John Greenewald: His name is John Ramirez. A retired CIA
officer, John spent 25 years with the agency specializing in
ballistic missile defense systems. And signals analysis of
weapons system radars. And along the way, he's learned some stuff
that he now feels he wants to share with the world.
John Ramirez: And then we have what appears to be also V
energy. That's the best way I can describe it, that people
have also seen,
John Greenewald: but he is no whistleblower. The information
he's about to share comes after a CIA Review of the information
he wants to convey. And they gave their approval that John
can talk about at all. This doesn't mean the CIA endorses
his information, but rather, it was reviewed by the CIA to
ensure no classified information is given to you or me. So what
does he want to share that the CIA is okay with? Well, how
about knowledge about a working group within the intelligence
community studying orbs? Or how about the reality that
internally, CIA personnel within the agency talked about UFO
related events? And yes, so much more, I saw my orb. Stay tuned,
you're about to journey inside the black vault.
That's right, everybody. As always, thank you so much for
tuning in. And taking this journey inside the black vault
with me. I'm your host, John Greenwald, Jr. and I've got a
very special guest today, someone that I've wanted to talk
to on this program for quite some time, he has definitely
popped onto the scene here and has done quite a few interviews,
and a very popular guest where he appears, and rightfully so
he's got a lot of information to share. John Ramirez, John, thank
you so much for joining me on the program and taking a little
bit of time with me and my audience.
John Ramirez: Well, John, thank you for having me. And so your
audience might be interested to know a little backstory. When I
was attending some of these UFO conferences with a colleague of
mine. You were waiting to go on stage. And we actually talked to
you when you're like very young, many, you know, I believe it
will say conference in Orange County, you have to write for
Orange County. And when you went up on stage to do your
presentation, he and I looked at each other kind of smiled and
said, you know, that guy really needs to talk to us. And here I
am talking to you. So I consider that as a circle that was close.
360 degrees, we close that circle, with my appearance with
you. Yeah. And
John Greenewald: I'm excited about it. I was I was surprised
when you reminded me because I remember, if you recall, where
we were standing, if I was on stage, it was to the right
before I went on. And when you guys had approached me, and you
had mentioned CIA? I did hope I didn't show it to you. But I
think I started sweating a little bit going, why are people
from the CIA here? Well, you know, waiting to watch me go up
on stage. But I'm glad you reminded me. And that was quite
a few years ago, like I said, and it's great to have you on
the program and be able to pick your brain now that you have
retired from your 25 year career in the CIA, and have decided to
come out and start talking openly about topics that I would
say not a whole lot of, of CIA agents personnel like to talk
about. And let me ask you, I wanted to ask you before the
show, what is an accurate term for you? Were you an agent or
were you a employee? What's what's what's proper?
John Ramirez: Well, we're not agents. There are no agents in
CIA. We hire agents, there are foreign nationals, that for
compensation could be monetary goods and services. They agree
to spy against their own government because they have
access into their own government and provide us with information.
And so that is a major reason why there's so much secrecy and
a lot of our most valuable intelligence sources are people
who, if the information was known publicly, and only like a
very few people would have that information in his or her
country. Their lives will be at stake And so that's a very
precarious situation for them and for us, because exposes our
sources, it may expose other sources if they interrogate this
person. And also the method of extraction method sources and
methods, the method of extraction becomes very fragile,
we won't be able to use that extraction method ever again.
And so that's why a lot of the secrecy occurs. And so it's not
like we're hiding information. It's more like, we need to
protect these sources of methods, because we may want to
use the source, again, or other sources, and we need to protect
how we get information out of that country, an adversarial
country, to the United States. And so that's that type of
person is an agent. I say, no, no. How
John Greenewald: would you describe yourself? Officers?
Officers? Gosh,
John Ramirez: officers, yeah. So operations officers, analytic
officers, Science and Technology Officers, it could be logistics
officers, you name it. I gotcha, the full gamut of all of our
positions. We're just officers.
John Greenewald: So I want to talk a little bit, just for a
couple minutes about what you did for the CIA. I spoke a
little bit about it in the introduction, everybody just
saw, but as I just mentioned, 25 years, you were quite busy in
that in that timeframe. Give me a nutshell version about those
25 years if you can. And what did you do for the for the CIA?
John Ramirez: Okay, so I can talk about his signals
intelligence. Everyone knows that the National Security
Agency does and what's intelligence there, the
functional mission manager, the director of NSA, what we call
danza is the functional Mission Manager for signals
intelligence, CIA does human intelligence. So humans, and
open source intelligence are also sent. And so that's our,
that's our focus. But within the CIA, there are other
capabilities that are also capabilities and other agencies.
But the focus of our capabilities is to support
operations. So from a citizen intelligence standpoint, our
second officers deploy to protect operations, they may do
counter surveillance, they may provide gadgets, in order to do
some of that extraction that I talked about this highly
sensitive. So in my role, I did electronic intelligence, and
electronic intelligence is the analysis of weapons related
radar signals, missile seekers, air defense radar systems
associated with larger weapon systems. And so we would like
collect signals and analyze them in a lab
to get the internals of that signal. When I mean by
internals, we want to reverse engineer that radar, just based
on the signals that we collect. And any photographs may, we may
have, have the source the radar antennas, for example, we can
measure, combined with the signals combined with other
information provided by our overhead reconnaissance systems
of how much power that we collected. And together, we can
then model that radar system. And that information goes to a
weapon systems analyst who's looking at for example, if it's
a surface to air missile system, we might do the radar signals
analysis for that system. And they may do the interceptor, the
actual shooting in of that weapons system, combining our
data with the interceptor data, they'll have a better picture of
that system. Now dia does the same thing. Dia has the missile
and space Intelligence Center in Huntsville, Alabama. They also
have a lab and they do the same thing. So what's the difference?
Well, the DIA is more interested in an adversarial system
performance against what we have in inventory. So when we look at
a system, we're looking at the nuts and bolts and the internals
of a system that is probably just being developed, so they
don't have like hundreds of them scattered over a country that
would have just like one or two that they're working on, and
they test. But dia looks at the entire deployed system, what
they call the electronic order of battle, all the emanations
coming from deployed systems, and they model against what
we're flying because they need to inform policymakers. This
adversary has a new surface air missile system. And its
performance is this. And we have, let's say, the F two F 22,
F 35 fighter planes. And we know the, the performance of those
fighter planes. And they have to model and simulate what our
planes can do against that system, or what that system can
do against our planes. So the DIA does that type of work in
great detail. And dia reports. You know, you heard of dirts,
just like a few pages, d i, Defense Intelligence Report from
the DIA. I've seen hundreds and hundreds of pages. And that's
one of the things that the IA doesn't like to release. And
it's probably not foreseeable, because it's extremely
sensitive, because it reveals our capabilities, if revealed,
reveals those capabilities that we need to work on in order to
counter a weapon system that's deployed. And what we provide is
weapon systems that are going to be deployed so that they can cue
up the acquisition side of the department saying, Okay, this
adversary has this weapon system are our counter to that isn't as
good, we need to either improve that weapon system or build a
new one. And so that's the relationship of what we do
versus let's NSA and dia. But we do have a lab. And surprisingly,
every September is family day. So the family members who are
uncleared to children, close relatives, of staff members and
contractors invite their family members uncleared to tour the
CIA, they practically have a full run of the house, as long
as they're escorted by a badged officer or a badge contractor.
And so here's my top secret SCI lab and I would giving tours of
my lab and putting up demonstrations pumping in
signals to simulate a radar system. And it's just showing
how we do things. So in a way, it's highly secret. But in a
way, it's it's not the fact of it's not secret. So,
John Greenewald: you know, John, I could have happily been your
son that day, when we would go in there. And no, that's
fascinating. And and one of the other job titles that stuck out
to me, which is one thing I want to deal with, before we move on
from your background, is that you were a founding member of
the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is
national counterproliferation center or NC PC. Yeah. I believe
that the history of that office began at CIA then was moved. Is
that that correct? ODNI?
John Ramirez: Well, it's one of the offices that reside both at
CIA and at the ODNI level at CIA. It's the
counterproliferation division underneath the director of
operations. And in fact, the most infamous member of that
division, we all know, what's Valerie Plame? She worked for
CP. I work for NCPC at the ODNI level where we have
counterproliferation efforts throughout the government. And
we were coordinating the United States government's response to
the tear to stop proliferation of nuclear materials. And we
were making sure that at the policy, not the operational
level at the policy level, that we weren't doing things that
were redundant, that we were like providing resources to them
be advocates for resources to these other CP organizations,
such as at the FBI, NASA security branch. There is a CP
division at NSA in a directorate called S director for cygan. And
in a subdirectory, called S two which is analysis in production.
There is a office of counterproliferation. So there's
just two examples of other counterproliferation efforts.
So, now, we want to make sure that we don't redundantly, like,
provide capabilities, that when we build something for the CP
equity, that everyone has access to it, and that they all can
provide inputs into that capability. So that when we buy
that capability, through NRO, for example, with a defense
contractor, let's say it's Lockheed Martin Building a
satellite or something like that, that all of their equities
are addressed in that sensor system. And all the capabilities
they want that to do so we brokered that kind of like, and
I can speak on the second side and that we also have biology
and nuclear as the other parts of NBC.
John Greenewald: Yeah. Valerie Plame is a name I haven't heard
In a quite a few years, that's funny. Bring her up and you
refreshed my memory on a couple of FOIA cases that I had many,
many years ago. But that's a different show in itself. So So
let me ask you, somebody who's involved in that type of work
and weapon systems. And obviously, you answered one of
my other questions already. Your lab was top secret SCI. So you
were highly cleared at these levels? It's kind of obvious.
But you know, just to set that up, how do you have a focus like
that with the CIA, and wind up at UFO conferences? And you, you
know, showed up at my at one of the, you know, my appearances?
What's that bridge? What got you into the UFO side of this? Was
it anything official or personal?
John Ramirez: Well, first of all, let me preface I don't
remember, we identified as CIA, I think because of the way we
behaved, you might have surmised us to be CIA.
John Greenewald: You might be right. But to be honest with
you, I could have, maybe I could absolutely be wrong, and maybe I
picked up on it. But I remember being nervous. Like, why are
they in and again, maybe it was just an assumption on my part.
So yeah, forgive me if I miss remember that part.
John Ramirez: Yeah, we would not identify CIA and a sec to your
question. We went there, because we were personally interested.
And you follow it. So my friend and I, we were both
experiencers. And we both had sightings. And so we had an
interest. But having that interest in CIA was not
official, both of us we informed CIA officers security, the fact
that we're going to this conference, the hotels were
staying at the flights were taking, and, and to verify that
we're paying for everything, the flights, the hotels and the
conference fees out of out of pocket, as long as they know
where we at. They didn't care where we went. And it's within
CONUS. So it's not like we're traveling overseas. Sure. So
that makes it a lot easier. So it was a personal interest. And
many people at CIA who worked in other areas, not even close to
the weapons intelligence area I worked. But in other areas, were
also hobbyists, I would say, of the entire topic. And I know
that because I was an administrator of a discussion
database and Lotus Notes, which really dates the technology, IBM
Lotus Notes, and they had little discussion database areas within
Lotus Notes. And one of them's called the users group, th U G,
and we put a little s it, it's pronounced thugs. And all of a
sudden, a lot of folks who served my time will remember Oh,
that's that John Ramirez from thugs, because I was one of the
administrators and I used to contribute a lot into the
computer hobbyists that used to post in that particular data
discussion base. But one of the topics was like what DNI,
Abraham's calls the other topic. And so we had a catch all of
things that we just contributed. And that's where a lot of people
talked about the Anunnaki. The money emits on Mars, anomalies
on the on Mars and the Moon and things like that are mostly
speculative in nature. I brought up the remote viewing program,
and MK Ultra, and all these things that we all know from
foils that CIA was involved in, we just discussed it at that
level. And it's supposed to be unclassified. So we're not going
to put in anything in there of a current operation or current
capability. Yeah, it's more historical looking back and
personal, personal experiences. And so in that context, that's
how I was able to interface with that entire topic at an
unofficial level. But having said that, I got phone calls on
the secure line, that what CIA officers are know the green
phone, so I say green phone, they know exactly what phone was
ringing. The green phone rang and people will tell me about
certain things that they witnessed in the course of their
careers, or even some in the course of their military
careers. For example, the strong association with Navy and the
phenomenon. One CIA officer called me up and say, yeah, when
I was on the USS Boston, and we're off the coast of Vietnam,
we had to fight off a UFO. My ship went to jury quarters, and
we fought off a UFO. And I looked at the deployment of that
ship, and where we're when that ship was Off the coast of
Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin, or what they call Yankee station.
There's nothing there that would even hint at that occurring. I
looked at the cruise, the cruise books at Navy people know that
when you go on like a cruise into the Pacific West packs or
to the Met the Met cruises, that there's a cruise book like a
high school annual. And I looked in there for any incidence of
anything strange occur. And of course, that's not going to be
in there. But he affirmed that, yeah, that happened. And so in
that level, that's where I got involved with some quiet,
personal as well as semi official.
John Greenewald: Let's talk about the semi official. Were
you able to peek anybody's interest internally with the CIA
about these types of reports that you were getting through
through the thugs? Through the from the from the your fellow
thugs? Were you able to get people to be interested? Or what
happened with that?
John Ramirez: Well, I think they were like, already interested.
And I met some of them for lunch. And we talked about it
like at lunch, going to the cafeteria. And we could talk
about it because it was personal, like experiences. Now.
There is no classified discussion at any cafeteria.
Sure. In the intelligence community, it's unclassified. So
we can't get into details about, you know, the professional side
of what we might have worked on. But it's all personal anecdotes
of what we experienced ourselves. So at that level,
yes, I was able to like, have a group of people just getting
together at lunch on our own time, because lunch is our own
time. And not doing it doing it this during government hours,
the eight hours were were working.
John Greenewald: Is that what you refer to as the semi
official aspect of it? Right?
John Ramirez: The semi official came from those discussions.
Plus when I got on the green phone, I gotcha.
John Greenewald: Yeah. Which is fascinating. And I took notes
about the USS Boston and Vietnam in the Gulf of Tonkin. But are
there any other incidents that you received through the green
phone or elsewhere that stick out to you as being something
that is not very well known or known at all in the UFO field,
but something that on an official level? Or excuse me,
from your time in the CIA, that you heard about? Anything that
sticks out to you? Well, I've
John Ramirez: already talked about this and my previous
appearances about the or working group.
John Greenewald: And I want to get into that. Yeah. So that's a
perfect transition. So what exactly is this orb Working
Group?
John Ramirez: Well, let's say that before any huge program is
launched. And a program is something that requires dollars
and cents to fund it requires a facility requires contractor
support, administrative support, logistics, support, all of that,
that that's real money. Before that occurs, there's always
like, offline before that occurs, pre program, people
getting together to kind of bound the problem, like what
what are we looking at? What are we dealing with? And how do we
approach this issue? So the world working group started
when, and I can say this, because the existence of orbs
was officially disclosed. And James SLoCaT skis skinwalkers,
in the Pentagon book, but we did see orbs, much like what they
saw associated with a lot of the anecdotes from eyewitnesses in
that book, so we saw orbs, and these were,
John Greenewald: if I can interject, and I don't mean to
John, just can you give a very brief definition? I know what an
orb is. And I'm sure my does other members. Yeah, in the
context of how you're referring to it, what what is an orb?
John Ramirez: Okay, so we have structural craft, the nuts and
bolts metallic craft that people have seen throughout the history
of Philology, and then we have what appears to be balls of
energy. That's the best way I can describe it. That people
have also seen those are the orbs I'm talking about. Okay.
And so, he said, well, people have seen these all along, but
from officially some of these orbs cannot be seen. Unless you
look at a spectrum outside of light, or actually below light
infrared is being below light below red. And when that we have
these capabilities built into some of our spacecraft, and turn
them on, we are looking for, like launch detection. That's
That's it primary function, we're also looking for what's
known as change detection, we might be looking at a field that
might be used for narcotics production. And we want to know
what changes may have occurred over a period of time over that
field. And that gives them an idea of what might be going on.
So that's, that's the day job, if you will, of those sensors.
What happened was outside of that day job of doing just
normal intelligence collection, all of a sudden, they saw these
balls of light. And it wasn't like an anomaly. To sense that,
what NASA explains as dust, you know, particles or whatever,
NASA lens flare, it wasn't that. And so it was something that was
a tangible phenomenon. But not the can't be explained. And so
originally, you know, when you get something like that, you
want to filter it out. Because it's noise based on like, what
you're really looking at, you don't want any of the noise
there. So you want to, like get rid of it, from the data,
subtracted from the data, because you just want to look at
your target. Well, this kept appearing over and over. And it
wasn't over the United States, because we don't turn on the
sensors. Over the United States, the National Technical mean,
sensors are not collecting against the United States. It's
an adversary. And so over adversary airspace in space,
here comes these these anomalies, and they kept
happening to the point where, okay, now we got to pay
attention to this. We got to pay more attention to this because
this isn't something that is just a random occurrence. This
is something that is almost like a, a tangible manifestation of
something we don't understand. So let's get the working group
together. And so what
John Greenewald: year What year was this going on?
John Ramirez: The the best I can say is, if you look at
Wikipedia, and you can now search for k h 11. They give you
all the blocks, block one, block two, block three, block four,
block five, block two, in the early 90s was when the KH 11. A
optical sensor taking pictures also included an infrared
payload is the KH 11 is an electro optical sensor. I can
say that because in our role reveal that, yeah, Nick 60th
anniversary brochure. So I'm saying I'm saying it's has
electro optical capabilities. So around, the best way I can tell
you without getting the trouble is, look, look at those blocks.
And so the earliest would have been in the early 90s. But as
these capabilities improved, when I first heard about this
phenomenon occurring, it was more in the timeframe of when I
became chief of Elan about 2003 2004.
John Greenewald: And the working group
John Ramirez: are starting by 2004 2005.
John Greenewald: Gotcha. So what's the next step once a
working group convenes? And I assume but I want to clarify
that the working group would be an eighth a oficial CIA Working
Group?
John Ramirez: No, it wasn't, it was an official nga working
group. Okay. Nga was the source of the data and whoever has the
source of the data. They're in charge of the working group. So
it was NGA. I see. Okay, National Geospatial Intelligence
Agency. They they're the ones who analyze, optical and electro
optical imagery. I see. So it was their data. And so our
tasking at the CIA side, we were weapons intelligence,
nonproliferation arms control the weapons intelligence part.
The first thing we want to do is to rule out is it advanced
technology from an adversary. And since we look at advanced
technology from our adversaries, we can do that analysis. There
are people looking at the actual craft that could potentially be
this and we're looking at the sensors or packages like
countermeasures, electronic countermeasures, that could be
providing this this kind of or like, manifestation. And so what
we looked at was US platforms in the Russian inventory, that
could have some kind of capability like that. And plasma
Stealth is that type of capability. Whereas we built
faceted kind of shaped aircraft, like the F 117 Nighthawk. With
facets and with radar absorbing materials, the Russians went the
opposite way they built devices that can be hung on to some of
their aircraft and produce a plasma field. So, okay, that's,
that's our comms razor. You know, that's the simplest
explanation. Uh huh. That's what it is. But these orbs started
appearing like way beyond the highest flying Russian aircraft,
which is the MC 31. It, it flew higher than the FOXHOUND. And so
123,000 feet is its maximum ceiling, it did, like, briefly,
in a test, it usually flies between like 85 to 100,000, in
what we call wartime mode, they don't fly that all the time. But
if they need to, they can sustain some flight because it's
basically designed to shoot down a ASR 71 It would look down, the
radar is capable of looking down the missiles capable of firing
down, we call it look down, shoot down, it had that
capability for that purpose. And if you're wondering why we don't
fly, ASR 70 ones anymore? Why do we take them off the inventory?
That's one of the reasons, as well as improvements in Soviet
Air Defense, Russian air defenses. So we rule that out
completely. And so other components of the intelligence
community will bring their expertise to rule out their
areas of expertise that they have knowledge of. And once that
happens, subject matter experts, and each intelligence agency
will be called together and meet to share information that they
have gathered to rule out everything. And then it was an
opportunity for Nga, and in our role, after they checked that it
wasn't a software glitch. And it wasn't our hardware glitch on
the satellite. They brought their expertise in. And at some
point, in that working group, they were informed about more of
the history of the intelligence community and US government's
dealings with you followed you. At a very deep, classified
level, I refuse to be briefed into that. I didn't want to be
briefed into that at all. I didn't need actually to know
that. But I didn't need for them to share why they wanted to have
my engineers to go to this working group. And so my job was
to write performance appraisal reports, I just need to know
what they're doing. So I can evaluate what they're doing, and
account for their time and pay for their trips.
John Greenewald: So I've got like 12,000 questions is popped
in here in the last 90 seconds of what you were saying. So let
me first start with the involvement with the field of
ufology. Is there any type of elaboration you can offer on
that? I know, you said you weren't brief. So I got that.
But I mean, do you know what they were referring to? Are you
talking about just They're, they're, in my opinion, not
really an investigative effort, but in essence, trying to skew
the storyline during the project Bluebook era? Are you are you
talking about that or something post Bluebook and something more
sinister,
John Ramirez: nothing sinister. But we're talking about the
actual technical exploitation of the UFO craft that flew during
the classic era 50 6070s During that project Bluebook time the
data that was collected that by the government, that's what
we're talking about. And they okay, I believe they got briefed
into that
John Greenewald: data or physical objects slash craft, as
John Ramirez: far as I know, data. I don't know if they saw
physical objects. I don't know if they saw anything about crash
retrievals metamaterials, I don't know because I didn't have
access to that kind of Meishan.
John Greenewald: Really quickly, why did you turn it down with
your, with your background and personal interest? Was there a
reason that you don't mind sharing?
John Ramirez: Well, basically, you know, this wasn't my day
job. My day job was much more involved and just sending two
engineers to this. And the thing about CIA is that we don't hire
people with curiosity. You know, I mean, if you're, you're going
to get a job at CIA because you're curious about UFOs you
want to get a job there. You're not going to get a job there.
Yeah, we have just cific missions to do we have specific
jobs to accomplish. And so that was my focus. And my plate was
full with many, many other things not to mention a budget.
Gotcha. So my life was like, too much cheats. Gotcha. Excel
spreadsheets was the was my job as a branch chief. That's all I
looked at, it seems like and managing programs and leading
people, the Career Service of these people, what's my
responsibility, that I make sure that they're challenged, that
just trained that they're accomplishing the mission that
we need to accomplish? That was my focus. So just this is just
being like an interest of mine. I knew what I needed to know, to
do my job. And that's all I needed to know. Gotcha. But I
would say this, when they came back, my two engineers came
back. I used to have a little alien doll, a gray, except it
was colored green. And it was like a stuffed stuffed all that
I could bend and put it on my old 17 inch Dale CRT monitor.
Yeah, yeah, top of the line at the top of the line, and that
everyone knew I was interested in it. In in UFOs, and ETs,
right. And so when they came back, they didn't say anything.
They sounded like not a to my doll. And they basically said,
you know, everything you think about that all makes sense now.
Wow. So okay, I don't need to know more. Yeah, they didn't
tell me anymore. So that's the closest I got to knowing what
they what they knew. But
John Greenewald: so let me with with that being said, if that
was the closest you got, let me take you back to the working
group. And it sounds like you guys worked really hard on
trying to figure out, you know, is there a Soviet explanation
for this, and essentially ruled a lot of that out or all of that
out? Was there a conclusion? I mean, what were you guys leaning
towards at that point, when the intelligence and the data showed
you? It was not the Soviets? It was not this MIG it was not?
Whatever you were looking at? What was the working? Theory?
John Ramirez: Yeah, I would preface that with it was during
the Russian era, because in the early 90s, the Soviet Union
John Greenewald: have, gotcha. Sorry,
John Ramirez: I was rushing back a little too far. Um, but I
wasn't
John Greenewald: privy to Tech was probably the same. It's
fine. Yeah, I wasn't privy
John Ramirez: to any of the results of what the working
group did. I did not know, I just know, there was a working
group, it dealt with this unusual orb anomaly. I'm I knew
that it was in the 600 nanometre range, which is orange, which
kind of fits what people see themselves now. I witnesses,
orange orbs, that they were not just random specks. But they
were flying in some kind of grouping. I say formation. But
when I say formation, people think of a, you know, a V shape
or something like that. It was just flying together. Okay. At a
very fast rate coming over the the Arctic Circle region, over
the Russian landmass with intent to go somewhere, you know, it's
not like there's a scattering everywhere. There's a whole
group flying together as a group. And so that's, that's
what I knew.
John Greenewald: So you've Okay, so you found out about all of
that, but you but never, nope. Whomever shared with you this
information? Never said, John, this is what we think it is, or
no, no,
John Ramirez: no, that was a compartment, they were read into
a compartment that was created for that purpose for the working
group purpose,
John Greenewald: from what you did learn and your experience,
extensive experience with all of this through 25 years. Looking
back, what do you feel and I know it's an opinion and you're
not sharing classified info here. But if I were to just ask
you, based on your personal opinion and your intelligence on
the matter, what would you say?
John Ramirez: Well, I, I believe that these orbs are some
manifestations of the phenomenon that is not metallic craft, it
could be Okay, so with my interest in more of the esoteric
features of ufology that is more like what we call the
metaphysical side of ufology. I believe that they're like,
manifestations of higher consciousness, that they're not
like craft. They're not like, like Tic Tac, or a gimbal or go
fast. But they're like manifestations of some other
parts of the phenomenon that we don't quite fully understand.
But when you talk to experiencers, they fully
understand it. If you talk to people who have seen these orbs,
they fully understand what they're looking at that there's
some consciousness behind what they're seeing. To the point
when I saw my orb in 2020, I got a message from it, to do what
I'm doing right now that you have information The world needs
to know. You need to share this information. You need to work
with someone who's looking to, to have answers to their
questions, and I found that person. So that's my
interpretation.
John Greenewald: Who can ask who is that? No, I can't, I can't.
Under understood I wasn't sure if there was a maybe a public
program project that you were doing that you can know. But no
problem is private. Sorry. Yeah. I didn't mean to I didn't mean
to pry too much there. But so your experience, obviously was
kind of reminiscent to what the cage 11 and the NGA data that
was being shared with the CIA and that working group? Do you
feel it was the same phenomena phenomenon?
John Ramirez: Well, the orb phenomenon was more of the
electro optical variety IR previously, that the Soviet
Union, during the Soviet era, with their radar systems did
detect unusual events in the sky. And we call those the domes
of light. So that's another type of a light kind of manifestation
of the phenomenon. And I first heard about the domes of light,
not through any kind of intelligence source, but a quasi
intelligence source, the Aviation Week journal, which we
used to call aviation leak yet, because there's so much good
information in there that we actually circulated around the
office for and we put a routing slip on it to make sure we check
our names off because there was so much information out there,
that actually triggered a lot of professional investigations into
what they were reporting, and one of them was the domes of
light, which FTD knew about. And then they, the FTD wanted to
cast this as a type of Soviet ballistic missile
countermeasures that they were seeing. But these domes of light
occurred absent of any missile test. And the missile that was
most prevalent with these domes alive was the SS 20 Sable, which
was an intercontinental no intermediate range ballistic
missile IRBM, which was politically destabilizing and
militarily destabilizing during the day because they would like
stationed these Ss 20s, close to NATO. And that was its purpose.
The target was NATO. And that prompted us to then deploy the
Pershing to IRBM. So you have nuclear missiles that can land
on our targets within minutes, because they're so close. And
that was highly politically destabilizing. And so the
phenomenon probably my opinion is the phenomenon knowing that
we know now that that they're associated with like ballistic
missiles, nuclear tipped ballistic missiles, phenomenon
had an interest in the testing of the SS 20. And so when they
launch SS 20, this phenomenon were occur, which was
interpreted by FTD in the most mundane way. It's just ballistic
missile countermeasures. But how do you describe this phenomenon
being seen by people on the ground, we're not associated
with a Soviet military. They're just eyewitnesses, citizens on
the ground seeing this. So it's not like totally related to
ballistic missile testing. And that was detected by radars by
the Russian radar, the Soviet radars at the time. So in that
sense, my very first encounter with anything of high
strangeness was not these this or working group, but this
phenomenon known as the domes of light, where we actually
deployed sensors to look for these unusual types of anomalous
lights. And where we deployed that sensor was on the periphery
of the Soviet Union. Because we wanted to get a good look at as
the missiles were flying their trajectories, and re entering
the warheads were reinter. We wanted to be able to detect if
there are any of these domains of light.
John Greenewald: Let me ask you a hypothetical question and this
is more towards the orb working group versus the domains of
life. But let's, let's say and I know you don't know the
conclusion, but that but they were leading to some kind of
manifestation of a phenomenon of some kind. That was not related
to a missile launcher countermeasures or anything like
that. Is that something that either the NGA would take the
next step in trying to figure out, or in my opinion for many,
many years, and arguably decades, some of these
intelligence agencies just kind of turned a blind eye to the
more nuts and bolts of UFO phenomenon. With this, do you
think the CIA would have said, Hey, we need to figure this out
we as the CIA? Or would the NGA do that? Or do you think that
they would just say, You know what, we're gonna leave this
well enough alone, like, Who do you think would be taking the
lead on trying to then take the next step to understand it?
John Ramirez: Well, it's a working group on the product of
the working group would be a report of their best estimate,
assessment or judgment of what we detected. And that report
will go to the Director of National Intelligence. And the
director of national intelligence can then brief the
policymaker. That is the president united states and the
appointed policymakers like the Secretary of Defense. And once
that report is written, the title 50 side and for your
audience, the title 50 is the non DoD side of the intelligence
community. So it's basically CIA, and actually parts of the
NSA, which are non military. They would then just produce the
working group produce the report from a title 50 perspective of
the civilian side of all of these intelligence agencies. And
there's the report. Now, the Secretary of Defense, being
briefed on this, maybe Usdi being briefed on this. It's up
to them to decide you know what to do. And they may then take
the DoD perspective on just about everything like that it's
a threat, or could it be a threat? And if it is a threat,
or could be a threat? First of all, how do we protect our own
forces? What is the nature of this threat? What are our
vulnerabilities versus this threat? And how do we do force
protection? So that's their focus, and incomes all set? So
2004 2005 When I left for NCPC, and return in 2009, that working
group was done. My understanding was that was done like 2007,
there abouts. It was a short lived working group. It wasn't
like something that lasted years and years and years.
John Greenewald: Are you aware of that report? That they
potentially I know that that's a standard procedure that you're
going over? But in direct relation to that or working
group? Are you familiar that they created a report?
John Ramirez: I can say that a report was a product of the
working group. So there was so big there was a report? I don't
say that so classified.
John Greenewald: Is this a classified? Absolutely. It's
John Ramirez: going to be classified? Because in that
report that we use sources, the methods that were used exactly
what the sensors were able to detect
John Greenewald: classified elements. I'm talking about the
project or program or excuse me, working group, I want to make
sure I'm accurate here. But the working group as a whole, was it
a classified effort as a whole?
John Ramirez: Absolutely. It was a top secret SCI working group
with a compartment designed for that working group.
John Greenewald: And all that makes sense. Can I ask just as
myself being a layman? And not entirely sure about all of every
facet of the classified world? How is it that you're able to
talk about I know, you didn't give conclusions, and you didn't
talk about technical capabilities of you know, top
secret tech. But if the idea of the if the working group itself
was a top secret sci fi environment, help me understand
how can we talk about it?
John Ramirez: Well, John, their their levels of understanding.
And the first level of understanding is called fact of
fact of that something occurred. So the fact of is not sensitive.
Now, I mean, I learned this way back when, and I sat on it
until, like, this year. You know, when I started doing these
podcasts, and I put it together in a report for CIA's review,
that, you know, working group happened, and this is what might
have happened. And I couched it in terms that could be a
hypothetical, but CIA knew that this working group occurred
John Greenewald: and They just to clarify, because I've talked
about the DoD side on this channel before, so my audience
has seen a lot of the videos, that would be the Doppler
process, the DD Form 1910, so on and so forth, that ties into the
UAP videos. So CIA, I assume, would just have the same similar
process where you take what you are going to either publish talk
about verbally orally in a in a, like a conference or lecture,
and they approve what you can come out with is that that's
correct. Okay. So and they gave you approval to talk about this,
right, the
John Ramirez: pre publication classification review board,
stated that my presentation was unclassified and can be publicly
disseminated everything in it. And that they do not that the
fact that they consider it unclassified, they do not say
that they can endorse sure everything in it, whether it be
factual, or not factual. So it's there, they're out the way the
way they can like distance itself themselves. From anything
we CIA officers might produce, even if it's factual, they will
always say, well, we can stay say, officially, that is
factual. So that was the situation that I follow. This is
the front door situation, I just want to let everyone know, I am
not a whistleblower. I went through the front door, and I
will always go to the front door, because that's what I
signed up to do when I left CIA to protect sources and methods
over a lifetime. And so that was the process I followed, which
allows me to be speaking with you. And I let CIA know that if
there's anything I say, and you know, they're monitoring all of
my appearances, they monitor Jim semi Vance appearances on Coast
coasts, or any any appearances by former intelligence community
officers, our home offices, believe me, they're monitoring
what you say. And they know and because I told them, If there's
anything I do, or say, that crosses a line, let me know. And
I will stop. And so far, I've received no feedback about stop.
John Greenewald: If you could sum up what your intention is by
doing these types of shows and bringing this information
forward. In summary, what are you wanting to accomplish?
John Ramirez: I want to accomplish that what we all
know, as you follow just what you know, it is that the
government, even project Bluebook was a limited program
of gathering information from citizens gathering information
from citizens maybe to debunk or maybe to collect these other
incidents in their database. But there was an ongoing process
since Roswell, to try to understand what we're seeing
what we have collected, that process never stopped. And this
orb working group was just a latest part of that long,
ongoing process, to where we're not seeing metallic craft. Now
we're seeing these entities of light appearing over the earth.
And so I want people know that what your knowing what you known
as all SAP and ATEP. That wasn't when it started. We informed I
believe we informed the people who did all sappan ated, they
must have known about this working group, because they were
there were Defense Intelligence people associated with that
working group of looking at orbs. So
John Greenewald: it and that's an interesting lie. I mean,
chronologically, you're talking about it sounds like a few years
roughly, you know, the the concept of OS app, depending
upon who you believe, was kind of born in 2007. Officially, it
was, you know, towards the end of 2008 when it was contracted
out. So you feel that that's there's a direct line there
between or maybe not direct, but there's a line or connection
between the work of a or working group like this, the discovery
of that phenomenon, and then the OS app contract coming up, and
the DIA focus, you feel that there's some kind of line there.
John Ramirez: There's a lineage, there's a lineage, it's not a
direct lineage, but when title 50 got done, title 10 took it
up. Title 10 being the Department of Defense, and so
many of the same people who are in the DIA and under Title 50
under NSA in a row. They're also kind of under mostly under title
title 10. They answer to the Secretary of Defense they nod to
the DNI. We answered it a DNI, we're title 50. And people need
to realize that the Intelligence Committee isn't this big
monolith. There are different US Code laws that match that
regulate what we can do. We have to follow these laws. We follow
title 50, deal defaults, title 10. And so Lew said this
himself, this was a title 10 effort. And he always mentioned
this is a title 10 effort, because he knows that there was
a title 50 effort. And so he just doesn't say, we just DOD,
the Department of this, he says, this is a title 10 investigation
into what we saw, and they went into even more high strangeness
with Sam Walker.
John Greenewald: Exactly. And that that leads me to my next
question, because I've always been skeptical over what the
official dia desire for OSS app was versus what contractor may
have turned it into, or was he just he meaning Bigelow, Robert
Bigelow, but through Bigelow Aerospace, when he was awarded
this doing exactly what the DIA wanted, or was it skewed a bit
and ended up backfiring, hence why it was defunded, a couple
years later. I've always struggled with that, because
dia, as you mentioned, is the military side of this, they're
getting into, according to the story, the paranormal and
looking at Skinwalker Ranch and orbs go along with a long list
of other stuff, including, you know, weird creatures that they
were investigating and so on. That also was in skinwalkers, in
the Pentagon, and this is where my skepticism comes out. So
maybe you can help me out here understand, why would that be in
the purview of the DIA, I can see a couple other agencies, if
you took the DIA out and put you know, a couple other different
agencies in okay, then we could we can chat about that. But I
don't see dia So from your experience and expertise from
the icy side. Why dia?
John Ramirez: Why DIA is because the director of DIA is the
functional Mission Manager for an intelligence different
discipline known as Masson measurement and signature
intelligence. Sometimes people say signals intelligence, that's
not correct. It's meant a measurement and signature
intelligence. So they would deploy sensors that can collect
this type this type of phenomenon. They would collect
radio metric data, radiological data, infrared data, ultraviolet
data, they will look at this phenomenon with the sensor
capabilities that they can deploy. That doesn't just
collect signals like NSA, or in CIA, there's really no humans
involved, because there's no one to recruit as an as an agent to
work for us. We're not going to recruit the phenomenon Hey, why
don't you work for us and tell us what you're doing so this
that those parts of the Intelligence Committee would not
come into play. But that DIA is responsible for Masset. There is
a part of the DIA called Dia slash Delta Tango dt, and that
is the massive office at DIA. And so they have their complete
responsibility for Masset. And since this phenomenon, is
something that requires collection beyond our senses,
beyond our other types of capabilities and signals
document or open source, dia will come into play, that's why
they're there.
John Greenewald: But on US soil,
John Ramirez: do they do that because Department of Defense,
they're responsible for the national security of the United
States of America in that very tangible form. So di as
Department of Defense title 10 can operate on US soil for the
intelligence mission, they can deploy. In that sense, CIA
cannot deploy to collect intelligence on US soil. Now, if
this phenomenon occurred in Russia, or China or some other
foreign place, that's when CIA
John Greenewald: CIA could, yeah. Gotcha. Okay. And some of
this controversy, and I just want to get your input and then
we can move on some of the controversy about this is what
the public OS app objective list was And now without was public
for many years, just even prior to December 2017, even though we
never knew about OS app until the next year, but that was
public for quite some time. Zero mention about any of that. If
you worked in the top secret world, if they wanted a
paranormal research study that they would keep highly
classified. Why would they post anything in public? Why wouldn't
they either do it themselves or contract in secret?
John Ramirez: It is,
John Greenewald: do you have thoughts on on that, because
I've always been curious about what was publicly available
versus what we've been told the program really was?
John Ramirez: Well, first of all, when they hired bass, that
had to be a detail known to the public through the RFP process.
You can't just pick a company said work for us, they had to go
and follow the federal acquisition regulations on how
to hire an external contractor. And they did that. So in the
Federal Register, you have to announce the fact that there is
a contract, and you have to publish the request for proposal
in the public domain. So the requirements for such a
capability for this contract, and the requirements for the
mission and what it needs to accomplish. It would have to be
publicly known because how else can a company then leverage its
resources and its capabilities? How can they do that? Unless
they know what the government wants? So they are
John Greenewald: claiming but well, there's classified
contracts that are awarded to and you don't? And again, I'm,
I'm more asking, not telling you. But But asking, you know,
when you have a contract, like for a stealth drone, or
something like that, that and correct me if I'm wrong, they
don't put a an RFP out for that type of level of secrecy with
the technology they want to create? Or do they?
John Ramirez: Well, what, okay, so when, like, for example, when
the when the F 117 was being developed, that would be just as
part of another effort to advance. Aviation, military
aviation,
John Greenewald: right, but can't see in secret is where I'm
going. That is,
John Ramirez: well, once the program starts, it will be
classified. But we don't announce all the details, the
secret details of a program, we announced just enough to get to
be able to do the market survey, and to do the technical
evaluation of the responses coming back from these
companies. And they can be classified. But the actual
reading of the contract the the RFP process is not but to your
point. Yeah, once once the RFPs come back, they can be
classified,
John Greenewald: coming. So and I'm always fascinated by this
and how it works, because I've tried to figure it out. So I'm
glad that I have you on just simply to be able to ask you
this. But when you get into like the f1 17, I think that was
senior trend was the was the classified program name.
Obviously, they're not going to publish senior trend. But there
was an RFP for a program like that that ultimately turned into
senior trend in the F 117. There was also a half blue. It was
good to have blue, there's tastes of blue, right? SR Spark,
right? SR Spark, I think was a CIA one. But the look back,
John Ramirez: yeah, well, it if you look at remove the labels,
and the intent of that development, was to study radar
absorbing materials, and not associated with a craft, or just
giving you an example. If we're going to do something, we're not
going to say we're doing it for this purpose. Because we have
this mission and we want to target this adversary, we'll
look step back and say what technical capabilities are we
looking for, and we'll publish what we're looking for in
technical capabilities, and not link that to a specific program
until we hire the contractor with those technical technical
capabilities. Once a contractor has been hired, once they go
through the whole process of acquisition and they're awarded
the contract, then we make sure that they have the clear people
because we stipulate in our RFP what the clearance level should
be. And then if they have clear people, we can then introduce
These contractors to the program. So we don't have an RFP
for programs necessarily. We have RFPs to gather information
on what companies can do a capability. That's the best way
I can explain it. Because I used to write RFPs for CIA. And so
we're not saying that, you know, we want to we want to study this
particular target. And the Soviet Union, was saying, Well,
what capabilities are needed to bring to bear by this company in
order to do that mission? So do you have injured electrical
engineers with microwave backgrounds? Do you have, you
know, things like that? You have physicists, you have things like
that? So do you have these people that have that
background? And this in this broader field, and we pick a
company that answers all that. And then when we award the
contract, we bring them to CIA? And then you say, Okay, this is
a program you're working on.
John Greenewald: And there's a classified aspects. So just to
kind of button that, and I want to move on to the the present
day stuff. Excuse me. So the potential contractor who sees
the requirements in the public realm, they're not aware of the
the classified aspects while they apply, right? I mean,
they're not fed. He both prior to being accepted as the
contractor, they're not fed what the classified aspects are, or
are they so they go off of the public stuff you need, you know,
this type of expert, this type of expert, this type of
facility, this type of clearance, but they're not fed
the nonpublic classified portion of that contract until they are
chosen
John Ramirez: specific targets, we're not going to put that in
an RFP, we're not going to put specific specific tools that we
have that then we it's called government furnished equipment,
GFP, we're not going to publish that. We just say, yeah, there's
GFP available, which was the contractor saying, okay, they're
gonna give me information or give me tools, that they're not
stipulating things of that nature. So you're right, in the
sense that we're not going to publish the target, gotcha. A
RFP, I will also say that CIA does not need to publish any of
its RFPs. There is a cut up, carve out for CIA, that we are
not required as part of the Federal Acquisition Regulations
to actually let out RFPs in the federal register in the public.
John Greenewald: Gotcha. Okay. I think that answered my question
where I was going that with that, attributing it to aos app
is something I've talked about for quite a few years. On if the
paranormal and and UFO aspect was classified, which I can buy,
and it wouldn't be in the public announcement, which we've
established is true. How would Bigelow know to to hit the
jackpot by looking for a secret UFO program to take part of,
without knowing it was a UFO secret program, and he was the
only bidder. And I'm not trying to put you in a weird corner. So
if you don't want to comment on it, not a problem. I think that
was where I was going with it. Cuz I've never had somebody in
your position to give me that side of it. You wrote the RFPs
and stuff like that. So that's why I wanted to ask, but do you
see where I'm going with that?
John Ramirez: I do. I do see where you're going. I can't
answer for bass or Robert Bigelow, specifically, because I
wasn't part of that acquisition. But I can give you the general
case. That it's not a secret that there there is a corps of
contractors who work with the Defense Department and work with
the intelligence community and CIA. There's just a corps of
contractor companies that we go to all the time. So it's, it's
like this close knit group of competitors. And so with
Bigelow, I mean, he's done previous work at Skinwalker. So
he has a lot of knowledge from the previous work at Skinwalker.
So he has a leg up on anything that might come out as an RFP.
My understanding is that Lockheed Martin was interested
in the RFP but dropped it
John Greenewald: Yeah, there was a rumor it was reported that
they actually submitted a proposal and then that was never
officially retracted but found out not to be true. When I'd
spoken to the DIA and they said sold bitter. I'm And I triple
checked that and pressed him and said, Hey, wait a minute, you
know, and I think I even brought up Lockheed at the time. But
yeah, it was,
John Ramirez: they may have been interested. But I think a lot of
companies like Lockheed Martin, they hire people to do nothing
but contract work. Yeah, they hire armies of people who know
how to write RFPs. Yeah, and I mean, these RFPs are so specific
that I used to eliminate, we used to put in language to see
how compliant a contractor would be by stipulating the type of
paper, the weight of the paper, the font, the font used, and the
font size. And we put in every third page shall be pink, we
make sure that every third page is pink. Because if the third
page is white, we say you're not compliant. Tossed I mean, that's
how specific we can be. So these people who know how to write
this, understand the rules of the game, look for the fine
print, look for the fine print, because they will answer that
RFP that specifically and so will your specific question i
Bigelow understanding that I wasn't part of the acquisition.
Sure. He's cute in to the intelligence community. We all
know that. And he may have got wind that such an effort was
going to start and he had an RFP go, ready.
John Greenewald: Ready? Yeah, it was only up for a couple weeks.
And he was the only bidder. And yeah, and again, you know, a lot
of people make a big deal that I bring up the sweetheart deal
thing for me, it puts it into perspective of what OS app was.
But but again, those are entire shows in itself. And I
appreciate you entertaining those questions. And yeah, and
helping me understand some of that. I'm at the hour mark with
you. And I don't want to take you take up your entire day with
this. So let me kind of fast forward from the onset days,
that regardless of what was official or not, here we are in
2022. Last year, June, the UAP report was published to the
public big letdown to many people. I found some gems in it.
But obviously there was a big letdown. There are two
observations that I had, I was surprised at so many agencies
taking part and I put air quotes because we don't know how much
parts some of these took in the report is about 13 or 14, you
know, named here. I've got it on my screen. The second
observation I want to bring up to you is the CIA is absent. So
just looking at the sheet, there's the Army, the Navy, the
Air Force, so obviously the the obvious ones, but the NSA, the
NGA, the NRO, the FBI, the DIA, NOAA, FAA, mg. Nga was
duplicated twice in the report. And so on ODNI. So there's quite
a few different offices and agencies that took part but not
the CIA. What are your thoughts about this public report, and
specifically the lack of any CIA involvement, at least from what
we're told?
John Ramirez: Well, the department knew that the Senate
Select Committee on Intelligence had queued up language for the
intelligence Authorization Act, FY 21, about this UAP study, the
department knew that ahead of time. And in order to get ahead
of the narrative. The Department announced that from its
understanding, in June, when the IAEA language became public, the
department got ahead of the narrative, and said, Well, we're
not going to wait for this IAEA to be signed, because then
Congress would drive US Congress would be in charge, we're going
to get ahead of the narrative, and create this UAP Task Force
and announce it and put the Navy in charge. And so then we can
then stipulate what the scope of this investigation is going to
be not Congress. And so that's what happened. In my opinion.
Now, you might talk to other analysts who may disagree with
that. But I've seen that happen before, where the government
will get ahead of the narrative by saying, oh, we'll do it.
We'll do it. Don't legislate it. You can put the language in the
legislation. But don't worry, you'll get what you need. So
that's what the department did, I believe, to get ahead of the
narrative. So if you look at the announcement in August, and you
look at the report release in late June, they had more than
180 days to do this. They had a better part of a full year to do
this, because they wanted to control the narrative. And so I
believe that's what happened.
John Greenewald: It looks like they only took like three hours
to put it together, though.
John Ramirez: Let me I'll address that. CIA was not
involved because This effort was Department of Defense title 10.
CIA is not part of title 10, the Secretary defense cannot order
the CIA to do anything, or participate in anything. If
anything, it's going to be a request to the director of CIA,
you know, we invite you to this to this report. They did not do
that, because the department wanted to limit the scope of the
report to just what was publicly released in 2017. That is,
November, I think it was 1227 2000 for the first tic tac
and the Nimitz battle group. Mm hmm. That's the start. And we're
gonna end it like, sometime in 2021. Yeah, that's it. That's
the scope of the report. We don't want CIA to bring in its
historical knowledge of everything to happen since
Roswell. That's not going to be part of the report. We want to
just it the military.
John Greenewald: So you think it was strategic to not include
CIA, not just because it was a limitation of SecDef? And his,
you know, mandate? Because I mean, the FAA is in their SEC,
that doesn't have any, you know, exactly.
John Ramirez: That's a good point. Because, you know, if
they added CIA, Will, CIA wasn't invited. And CIA had no way of
legally inserting itself into the report. It was Secretary
defense title 10. So
John Greenewald: can I ask, do you know, for 100% fact that
they weren't
John Ramirez: invited? They were not invited?
John Greenewald: They were no, put your call in? I'm only
asking because I don't know. But so you don't think there was a
any type of requests? And it was the CIA that said, hey, no, I
don't want we're not SecDef got no jurisdiction over us. So
we're not going to contribute. So you know, for a fact that
there was never a line extended to CIA.
John Ramirez: I can't reveal why I know that. Okay. I do know
that they were not formally invited to participate in the
Navy UAP Task Force at all.
John Greenewald: Now about the the new effort the aeoi, MSG
UAP, tf is going away. aeoi MSG is coming aboard. Do you feel
that there will be coordination there? Or do you think CIA still
going to be
John Ramirez: the law states that needs to be coordination
between the Secretary of Defense in coordination with the
Director of National Intelligence. And so that's a
way for CIA to participate in a OSI MSG. And also, there is the
intelligence Authorization Act, FY 22, where I'm not sure where
that went, but there was language in there that was
somewhat different. The NDAA tends to say, Okay, secretary of
defense, you need to have the coordination of DNI to do this
group aeoi MSG. But in the IAEA, its tells the DNI Okay, April
Haynes, you need to get the cooperation of the Department of
Defense, the Secretary of Defense to do this legislation
stipulated program. So on the, on the NDA side, It's 180 day
interval report. On the ISI, it's a 90 day interval report.
So it's like two different pieces of legislation. And I
don't know if the IA language for UAPs is still in there. It's
much shorter. The NDA is much broader, much in depth, and so
I'm not sure what happened to it. But there's two pieces of
legislation. And I don't know how they're going to resolve
who's in charge, because on the Senate side, IAEA, it's the DNI
getting the cooperation, Secretary of Defense on the NDAA
side, which came out of the House Armed Services Committee.
It is then the or, yeah, I think I'm right. It's the it's the
cooperation of DNI underneath the Secretary of Defense.
John Greenewald: Yeah, I'm glad it's not confusing at all, John,
because,
John Ramirez: well, I mean, I'm upset at the aeoi. The MSG part.
Yeah. Because that's management synchronization. Me implies.
Okay, department. Let's get our story straight of what we tell
Congress. Why is it called management, synchronization?
Management synchronizing? What? Yeah, you know, object. Airborne
object identification, that sounds great, but when you
manage the identification, and synchronized in a vacation,
according to what the department wants, that tends to tell me
that we're not going to get it A lot of what we really want,
John Greenewald: you know, I'm at the tail end of the time that
I have with you, and I really appreciate your time. If I can
just ask you one one last question with your time in the
in the CIA and, and it sounds like you've had a lot of
knowledge over the years that now you're being able to, to
come out with, do you have any regrets over the last, you know,
25 years with your career of the CIA or, or, you know, even post
retirement, anything that you look back and wanted to do
different with your time?
John Ramirez: Well, knowing that the working group started in
around late 2004, and went through 2005, I was chief of the
Elan Analysis Branch. My regret was not hiring Eric W. Davis,
when he applied for a job at CIA. And that was my deepest
regret, knowing what his capabilities are, and knowing
participation in the study of this phenomenon. I wish I would
have hired him, because I would have sent him to the working
group.
John Greenewald: So Dr. Eric Davis had applied for the CIA in
your, in the 11th. To the major I have it, electronic
intelligence analysis branch,
John Ramirez: he actually apply for broader Japp job category
known as St. W. That's scientific, technical and
weapons. And so that is usually the place where scientists,
physicists, chemists, biologists, you name it,
electrical engineers, mechanical engineers, that's the job
category that they would check off when they apply for job. So
he was St. W. And so his resume in his application package, went
to hiring advisors in the weapons intelligence
nonproliferation Arms Control Center, my parent office. So
it's logical that it went to knowing the structure of wind
pack, it would have gone to the missile and space group, and
particularly in the space group, because of his background, and
it also perhaps, and the missile group, missile part of the MSG.
And I believe he had interviews because I learned about his
application from my colleague, branch chief, who was chief of
mass sent in CIA. And he interviewed Eric W. Davis, after
he came downstairs and escorted downstairs to this signature.
Branch. And he was interviewed there.
John Greenewald: It have you I'm just curious, have you talked
about that before? publicly?
John Ramirez: No, no. But if you ask me, like, what's my deepest
regret? I deeply regret that, because he would have just been
saying individual talk to and because I looked at his it's
more than a resume is more like a CV. I mean, he listed a lot of
detail. And it's an a CV, and knowing his background. I wish I
would have hired them. In hindsight, knowing that there
was a OHRP Working Group starting up. Yeah. But the
signature, Branch Chief signatures Branch Chief had it
me his application package for me to review. And I noticed that
you know, this is a brilliant guy. I mean, no doubt about it.
He is brilliant. Beyond Belief, I mean, outstanding guy. And I
looked at the projects he worked for, for the Air Force Research
Lab. I read his paper, CIA has a requirement to submit writing
samples, particularly in the director of intelligence, it's
all about writing. Yeah. And He submitted his paper on
teleportation physics, which I read. And it was data 2004. And
I remember oh, this is a recent paper, because it was the same
calendar year later, after we published that paper for AF
AFRL. But he, he was in the building on escorted, escorted,
he had to have an escort. And that means that he did not have
a top secret SCI clearance that he passed to us. He didn't pass
clearances to us to get a different kind of badge instead
of a visitor's badge that required an escort. Okay, all
times even going to the bathroom. He he that's the batch
he had, and he did not have the no escort required batch. Which
means that you passed your clearances at the SEI level.
John Greenewald: Do you remember what year this was? If I may ask
2004
John Ramirez: Because when I looked at his paper,
teleportation physics, I remarked Oh, this is a very
recent paper. He just he just
John Greenewald: published it. So that means he didn't have any
clearance or didn't have a top secret. He didn't have a top
John Ramirez: secret SCI clearance when he Okay. And when
to CIA for those interviews?
John Greenewald: I have to if you don't mind, can I take you
for a couple more minutes? Are you okay? So with that, the two
questions I have and one you may not be able to answer, but very
quickly was he hired but I know you said you didn't hire him,
but did somebody else at CIA.
John Ramirez: My partner Webpack did not hire the signature
branch, the event branch. We didn't hire him. And he wasn't.
I did not see him in Webpack spaces. And the places that I
should see him at the missile and space group Park. He wasn't
in there. So not to say that somebody might have seen his his
application package and may say, Hey, this is a great guy that we
can consult, bring him over here. Yeah, gotcha. Yeah, but
you guys die. But we, we didn't we didn't hire him as a blue
badge employee, not to say that he may have, he may have
attracted enough interest to be introduced to other people in
the IC saying, Hey, this guy, you know, he's very interesting.
We didn't hire him as a blue badge staffer, but you might be
interested in it. I don't know if he served as in a
consultative capacity at all. As an independent contractor. I
don't have that knowledge. I do know he was escorted because my
engineer escorted him down the hall to a snack stand. And CIA
officers are no, it's Ron and Sally snacks down on the ground
floor where my branch was located. Yeah, Ron and Sally.
Ron was blind. And he was very affectionately liked by all CIA
officers who served during when they had snacks. So that
validates, okay. Yeah, Ron and Sally snacks and my, my engineer
that I did send it off, or working group, one of them was
escorting him. And he was introduced to a colleague of
mine, and another branch, who I witness the fact that oh, yeah,
he just had a visitor's badge.
John Greenewald: Wow. So this was 2004. He said, and yeah, I
always like to put everything in chronological order, because
that's the best way to put together a puzzle. But I, I,
you're familiar with the Eric Davis, Thomas Wilson notes,
whatever you want to call them. I've done quite a few different
videos on it. I'm a huge skeptic when it comes to these notes.
But since you have this kind of knowledge around the timeframe,
it was allegedly October of 2002, when Eric Davis met with
allegedly Admiral Thomas Wilson and Wilson, as a J. Two decided
to spill all these, you know, highly classified secrets in Las
Vegas. Based on what you've seen, do you have an opinion on
those notes? And if he's not cleared? Why would Wilson and
then I really want to ask the question, why would Wilson do
that?
John Ramirez: Well, Eric Davis was a member of an organization.
I'm a member of the association, former intelligence officers.
And you don't have to be an intelligence officer to be a
member of the AFI Oh, you just have to be a person who has
worked with intelligence, or worked with a military
intelligence side. And so he knew people who were in the Las
Vegas chapter because he was a member. And the last Vegas
chapter members about vouched for Eric Davis to Admiral
Wilson. So that was one of the ways that Admiral Wilson you
that Eric gave us was real deal in terms of, you know, the fact
that he is associated in some way with the intelligence
community or with military,
John Greenewald: according to the story or you have knowledge
of that. He's a member of the AFI. Oh, yeah. No, no, I
understand that I'm talking about the vouching to Admiral
Wilson. Is that a story you've heard? Or you have direct
knowledge? No,
John Ramirez: that's, that's based on a good point that you
have John, that was based on reading the notes.
John Greenewald: Oh, okay. I got I got so so we're going out.
Gotcha.
John Ramirez: The other thing that I have knowledge of is that
E and G is the we call the operations operations and
maintenance contractor for area 51. They run the security, they
provide all of the services, just the logistical support of
running that facility. And it may provide some analytics
support as well. That's interesting that I went to E and
G. When I was at a facility next to area 51. I went to the DOE
facility to get batched Mm hmm. So I was surprised that occurred
an E Geez. Parking lot. According to the notes, I didn't
know why that would be but maybe Mr. Wilson had some business
there to do. Do you feel
John Greenewald: that happened? Just out of curiosity based on?
John Ramirez: Well, as you know, I say embrace widely hold
lightly. And since I don't have any and knowledge, I hold that
lightly. But I embraced it widely that it's possible that
could have occurred. What I don't believe occurred was
Admiral Wilson saw that memorandum allegedly from the
NRO and said, by golly, I need to get to the bottom of this.
That is complete nonsense.
John Greenewald: I did a pretty big breakdown of that, the that
memo and and how that anchored the whole story. And that that,
to me is one of the biggest tells, in my opinion. Again,
this is just my opinion on why there's not a whole lot of truth
to this, because the entire story hinges on that memo. And
in my opinion, the memos bunk, you brought up the memo, if
you're familiar with a Do you feel that the memo is bunk yet
is completely bunk? So you So you agree that that memo was
just
John Ramirez: that wasn't the that was an impetus for Admiral
Wilson to
John Greenewald: talk, but according to the notes, it was,
and according to Greer, it was because there was. Yeah, I mean,
that's the legend anyway. And that's, that's the story. So for
me, it falls apart from there. But again, going back to what
you feel, I mean, do you feel there's any truth to that story?
John Ramirez: I would give some possibility that Eric Davis was
known to Admiral Wilson in some capacity. That's me being very
generous. I don't think they were like 100% complete
strangers. I don't think Admiral Wilson would look at our air
gave us it Who is this guy? Because Eric Davis worked
closely with the Air Force Research Lab. And so I would
imagine that someone in the capacity of j to the joint
chiefs of staff would know about the work of the AF RL. And so in
that capacity, there might be some linkage there. But to say
that emerald Wilson wanted to speak with Eric Davis because he
saw this memorandum. Admiral Wilson was look at that and no,
it was completely faked. Yeah, I was eland and it listed eland
What is it Elan ops. There's no such thing as Elan ops. I was
eland I know people at NSA eland. I know the Elan community
threw out the military, military intelligence side and the
civilian icy side. There's no such thing as eland offs or you
know all these other they put us address fees in the format was
the complete wrong. Central Security Service is the uniform
cryptologic service elements at NSA. They're the people wearing
uniforms, members of the military who work at NSA in the
second field, in our role in our roles. organization chart would
not have central security services there. Yeah. And in a
row is not part of the Air Force folks. Yeah. You know, there's
John Greenewald: a lot of problems. I mean, so yeah, a lot
of problems.
John Ramirez: And plus all of the units that are listed down,
I have a list of where every unit was stationed. And you
know, I find it strange that one of the wings fighter wings was
stationed at Tinker Air Force Base in Oklahoma. And so why
would you know, this, the entire intent was of the memo was, oh,
you know, we found out that these UFO researchers are going
to be at the little alien N and Rachel LaMotta. And we want to
shut down all operations. Right? And they listed like some of
these units in the Air Force. They're real units, somebody did
their homework, but they just pick and chose pick and choose,
like, cafeteria style, or what sounds good. You know, what,
what can we find that may have had some associated area 51?
Just throw it in the report. So I mean, I have a lot of problems
with that mission operations. Moc, by the way stands for
Mission Operations Center. That's what I stand for. And a
note like that it was legitimate. We're not going to
the LCS of these organizations, or these fighter wings, every
every unit involved in intelligence would have a SSL,
every Pentagon unit, every department of defense unit will
have an SSL, a special security office, and that's the
recipient. And for the top part, it wouldn't go to eland Mo. Even
UPS Yeah, it would have said NSA s to SSL.
John Greenewald: Yeah, it was, it was definitely a mess. Let me
the final question. Bottom line real quick, beyond the memo,
because then the biggest supporters of this story, have
kind of dismissed my critique of the memo saying, Oh, well, then
the memo is not a big deal anymore to the story, even
though it's been bantered about since day one. But now we take
that out and it's like, oh, well, it's not a big deal. So
let's take the memo out of the equation. You look at the notes,
you look at the idea and concept that Wilson would would spill
the secrets. I know you said that it's a possibility that he
would know him and or know of him, right, with your experience
being top secret sei cleared working for the CIA. And, again,
this bio is amazing. So it kind of speaks for itself with your
intelligence, background and clearances. Do you see that
happening. But with a j two
John Ramirez: with a J. Two, at his position in the Joint Chiefs
of Staff, the possibility that he may not be aware of the
programmatic details, I find that to be credible. But he
would know the fact of that they might be an effort to reverse
engineer some of these crap. So that's one level, but to know
where it's being done, to know how much money is being placed
in these programs, to know like results of these programs to
actually go to the these these facilities and see these craft
that go either way, depending on how sensitive that program
really is, and what I can bring from personal experience that I
was involved in a controlled access program at CIA. And I had
the biggest list for that program. And as the program was
winding down, I was given the biggest list, I was made the
control officer for the program. With a job I did not relish and
I got rid of as fast as I could. But I was given a bucket list.
And on the bucket list were the names, birth dates and social
security numbers of the current president and former presidents.
So I know that you know, that bucket list is everything. And
but you know, I didn't see this program was something that James
McCaskey would have interested because it was part of his job
to look at ballistic missiles and ballistic missile defense.
So we were collecting at a covert facility, this data, and
I did not see any very many dia people on it. In fact, the DIA
people would have been at missile and space Intelligence
Center in Huntsville, Alabama. And they were not on it. In
fact, Neysa Air National Air and Space Intelligence Center, they
were not on it. It was just CIA, State Department because we need
an entry into that country. And the President, national security
adviser, Secretary of Defense was on it. Secretary of State at
that level. But I didn't see like Joint Chiefs of Staff. I
saw Secretary of the Air Force. But I didn't see Secretary of
the Navy
John Greenewald: and the former president, I assume was the they
were being read through the Presidential Daily briefs, which
they still get off of that
John Ramirez: program. After they leave office.
John Greenewald: Yeah, you were saying former? Were you
referencing president at the time but former right. Yeah, I
gotcha.
John Ramirez: Okay. Biggest list included everyone who has ever
read into the program? Gotcha. Okay. So you know, I saw
Secretary of State current Secretary of State former
anybody was read into the program and I short bigger
lists, my name is on it. Gotcha. With my Social Security
birthday,
John Greenewald: what was the program name? John.
John Ramirez: I can say this now because it didn't get redacted.
Okay, I can't say the program name. But the Central
Intelligence Agency in the People's Liberation Army of the
People's Republic of China had an intelligence sharing
agreement, to the point where the CIA built SIGINT collection
facilities in China and trained Chinese officers on how to
operate our equipment to collect against Soviet and then later
Russian ballistic missile tests. So we were sitting side by side
with our counterparts in Chinese intelligence, we provided them
with a lot of intelligence that you as an American system now
can't see. But there are folks in China, our erstwhile
adversary that saw this intelligence where we couldn't
even share it with our own American people. Yeah. So
that's, that's how like some of these programs get so deep that
very few people can be apprised of it. And even people who would
have an equity in analyzing that data, were never given that
data. And a say had it in a say was apprised of it because they
are the sikat mission mission manager and the functional
Mission Manager for second is Director of NSA turns up, so in
a say was read into it. And when I went out there to travel to be
Chief of Operations at one of the sites that we built, my
counterpart was NSA. But he didn't go us NSA, he went to
CIA, he had to leave CIA, NSA temporarily, and get bashed,
you're now in CIA, go out there, do your thing, and then come
back. And then we'll make use NSA again, also kind of like,
can't share too many operational details. But those are the kinds
of things that we have to do, because. But I didn't see a lot
of Dia people on it. So using that, as an extension, it's
conceivable that a program, they may have fact of knowledge that
we're exploiting these vehicles, alien reproduction vehicles, or
whatever you want to call them. The fact of is one thing, but
knowledge of the programmatics the funding the logistics,
that's another whole nother level. And in our program, we
use trees. So if you are briefed on a certain tree, you know, so
much, if you brief on another tree, you know, so much more. We
had a whole bunch of trees. So you know, if if you owe your
brief that the Elm level, the old tree level, or you know,
this much, I need to brief you at the oak tree level, you know,
it's, that's the kind of thing you know, so. So that was not
redacted at all. And I was surprised that CIA, let me say
that we had our intelligence relationship with pizza pub with
China.
John Greenewald: Yeah, I was not expecting that when you started
talking about that. So I'm surprised. John, I can talk to
you all day, I hope that you enjoyed your experience here.
And, and I really do appreciate on behalf of my audience, your
time just coming aboard and fielding all these questions.
And let me pick your brain here for the last 90 minutes or so.
So thank you for that. And I hope you'll come back, because
it sounds like we would have quite a few more things to talk
about.
John Ramirez: Thank you, John. And you actually, you helped us
kind of close the loop on our very first meeting together. And
I think that's one of the charming stories of my time at
CIA is that I actually met you. And now I'm meeting you in
providing and sharing some of my experiences at CIA when I
couldn't do that when I first met you. Yeah, I'm happy to
appear again with you. Thank you.
John Greenewald: Yeah. And I appreciate that. And thank you
all for listening and watching. Make sure if you are on Youtube,
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that five star Mark is what we shoot for. Thank you again,
John. Thank you all for listening and watching. This is
John Greenewald, Jr signing off, and we'll see you next time.