Former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe, speaks out

John Ratcliffe

John Ratcliffe was the United States Director of National Intelligence, between May 2020 and 20 January 2021, under the Trump administration. On 19 March 2021, he was interviewed by Maria Bartiromo, on FOX News Primetime. The following is a transcript of that segment, prepared by myself from a full length version, kindly supplied by Giuliano Marinkovic. This version is longer than the version being circulated on such social media sites as Twitter. 

Transcript

MB - Joining me right now, is the former Director of National Intelligence, John Ratcliffe. John it is great to see you tonight. Thank you such much for being here.

JR - You bet, Maria.

MB - John, you have seen, in your role, the most intelligence that anybody has seen other than the President, as the Director of National Intelligence. I have been wanting to ask you this next question for a while. I want to ask you about UFOs - Unidentified Flying Objects. The Pentagon is going to come out with a report by June 1st, and in the $2.3 trillion dollar omnibus appropriations legislation passed in January, it includes the Intelligence Authorization Act; money for the Pentagon to continue investigating UFOs. John, we are going to get this report June 1st, Can you tell us, have Unidentified Flying Objects been seen?

JR - Well sure. We have lots of reports about what we call Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon and this actually is a program that's been in place for a few years in terms of a task force that has been there under the National Defense Authorization Act, but as you correctly point out Maria, there's now a report that will be issued by the Pentagon, by the Secretary of Defense and the Director of National Intelligence. (KB - See comment 1 below.)

I actually wanted to get this information out and declassified (comment 2) before I left office, but we weren't able to get it down into an unclassified format that we could talk about quickly enough, but frankly there are a lot more sightings than have been made public. (comment 3.)

Some of those have been declassified. When we talk about sightings we're talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery (comment 4) that, frankly, engage in actions that are difficult to explain; movements that are hard to replicate, that we don't have the technology for, or traveling at speeds that you know exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom.

So, in short, things that we are observing that are difficult to explain. And so, you know, there's actually quite a few of those, and I think that that information is being gathered and will be put out in a way that the American people can see.

We always, when we see these things, Maria, we always look for a plausible explanation. Weather can cause disturbances - visual disturbances. Sometimes, we wonder whether or not our adversaries have technologies that are a little bit further down the road than we thought, or that we realized, but there are instances where we don't have good explanations for some of the things that we've seen. And, you know, when that information becomes declassified I'll be able to talk a little bit more about that.

MB - Can you tell us where it was seen?

JR - Actually all over the world. There have been sightings all over the world, and when we talk about sightings, the other thing I will tell you is, it's not just a pilot, or just a satellite or some intelligence collection. Usually we have multiple sensors that are picking up these things (comment 5.) And so, again, some of, they are, just, they're unexplained phenomenon and there's actually quite a few more than has been made public.

I think it will be healthy for as much of this information to get out as possible, so that the American people can see some of the things we have been dealing with.

MB - OK. Wow, that is pretty extraordinary. We so appreciate that, that you're talking to us about this. Can this year get any weirder. Pandemic, shutdown, UFOs. John Ratcliffe it's great to see you. Thank you so much ...

Comments

1. The report will be submitted by the Director of National Intelligence. Thus, Ratcliffe, had he still been in office would have been the individual submitting the report. As he was the DNI between May 2020 and 20 January 2021, you can reasonable state that he would have been briefed on the subject of UAP. The new Director of National Intelligence, under the Biden administration is Avril Haines.

2. "declassified before I left office..." This implies that some, if not all, of this information is currently/was previously, classified. Please take a look at my previous blog post where I discussed security classifications levels of UAP information. 

3. "lot more sightings than have been made public" Most of us would have believed this statement to be true, even before Ratcliffe made it.

4. "or have been picked up by satellite imagery" A very interesting statement indeed. There have long been accounts given of such satellite detected UAP. As long ago as 1988, researcher Jacques Vallee (Forbidden Science: Volume 3) in a diary entry dated 28 June 1988, speaking about Hal Puthoff, wrote:

"Hal has seen a 2-inch thick file that details UFO observations by infra-red satellites: 'The objects arrive 3,000 miles above the Earth,' he told me. 'The satellites pick them up as they come near the surface and going away the same manner as they came in. Their infra-red signature shows a level of energy 15 times that of an aircraft carrier. But the data is so tightly classified nobody wants to talk about it.' "

5. "Usually we have multiple sensors that are picking up these things." Again, a confirmation of rumors or stories of which we are all aware.