if I got into that. Let me finish what I was telling you about the SHAPE study. The Assessment concluded we were dealing with incredibly advanced technology. We were dealing with four different groups, all humanoid, but one group looked totally human. We concluded in this study that they were from somewhere else. Another planet, another star system, perhaps another galaxy. We concluded that they did not... they were not malevolent or hostile - overtly. They certainly were able to defend themselves. But they did not have an agenda, an aggressive agenda, that was hostile, because they had not smashed and torn and broken and destroyed our military.

K: And this is prior to the abduction scenario that has since come to the forefront?

B: Oh yeah. This was the initial study in '64 based on three years of research by the military.

K: Now, who did the study?

B: The military.

K: But who in the military? I'm assuming you weren't part of this?

B: No I wasn't. I was working in the War Room at SHOC. The study was under way when I arrived. It was made up of NATO members. There were Germans involved, there were French involved. There were Italians involved.

K: Scientists?

B: And Americans... they went to some universities and got some of the top people. They got historians... Oxford, Cambridge. They got physicists from several of the top universities in Europe. It was a thorough study.

K: Was it signed by their... in other words, did they sign off on this study? Do you have names?

B: The individuals who contributed to it, in bits and pieces, would put initials, you know, to their particular part in it. You would have anthropologists, historians, geologists...

K: Okay, but do you know their names? I don't know if you are going to tell me.

B: No, I know the names of the guys that I was with at SHAPE headquarters who read the damn thing, and signed off in it, yes.

K: Okay what about the ones that worked in the study itself?

B: No, I never kept those names, because as I said this was classified. If I had ever been caught with a piece of paper from this study, I could have gone to jail.

K: But someone you were working with gave you this to read.

B: Well, I'll tell you how that happened. One morning, one or two in the morning, we were on these long shifts. I'm bored to death. The coffee was so black you couldn't drink it. The phones are not ringing. The telegraphs were not going off. It was boring as hell. It happens a lot. The old story is military life is 99% boredom and 1% total disaster, total terror. But we were going through the 99% boredom, you know. And I'm sitting there nodding off, and had read old newspapers, magazines and all. The controller on duty at the time was an Air Force Bird Colonel, what we called a O-6. All controllers were 6-level, and I ran the duty roster. He looked at me and went over to the vault and he pulled this thing out and threw it on my desk. He said, "Hey, this will wake you up. Read this." It was The Assessment, and it dealt with UFOs, and it concluded that there were extraterrestrials coming here, had been coming a very long time. Sometimes estimates of a thousand years, two thousands years. Historical records in The Assessment itself indicated that the Romans had been paying attention to them two thousand years ago. So I'm going through this thing and history was one of my majors when I was in college. Good God, this is dynamite! The more I read, the more I wanted to read, and I went through the whole damn thing, and then later every time I was on duty in SHOC I would go over to the vault, pull it out, go through it again.

K: So did you have conversations with this officer?

B: We had limited conversations, because you could not discuss classified material outside of SHOC because there were too many ears. We were having a problem in those days. Let me tell you another little side-bit here of history. We were in the middle of a vast French spy ring. Which if you really want to do the follow up on that, you get a book by Leon Uris called Topaz.

K: Oh, cool.

B: It was made into a movie.

K: That's right.

B: Uris laid it out. A French spy ring was going on in Paris. I was there at the time, and we would find French Air Force officers. We found a French General one time in the woods outside of SHAPE with a bullet hole in his head. Guys were jumping out of apartments in Paris. It was a major scandal, de Gaulle was the president...

K: Okay but what was the objective of the spy ring?

B: Well the spy ring was Soviet, to find out what we knew that they didn't know. So they had been buying and paying off people all over Europe... Hungarians, French, Germans...

K: So what has that to do with finding The Assessment papers?

B: What it's got to do with it is the UFO issue. No information ever came from Washington or London to SHAPE headquarters on the UFO matter because of the French spy ring. Everything that came from Washington and London to Paris ended up in Moscow. There was a British Air Marshall, Thomas Pike. Thomas Pike was the Deputy SACEUR [Supreme Allied Commander Europe]. He was Assistant Deputy to my boss, an American four star General by the name of Lyman Lemnitzer. Sir Thomas Pike, after the incident in February '61 said, "We're going to have to figure out what the hell is going on here. We're getting nothing from Washington or London on this issue. We ask... they don't send anything. We asked them for information and insight on these objects. Who are they, what's happening? Nothing." Well nothing was because everything that came from Washington and London ended up in Moscow thanks to the French, the Hungarians and the Germans. So the study was initiated strictly as a military idea to conclude what the hell is happening to us here. Is there a threat, yes or no? They concluded apparently not, because these guys had been coming and going for a long time. The history annex took it back a couple thousand years. The records, the photographs, the drawings, the paintings, it was unbelievable material. This was just all wild for me, you see.

K: Okay, but this is after World War II...

B: Yes.

K: It was after Germany had, you know... Paperclip... [Project Paperclip, in which key Nazi rocket scientists were brought to America after the war]

B: Germany was divided.

K: Okay, and you were in West...

B: We were Western Europe.

K: Sure.

B: The Warsaw Pact was Eastern Europe.

K: So are you saying that the technology that was used by Hitler and his group, some of which was brought back to the United States was not known to the West, you know, to the people in NATO that were doing this report?

B: Of course not. It was highly classified.

K: But it's a classified document. So you're saying there's a classification in a in classification...

B: You have a classified document here and then you have classified document here, and the guys who wrote this one and have access to this one, can't read that one because they don't have the need to know. Now the guys that have got this one and wrote it and read it and talk about it, they can't read this one because that's another separate classified document.

K: Okay... so this guy Pike, right, he's the guy in charge?

B: Thomas Pike, Air Marshall Sir Thomas Pike, initiated the study in February of '61 and said.. .

K: He had a need to know.

B: "I want to know what the hell's going on", and they started the study.

K: There's some kind of animosity, I don't know, to this day, between NATO, right, and the US and...

B: Honey. You should have seen the animosity that existed in SHAPE headquarters itself.

K: Oh. Okay...

B: It was so bad that the Greeks and the Turks wouldn't even walk on the same side of the corridor. Cyprus was an issue back then. It still is. So we had Greeks and Turks snarling and frowning at each other, and we had the French. Uh ho ho ho ho... Excuse me, bless their hearts, the French were a pain in the butt from the very beginning.

K: Why?

B: Well first of all de Gaulle hated the fact that Churchill and Truman had not given him the appropriate respect that he felt he deserved. One of the reasons that happened while I was there, is that France withdrew from the Military Alliance. De Gaulle threw us out. We had to pack our bags and move the entire kit and caboodle from Paris to Brussels. And I was there at the time when it happened.

K: Okay where were you reading the report, before or after this happened?

B: I'm reading the report in Paris. SHAPE was located in a little town called Chatou... Rocquencourt, right outside of Paris. A little old Napoleonic battle took place there somewhere. Anyhow, the animosity between the French and everybody else... the Germans, the Italians, and the Americans and the Brits were all like this (clasps hands together into a fist). The French were over here. (points away to his right)

K: But you're saying the guy who initiated the report is Pike?

B: Pike.

K: Okay. And you're saying, I mean he clearly had a need to know if he's having flyovers and the US is hearing about this, Britain is hearing about this. The people at the top are hearing about this. So he does this report on his own or...

B: No.

K: ... or something... that's what it's sounding like. He had a need to know so theoretically...

B: He was a five star rank Air Marshall. He had authority to initiate a study like this, and he did.

K: Okay, where did it go from there? Do you know? Did it go to the US? Did it go to...

B: No, no.

K: It sat in a safe somewhere?

B: They published fifteen copies.

K: Right.

B: The first, copy one, went to the Secretary General of NATO. But you cannot imagine what an international headquarters is like. It's like a.. a wasp's nest.

K: (Laughs)

B: Like I said, the Greeks and Turks were snarling at each other all the time. The French were always angry at everybody.

K: Okay so what you are saying, fifteen copies...

B: Fifteen copies were initiated. A copy went to the US, a copy went to Italy, a copy went to France, a copy went to the UK, and so on. Fifteen copies are out. One copy, I think the 14th or the 15th, came right there in the vault at SHOC.

K: Okay.

B: Reading material for the controllers, the full Colonels who ran the 24-hour-a-day War Room.

K: So you weren't the only one that read it?

B: Oh no, no, no. Oh no. We had an American Air Force General by the name of Robert Lee. Robert Lee read the thing. I got to know his aide fairly well... it was a Lt. Colonel. Inside the War Room we were a select group. We all had the highest clearance possible. The enlisted men and the officers mingled closely. The enlisted men had... the senior enlisted men, most of us were top E-7s or E-8s and a couple of E-9s. So we mingled closely, and it wasn't on a first name basis, there was always respect for rank. But when you work in a War Room like that, and you work closely together over the years, you get to know each other pretty well. General Lee's aide told me, he said: "When the old man read that story, that report, The Assessment, it hit him like a truck, hit him like a ton of bricks." He told me that the General threw his hat across the desk and he says, "Do you know what the hell this means? Everything we've got, everything we've done, everything we've had, doesn't mean a damn thing." The shock was pretty serious. Here you have a highly decorated World War II Air Force General who's been all over the place... I think he flew B-29s in the Pacific... he said, "If this is all true, if this is real, what we've got, all our military, our Air Force, our bombs, our planes, doesn't mean a thing." The conclusions of the study after three years concluded that they had been coming here for a very long time. That they apparently had some involvement in the origins of our species. Big shock to traditional people, particularly Christians and Muslims. It was interesting because apparently there wasn't a threat involved. If they had been hostile or aggressive it would have been over a long time ago. Now: what was their purpose? Well, the study was not able to conclude that. It said that the military committee will continue this research, which indicated to me that the study in some form had continued... that this document in '64 was simply an initial conclusion.

K: Okay.

B: But when they concluded that there were four different extraterrestrial groups involved, and one of them was totally human, looked just like us, that was a BIG shock to the old traditional mindset of the military. The Admirals and the Generals, they couldn't deal with it.

K: It also said that there was something to do with the religions, that all the religions of the world...

B: Well, let me tell you. The study was not that thorough. It was a beginning for me. It was the initiative, the initial event that triggered my curiosity. It launched me on 40 years of research. And much of what I've concluded has been as a result of the years of study since. You see, I continued to dig, I continued to probe. I continued to turn over rocks. As I said, I drove my friends up the wall.

K: Okay you looked at this material, you learned a lot. You weren't the only one. You've convinced me of that. Supposedly these people that you knew also read it. They weren't your close friends, I'm assuming?

B: Well, they weren't my dearest closest friends, no.

K: Okay but were you able to talk to them or have relationships with them after outside of 1967? Did you ever compare notes?

B: We formed, back in those days, what we call "the old boys network". This network was made up of people like myself, enlisted and commissioned. Of all services, Air Force, Marines, Army, Navy. As I said, all ranks. There were others like me who were so engrossed by this and excited by it and what it meant. You hear a few of them coming out even today, those that are still alive, saying what I saw, what I learned, what I concluded. The reports I studied, the contacts that I knew happened. Some of them had contacts themselves.

K: Sure.

B: Personal contacts with some of these guys (pointing up). Phil Corso was an example. Are you familiar with who he was?

K: Absolutely.

B: I knew Phil fairly well. He and I were speakers at several conferences together. And in Italy I got to know him pretty well. Phil shared with me things that he had had happen to him. Not just what he had seen, but that he had personal contact with an alien at White Sands. He was in charge of the security of the range one time. And something came in, the radar picked it up. He hopped in his car and went out to see what the hell it was. There is a UFO sitting on the ground. There's a guy standing beside it, and Corso walks over to him and says, you know, "What the hell are you, who are you, and where are you from, and why are you here"? This fellow says, "I just came to talk". Corso asks him, "Well, are you with us, or are you agin' us?" Simple military type question. You know, are you with me or are you against me? This guy says, "Neither, we're neither for you or are we against you". He had a conversation with this guy that lasted over an hour. The guy says, "Please turn off your radar, it disturbs my control or my guidance system, so I can leave." Corso went back to the shop, or back to the headquarters, and turned off the radar... and away he went. I got to know through the old boys network dozens of guys like myself, who were as excited and enthused about the thing as I was.

K: But they didn't become whistleblowers. What's the difference?

B: Some of them did. Some of them lost their commissions, some of them lost their rank.

K: Can you name somebody? If they became a whistleblower, do I know them?

B: No, no, no.

K: What happened?

B: Many of them just retired and died.

K: Okay, so they tried to blow the whistle, but they didn't get known? They haven't lasted...

B: Let me explain something.

K: ...but you have.

B: I was one of the loudest loudmouths, and this is my nature. I retired as a Command Sergeant Major. And that rank gives me the privilege to open my big yap to anybody. The Generals, the Admirals and everybody in between, you see? It's a unique kind of rank to have.

K: I see.

B: The Generals depend on you to tell them the truth whether they like it or not and so you learn to tell them the truth. Well, I turned out to be a big mouth. I sat on this for... when did I come out of the closet, so to speak? It's just a term...

K: Right, okay from 1967...

B: I sat on this from '67 to '92 or '91? I believe I came out of the closet in '91.

K: Okay, so that's a long time.

B: Yes. I respected my oath, which I swore. I took an oath to never share anything that I learned in a classified nature while I was on active duty. I knew that if I did, I could go to prison for 10 years, $10,000 fine, forfeiture of all pay and allowances, retirement everything, whatever, forever.

K: Okay so you've come out. What happened to you?

B: So I came out in '91 at a conference in Tucson, Arizona. The result was monumental aggravation and frustration that the government had continued over all these years to lie to the people. Not only were they lying to the people, they were ruining lives to keep the lid on this subject. I had enough of that. I had seen good friends of mine, guys who... theyhad said something to the wrong person, the wrong way at the wrong time, and they sent them to Iceland, you know?

K: They reassigned them?

B: They reassigned them to Iceland without their families. A three year assignment in Iceland. That's like the Russians sending you to Siberia. We have this in this country, the ability to do that. There are assignments here and there that, you know, I don't want to use the wrong terminology and embarrass you but... you've heard the term anus mundi? We have places on the Earth where we have military bases, and if they send you there, everybody says, "Bye, we'll probably never hear from you again", you know?

K: Okay, but that didn't happen to you.

B: No, it didn't. And let me tell you...

K: Why not? Do you know why?

B: The more I learned, the more I grew aggravated I became. And at '91, I think it was, when I came out... Wendelle Stevens is a good friend of mine. Remember the "old boy network"? retired Lieutenant Colonel Air Force fighter pilot Wendelle is still alive down in Tucson. He and I were close for years. When I retired from the Army, I bought a house in Tucson and lo and behold, I found I was right across the street from Stevens. Anyhow, he went to prison, and it was a trumped up, fixed political deal. I always suspected it was because he had spoken out openly on the subject. Now there were people who say, "No, no, Wendelle just made a dumb mistake, and he broke the law", and off he went. He spent three years in prison. Well, here's an example for you. People say, "Well, he screwed up". Well I never did believe the man screwed up that way. I think that partly him going to jail was a result of him being very outspoken. Now, that's a threat that you face. In '91 I was up to here (puts hand to forehead). My first marriage was on the rocks for a variety of reasons. I was in a new job. I took a job with the Sheriff's Dept. I was actually working for FEMA as an emergency management director. But I was just so frustrated and so aggravated, waiting for the government to tell the people a little something. And then I was so frustrated and angered by the fact that not only were they not telling them the truth, they were telling them blatant lies, and they were also destroying people's lives. There were people who had contacts, who the government would place in what they called, what is it the police put you in protective...?

K: Protective custody, a safe house?

B: Well not just custody, they create a whole new life for you.

K: Oh yeah, okay.

B: I have seen examples of military families' lives destroyed because...

K: Because the person spoke out?

B: Well, a pilot could come back from a mission, and before they got to him he said something to somebody: "My God, you should have seen what I saw up there! There was this damn ship flying along beside me and there were faces at the windows looking at me!" This went public. And this poor son of a bitch, they took him and sent him to Kwajalein. I believe it's some tiny little atoll in the middle of the Pacific, where you can't take your family. And he went off to Kwajalein for god knows how long, away from his family because he said one thing. I learned all these things. It struck me that this was not fair. That this was not right. That no government, dammit, has the right to do that to people. I came out of the closet in a BIG way.

K: Right.

B: Not only did I share everything I learned at SHAPE in the study, The Assessment, which is in itself dynamite. But the real dynamite is all the stuff I've learned since. And I learned even after I retired from the Army in '76. I still had clearance. I worked for FEMA. I got a what's equivalent to a Master's Degree in emergency management at the Institute in Emmitsburg, Maryland.

K: Okay, but they didn't come get you and send you off to Siberia or Iceland...

B: No they didn't because once I opened my big yap I had people come to me to tell me, "Bob, that's your only defense, that's the only security you've got. Keep talking. Because if they come and shut you up now, it'll be so obvious..."

K: Oh, I see.

B: ...to the world that you've been closed down, that what you've been talking about must be true." As I told you, I think I shared with Bill, I was intimidated. I had phone calls from people who wouldn't identify themselves. Male voices saying, "Don't you think you've talked about this just about enough? Why don't you the hell... it's time for you to shut up." (Mimics holding phone to his ear) "Who's this?" "Never mind. Keep your damn mouth shut." Click. I had a number of those. I had a little house in Tucson in a cul-de-sac. I lived there, bought it years ago. Bought it in '60-something. I'm sitting there one day reading or whatever, and I hear (imitating sound of helicopter rotor blades), a very distinctive sound. I knew a helicopter. I knew the sound of a Huey because I'd been in Viet Nam, and the Huey has a distinctive sound all of its own. I thought, you know, is it passing over? And it kept (imitating helicopter sound) and the damn thing was sitting over my house. So I go out the door into the driveway and I look up, and there's a totally black Huey type helicopter, not more than 100 feet above my house, violating FAA rules, you know, totally violating the rules. The damn thing was sitting up there and there was not a marking on it. Not one mark on it, it was totally black and that was a violation of FAA, you know. Now these guys violate the law all the time. I stood out there and I thought, "Who the hell are you"? I looked up and studied it, and there was this big circular glassy apparatus on the bottom of this thing. It was part of the aircraft. And I concluded later that it probably was one of those 360-degree windows. There were probably guys sitting in there looking at me down through this glass. But it was black, totally black. The glass was black. The thing was just sitting up there, kind of like nyah, nyah, nyah, you know. I mean what are you going to do about it? So I shook my fist pointed my finger, mouthed a couple of profanities. Called them a number of names, (pointing up with finger) "I know you, you son of a bitch! I know who you are and I know what you're doing!"

K: Okay.

B: And about this time I'm really giving them hell. I'm sure they thought, "All right, we got his attention", and off it went. First of all, totally black, no markings... a violation. It's hovering over a private residence... a violation.

K: Sure.

B: You know they don't care. It was an intimidation. This was right after I had gone public at this conference in Tucson.

K: Okay. So tell me, you had friends in high places, because I know you've spent some time in Washington. Who's protecting you? Because... is it human, is it extraterrestrial...?

B: Let me tell you what I think, and this is just my two cents. I think that after I came out publicly with a big mouth, and spoke and began to speak regularly at that time. From '91 on, I traveled the world, good God; I've been to 18 countries. I think going public and being out in the open probably was what saved me. Other than the phone calls and the black Huey and all the rest of it. You know I've had people come up to me at conferences, guys who would not introduce themselves, and with suits, you know what the term suits means?

K: Sure.

B: Three piece with vest...

K: (Laughs)

B: ...typical government agency type thing. "Uh, you've been speaking out pretty bluntly about this, why are you doing this?" "Well, who are you?" "Never mind, why are you doing this"? "Well first of all, the truth needs to be told". "Oh, yeah, you think you know the truth?" "I think I know some of it, how's that? As a matter of fact I know quite a bit of it. That's even better". And I've had these happen too, over the years. I had an interesting time... I spoke in Leeds at a conference. Got a call from a guy who identified himself as "Mr Sweeting". You know, typical UK name, I guess, "Mr. Sweeting". We found out Tony Dodd checked out the phone number from Mr Sweeting, who called me and said it was imperative the he speak to me before I went on. Tony and I both got in the phone booth together, crammed in there. Tony's listening as I'm talking to Mr Sweeting, and he says, " It's imperative Mr Dean that I speak to you before you go on. What are you going to say?" And I said, "Well, Mr Sweeting, if you're local, why don't you come to the conference and listen?" "Well, no, I can't do that. I just wanted to know what you plan to say." I said, "I plan to say a hell of a lot."

K: (Laughs)

B: And Tony checked the number. And guess where? There's an enormous US National Security Agency facility in Yorkshire, called, ah...

K: Menwith Hill.

B: Menwith Hill. I've driven by it. Tony took me by several times.

K: Sure.

B: Mr Sweeting's number was Menwith Hill.

K: Okay, so what... that's it? That's the gist of your conversation?

B: Well the gist of the conversation was Mr Sweeting would not say anything to me about who he was and why he wanted to talk to me. And I told him, "I ain't gonna share nothin' with him over the phone. If he wants to talk to me, come to the conference and I'd be delighted to talk to him face to face."

K: Well on that issue, have you had whistleblowers, people, come out of the closet and share stuff with you since you're a whistleblower?

B: Oh hell, yes. I've had people come up to me and say, "You know, I've been wanting to share this, Dean... and I think I can share this with you because you won't take my name and address and phone number and turn me in. But this happened to me and I know it happened to you." We've all been members of what we call the "old boys network". We wanted to get it out. We wanted to get it out honestly, up front, and democratically, dammit!

K: So you've convinced me that you're out there, but I'm still not buying it completely because... do you think that you've had health problems? Have you had you know, mind control, and if not, then I have to ask you again, who's protecting you?

B: Well let me say this about that... sounds like Nixon... (Kerry laughs) I have shared this with people several times be cause they've asked me the same question, okay?

K: I'm sure.

B: When I became notorious, I suppose is the best word, where I've spoken bluntly, regularly all over the damn planet, and all over the United States, to a considerable amount of positive response from people. Not only military thanking me for going public, and I've a number of old close warm friends that have retired to a level of some degree. A good friend in Roswell, a retired Army Sergeant who after he went public, his son was killed by a hit and run. And they always concluded that it was the result of his going public.

K: Clifford Stone.

B: Clifford lost his boy.

K: We interviewed him, yeah.

B: Clifford is a very close friend and his boy was killed right after he had published his book. Now you say, "Oh, coincidence". Bullshit! I have seen a lot of coincidences in my time and I don't believe in it.

K: Okay.

B: I don't believe there is such a thing as coincidence. In everybody's life, there is no coincidences. It's all laid out. Clifford is like me now; he's turned into a recluse.