John Greenewald: For the past few years, the world has heard
about America's involvement with UFOs. And how even today, the
United States is studying the phenomena to finally figure out
what is haunting US military aviators. But the US is not
alone and being confronted by unidentified flying objects. Its
neighbor to the north Canada has encountered them for decades.
And although the Black Vault has received a small sampling of
those reports in the past from the Canadian government, my
guest today has now taken it to a whole new level
Daniel Otis: when something's moving faster than any fighter
jet they've ever seen. And then it makes a right angle turn.
Like what is that
John Greenewald: Daniel Otis, a Toronto based journalist who has
written for more than two dozen publications over the past
decade, has access more than 20 years of Canadian UFO
encounters, and released them into the public domain for the
first time ever. Daniel is about to step into the vault to break
down the most important discoveries. 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 making this your podcast or your live stream of
choice. I'm your host, John Greenwald, Jr, owner and founder
and creator of the black vault calm and factor. Looking at the
whole team. I do everything over here. So forgive me if I don't
get videos up as much as I want. But I'm excited about today's
show. I am inviting. Let me get him in here. Canadian journalist
Daniel Otis who just published a great article that has dissected
20 years of UFO reports from Canada. Daniel, thank you so
much for taking the time out of your day. I know you've done
some interviews already about this, but taking some time to
share it with my audience.
Daniel Otis: John, thanks so much for having me. I'm a fan of
the show. And it's an honor to be on. Well, it's
John Greenewald: an honor to have you here and my kudos to
you. You have been covering the UFO topic. You're obviously an
accomplished journalist, you've done extensive work over the
last decade, you've been covering the UFO topic, and
correct me if I'm wrong, but from April of 2020 To date, or
2021. Now I'm messing up the year. What was it 2020 or 2021,
Daniel Otis: from April 2021 was when my story on the subject was
published. And I guess my first Canadian FOIA request went out
in February of
John Greenewald: 2021 2021. COVID has messed up my brain so
everything just kind of mashes together. So 2020 2021 I see is
the same year regardless, though, uh, you know, a long
enough time to really dive into the topic. You've done some
excellent work already. And and, you know, I think this is
arguably your best work in triumph at this point, because
you've brought out 20 years worth of UFO UAP reports from
the Canadian government. And let's just kind of start there.
I mean, what exactly was the headline that you just put out
there through vice? And what exactly did you find?
Daniel Otis: Yeah, so through Canada's Freedom of Information
System, which we call, they're called Access to Information
requests here, I was able to obtain 20 years of UFO reports
that were filed with Transport Canada, Transport Canada is a
federal government department, similar to I guess, the
Department of Transportation in the United States. And they
basically regulate aviation, as part of their operations. They,
they maintain something called caters, which is an online
aviation Incident Database, where incidents you know, big
and small get entered. You know, a bird hits a plane mechanical
failure, and drunken, unruly passengers. And, you know, so
called UFO sightings get factored into that. So what I
wanted to do, you know, there are some public facing reports
from Transport Canada, but what I wanted to do is try to get
more of the source data, whenever these reports come in.
The first point of contact are air traffic controllers, if it's
an aviation report, and in Canada, all air traffic control
is operated by a private company called nav Canada, I believe in
the United States. That's all fulfilled by the FAA, which is
a, you know, a federal administration that's not a
private company. So you can't actually, you know, sit write a
FOIA request to NAV Canada itself, but what I was trying to
do is targeting to target their community And the reports that
they were sending to Transport Canada about these aviation
incidents. In addition to that, you know, by filing these
requests, we also got reports in from military personnel, police
officers, a lot of civilians, and the you know, the release
totaled about almost 300 pages, 290 pages to be exact. It was
came in through two separate information requests. And
there's about 500 reports in there. Some of them, you know,
are drone sightings, balloon sightings, etc. But then there's
a whole bunch that are, you know, we're unusual lights and
objects behaving sometimes in odd ways, reported by, for the
most part, professional airline pilots.
John Greenewald: So with your coverage before and your time
getting into the UFO phenomena, I use plural because I think
there's multiple facets to this. Were you surprised at what you
got? Were you? Were you expecting it? Or were you just
completely surprised?
Daniel Otis: I think I was expecting it. Because I had
found many of the reports contained in the release, I had
found by looking through transport Canada's public facing
aviation Incident Database. But there were reports that came in
that I'd never seen before. Probably the single longest
report in the release, it's about four pages long and
details, a pair of civilian seeing something over the
Atlantic Ocean, reporting that and then Canadian Air Force
officials checking NORAD radar, and you know, picking up
something at, you know, the exact time and location these
people were calling it in. So, you know, the reports like that,
that were new to me, I think overall, it was expected. I
think what wasn't expected it was how much of it was retained.
back about a year ago was the first time I filed requests for
this information. And Transport Canada got back to me and said
that those records were unavailable, go try defense, you
know, so for me, it was just a matter of doing a little more
homework and asking the questions in different ways, and
targeting more specific departments. In this case, I
targeted the team that's responsible for putting together
the online aviation database that I mentioned. And in
addition to that, I also targeted the aviation operations
center at Transport Canada. So they're the sort of frontline
aviation emergency staff, and that's where from them, that's
where, you know, some of the reports I've never seen before
came in, because that particular department was also getting
communications instructions for reporting vital intelligence
sightings or service reports. That department and Transport
Canada was getting these UFO reports, right, from the
Canadian military, you know, things with the Air Force
emblems, things like that. So a lot of that was new to me. So it
was a mixed bag to answer your question, some some things. For
the most part, it was expected, but there were a few surprises
in there for me as well.
John Greenewald: One thing I didn't point out, yeah, but I
want to point out is that you're not a quote unquote, UFO
journalist, you're a journalist who covers all sorts of topics.
UFOs just happens to be something you've covered quite a
few times now. But with all that experience, covering all the
things that you have going to when they told you that material
was unavailable. Did you feel that was? Are you kind of
hinting that the cover the Canadian government was covering
this up or attempting to shield you from the truth? Or was it
just a simple, you needed to learn the ropes of where things
were?
Daniel Otis: I think it was a ladder. You know, Transport
Canada as a whole tends to be very dismissive of the subject,
you know, in their statements to me, they, they're just very
dismissive about any of this. But I think it was, you know,
just not asking the right question and the right way, an
important lesson in journalism is, don't take no for an answer.
And don't be afraid of asking the same question again, and
again, and again, because every time you ask, it might get a
different answer. And I think the same holds very true for
when you're operating in the Freedom of Information world, I
think you can attest to that. You know, you can put two
differently worded requests out there and different things come
back.
John Greenewald: Absolutely. And it's a good mindset to have so
my sincere compliments because a lot of times people will hear
that No, turn around, and then just go okay, that thanks, and
then just move on. And so kudos for not doing that. So, if I can
before we dive into the documents, when you first I want
to take you back a little bit now before this, when you first
started covering the UFO topic, has your mind changed at all on
the topic?
Daniel Otis: Um, that's kind of a loaded question, John. Yeah.
John Greenewald: That's what I'm about here at inside the black
vault.
Daniel Otis: I think if anything, I'm just more open
minded than ever. I think as you said, referring to this in the
plural is probably necessary necessary. There's, you know,
1000 people seeing 1000 different things, very likely.
But I think when I first dove into it, I was finding some, you
know, unusual contemporary reports. But for me, when I
started looking back into the historical archives of Canada,
you know, and looking at reports from the 50s and 60s, that's
when my you know, something really clicked for me that we
might, at least certain reports might be dealing with something
that, you know, science hasn't explained yet. You know, for
example, in an earlier story, I did, I was documenting 70 years
worth of UFO sightings by Canadian military personnel and
I Canadian military bases. One of those bases CFB, North Bay,
which is in Ontario, the province I'm and they had a kind
of reports from both 2007 and from 1952. And the one from 55
years earlier was genuinely the more unusual of the one that
involves something moving in a kind of erratic way. And you
know, these were both cases with multiple witnesses, etc. And I
think for me was seeing that kind of historical continuity by
delving further in time with my research, that it kind of really
opened my mind up to possibilities of what people
could be seeing.
John Greenewald: You said, and I think it was attributed to
Transport Canada that they're pretty dismissive of Transport
Canada, you were talking about, right? Yeah, sure that they're
pretty dismissive of the UFO topic, is the Canadian
government and then equally the Department of National Defense?
Are they all dismissive? Do you feel? Or do you feel that some
are more open to the phenomena than others?
Daniel Otis: I would say our Department of Defense isn't
dismissive at all. In their statements, to me, they
acknowledge that sightings like this occur that are of you know,
that are unexplained objects, phenomenon, etc. They are, you
know, they acknowledge the reality of that, but in their
eyes, it's not a defense issue. So that's why, you know, in
Canada, there are pretty robust mechanisms for how these things
are documented. But nothing is really done with those reports
themselves once they come in from pilots and soldiers and
police officers, etc. Yeah, so I believe our defense department
is not dismissive at all. And they don't see it as a defensive
as a defense in a national security issue. And frankly, I
think that's a good stance for them to have. Because, you know,
the minute they start seeing this as a defense issue in
Canada, then all the type of reports I'm you know, able to
pool suddenly become inaccessible from the FOIA
process on national security grounds. So, you know, there's a
lot of people clamoring in Canada, oh, you know, our
military needs to be investigating this just the way
the US does. That's not something I want to see happen,
because that means, you know, the tap of data is just going to
completely run dry. My hope is that if the Canadian
government's do want to have does want to have a more active
participation in the subject, that they would do so and, you
know, from a more scientific perspective,
John Greenewald: if you juxtapose that position where
it's not a, as you said, they don't feel it's a defense issue.
juxtapose that with America, who says it absolutely is, and and a
potential threat, and they talk about that threat. Why do you
think that there's that completely different stance
between two neighboring countries about a phenomena that
obviously is plaguing both sides, but one sees that as a
not a national security threat or defense issue? The other one
now, after all these years is finally saying, yes, it is. We
have to figure this out, investigate it, they have Task
Force, the task forces groups and everything. And they they do
have that trout of secrecy. Why do you think there's such a
difference?
Daniel Otis: Actually, I just want to clarify one thing before
I answer that question. In statements to me, the Canadian
military has said that they do not investigate the these types
of sightings outside the context of, you know, threats, credible
threats, search and rescue operations, you know, things of
that nature. And there have been cases, for example, there was a
case where somebody reported something going into the ocean,
and that they sent search and rescue helicopters to inspect
there. There have been cases where things have been detected
on NORAD radar, and they have deployed Air Force assets to
investigate. You know, it's not like they're just dismissing
anything that's remotely UFO, like if they think there's
something worth, you know, clinging on to and that does
fall within their purview. They will deploy assets. But you
know, you also have to understand the Canadian military
and the US military are two very, very different
organizations. You know, that Canada's military is relatively
small, you know, we don't invest a large amount of our GDP into
the armed forces or armed forces or using you know, old equipment
Some of the CF 18 fighter jets that were flying are, you know,
the same age if not older than me. And those, you know, that's
those are our most contemporary, you know, fighter jets, it's
just a different kind of thing. You know, it's a military that's
operating on shoestring budgets. You know, they don't have the
money to sort of, you know, pump, like, unlike the US, you
can't just suddenly, you know, come up with millions of dollars
of black money to
John Greenewald: just throw it out there.
Daniel Otis: It just, it just, it just doesn't work like that
in Canada. You know, the Canadian military when it's
deployed. You know, it's usually limited deployments. There was a
presence in Afghanistan, for example, you know, we're
deploying to Eastern Europe right now. But it's a small army
that isn't trying to be on the cutting edge of technology, the
way the US is, you know, we're buying our technologies, often
from other countries when it comes to military hardware. So
in your interest, there is some domestic research and
development like, don't get me wrong, but it's just, it's just
a different kind of machine.
John Greenewald: I gotcha. And in your track to unravel all of
this, I assume Canada has some type of procedure to either
document or if there is a potential threat to go out, did
you find those procedures? Are they pretty black and white?
Daniel Otis: So that stuff they don't release to me, right?
Because when it comes to, you know, what the responses are to
credible threats, then that sort of information can be withheld,
you know, on national security grounds from the Freedom of
Information process. That being said, one can read between the
lines. So for example, there was a case that was covered, not in
this story, my one previous, and it involves NORAD and the
Canadian Air Force detecting something moving pretty quickly
towards North America, from the direction of Greenland. In that
case, Air Force assets were deployed of CF 18, fighter jets,
they weren't able to find anything. And a report I found
later blames it on faulty Raider equipments and Labrador, which
is Canada's North Atlantic coast. So you know, that in that
case, for example, I wasn't it doesn't say CFA teams were
deployed. It says that, you know, there was some code word
and then the code letters for the Air Force base that it was
launched from, I think it was YPG Bagotville, the CFB
Bagotville, which is an Air Force base in Quebec, you know,
and I just did the research, the only aircraft that are there
that could be deployed that far, were the CF 18, fighter jets,
which, you know, then I asked him, they could neither confirm
or deny all of this stories just meant to illustrate that when it
comes to how they respond to credible threats, you know,
there's documents like that, that sort of spelled it out, but
you have to do a lot of digging in between the lines and, you
know, break down all the acronyms and code words to sort
of get a sense. But you know, the full picture wasn't
presented to me in those documents. There were still
plenty of redactions. But I was able to glean enough to tell
that story. Which, you know, they confirmed as being true
that all that happened that day.
John Greenewald: Yeah, the acronyms are always fun to to
try and unravel. That's a puzzle and mystery all in itself, but
away from then what what could obviously be a defense threat of
an incoming ICBM or something else in a situation like that?
Were there any other types of procedures that you were able to
find, with, let's say, a commercial pilot who's just
flying around and see something out of his, you know, right side
or something? And it's not necessarily like a, you know, an
incoming missile or something like that? Were there more
commercial guidelines for them to report? Are those accessible?
Daniel Otis: 100% Absolutely. And this is something I know you
know, personally about these. These procedures are called
service procedures. See, IR vi S stands for communications
instructions for reporting vital intelligence sightings,
John Greenewald: so that three times fast.
Daniel Otis: So this, this was first developed during the early
part of the Cold War by the United States. I think I'm
probably reading things that you've written because this is
where I learned
John Greenewald: about this. It's all good. It's about you.
Don't worry. I learned
Daniel Otis: I first learned about these on the black fault.
True story. Developed in the United States quickly adopted by
Canada as a Cold War era threat detecting mechanism. You see a
missile file a service report, you see something that looks
like a foreign warship, file a service report, you see, quote
an unidentified flying object file the Service report. So this
mechanism has been adapted by both the Canadian Air Force and
nav Canada, the private company that operates Canadian air
traffic control. So these procedures, you know, many, many
decades later are alive and well in Canada. And in both the Air
Force and the civilian air traffic control iterations of
these procedures, they both explicitly explicitly say that
Unidentified Flying Objects ought to be reported. And when
those objects are reported, it serves as a sort of flurry of
notifications and reporting that involves the Canadian Air Force
as well as NORAD affiliated squadrons within the Air Force.
It also involves Transport Canada, the federal departments,
and nav Canada, sometimes there's police involvement,
there's evidence of some of the details from these reports being
forwarded to the US Air Force as well as NORAD headquarters in
Colorado. So, you know, there are mechanisms to document these
things. But I'd say in 99% of the cases, there's little to no
follow up, things get documented, they get shared
around, and then they get put in drawers to collect dust. Here in
John Greenewald: America, obviously, you follow the news,
but so this isn't new to you. But obviously politicians here
are getting more interested in the last couple of years.
They're, you know, writing legislation. Just in the last
couple of days, they're in Canada, it sounds like some
politicians there are getting interested, is that new? Or are
you guys seeing the same thing? And have you seen that in the
last couple of years?
Daniel Otis: Um, in Canada, it's been crickets. I know, you have
folks like Senator Marco Rubio, who has been very outspoken on
the issue and very candid, you know, about the US military
dealing with genuine unknowns. It's been absolute silence in
Canada. And on, on, when is this airing, it would have been on
yesterday, Wednesday, on Wednesday, a for the first time
in decades, a Canadian Member of Parliament spoke publicly about
unidentified aerial phenomena. He was in a committee meeting
for natural the Natural Resources Committee in the House
of Commons in Parliament. So this is like our Congress.
Right? This is like a congressional committee. And
there were reviewing budgetary items. And it came up that a
nuclear agency within the Canadian government was
receiving money from the Department of Defense for
security related matters. So you know, Mr. Larry McGuire, who is
a member of Parliament from Manitoba, you know, after like
seeing this budget line, he brought up recent drone reports
in Sweden over nuclear facilities, I think Sweden has
been encountering some, you know, conventional looking,
perhaps military drones, he brought that up. And then he
also brought up the new UAV office that was, you know,
embedded in the recent Defense Authorization Act in the United
States. And he said, Hey, you know, you know, we're putting
money towards nuclear security, Have we had any reports of UAPs,
at our nuclear facilities, the Deputy Minister of natural
resources, said he wasn't aware, this is like the top bureaucrat
in that department. And, basically, and then Mr. McGuire
continue to ask if they if they would be willing, if that
information came to light, if they would be willing to share
that with their US counterparts, because I believe the language
in, in that in the in, in the legislation, putting it as such
that, you know, nuclear agencies should be reporting in to this
new, this new US body. So he asked if the Canadians would be
willing to share as well, as part of, you know, the
international partnerships, all of that to say, the big focus
John Greenewald: and not to step on here, but focusing in on only
nuclear installations. That's the what they're talking about.
Daniel Otis: This is a natural resources committee. Canada, is
a huge supplier to the international market. For
uranium, we do a lot of uranium mining here. So this would be
limited in scope to nuclear facility. So they don't he he
asked them questions about this, and they are obligated to
provide a written response. And as I said, the questions were
just to put it more clearly. The questions were one, are you
aware of any, you know, UAP or unknown drone incidents that
Canadian nuclear facilities and to if you get that data, would
you be willing to share that with the United States? So I'm,
it's my understanding that the next steps of this is that this
member of Parliament's will be presenting a letter explaining
this in within a month, I imagine. And that letter will
necessitate a response, a written response from Canada's
Department of Natural Resources. I'm so sorry to go deep into the
weeds know, it's like super nitty gritty procedural stuff
for Canadian Parliament. But all of this is to say, a current
member of Canadian Parliament asked questions about UAPs and
nuclear sites while on the job. And that just hasn't happened
that just
John Greenewald: has so so that and that was kind of the point I
wanted to stress too is that's unprecedented for you guys up
there.
Daniel Otis: Absolutely. Yeah. And but it was a legitimate
question, you know, yeah, this is a person who has some
interest in the subject. And he's on a committee that's
dealing with allocating funding, you know, to nuclear facilities
for security. And that that is certainly a legitimate questions
to ask, if any UAP have been spotted at Canadian nuclear
facilities.
John Greenewald: I want to talk about something that that is
kind of a hot button issue when it comes to the UAP topic. And
that is really, really shown itself here in the last week.
For those who watched social media. On the black vault, I
published a Freedom of Information Act response about
what they had, what I believe anyway, labeled A UAP. And the
reason I say that is I came up with a UAP related request. It
is actually stored online right now at the US Navy online, what
they call reading room in a folder called UFOs, or UFO docs.
And then the sub folder is labeled UAP. So it's obviously
connected. My question is, when you pull up these, this one
particular incident had never been out before, there were
photographs that I got, I published those, it is clearly a
drone, and a quadcopter type device, right? It's not an alien
potential spaceship, nothing like that. It is a drone, but
labeled as a UAP. The D word seems to upset some people, but
it's definitely part of the conversation. I don't feel this
phenomena is explained solely by drones. But as a journalist, can
I ask you, what role does that D word do drones play in this
whole conversation? Because if you look at the clip, from that
you were just talking about, they're referencing drones? Do
you get the impression that drones is kind of a secret way
of saying, Okay, it's it's something else? Or do you think
that this is more about drones than some people want to
believe?
Daniel Otis: I think there's a lot to do with drones in this. I
mean, in this, these 290 pages of reports that I received from
Transport Canada, there are objects that are clearly drones,
you know, some are labeled as such, some are ambiguous, you
know, a pilot says they saw a drone or a balloon. But there's
definitely drone reports in there as just as there's
definitely Starlink satellite reports, you know, for now, it's
quite common. Anyone who follows the UAP topic knows what a
Starlink satellite train it is, right? Like, when you see a
whole bunch of dots, a double line? You know, if you see a
whole line of dots moving, like, you know, together in a straight
line, it's not that's what it probably is. Yeah, but back in
2019, you know, pilots flying over Canada, back when this
technology, you know, was just starting to be launched, they
have no idea what that was. And, you know, it wasn't, it wasn't
common knowledge back then. So, you know, there's reports that
that are clearly that there's reports that are clearly drones,
there's reports describing unknowns that seem to be very
drone like in this in this release, and there's reports in
there that don't seem drone like at all, you know, I think that's
definitely part of it. Also, floating paper lanterns. I've
been camping and heard someone screaming, you know, in the
campground about UFOs there's UFOs over us, and it was a
Lancer, you know, and had I not been there to sort of explain
it, this person probably would have spent the rest of their
life telling this phenomenal, you know, UFO story. A lot of
people are seeing a lot of different things. But you know,
at the same time, I feel like, you know, there are there are
enough reports contained within the release, to least nourish me
and make me you know, still make me believe that, you know, some
of these things are unexplained. Yes, drones, drones play a part
of the picture. And you have to admit that there's lots of
people seeing different things, and not everybody knows what
every type of drone looks like.
John Greenewald: And I appreciate your perspective on
that I just wanted to ask simply because and I've said it a
million times on this channel, but my biggest haters never
listened. I don't believe that's the explanation for all this.
But it's very interesting to see the reaction when drones come
up. And that's why I wanted to kind of get your perspective
researching it for as long as you have, and especially coming
from the Canadian angle, looking at how they treat it. So that
being your answer is as I'm sorry, good.
Daniel Otis: No, but I would just want to answer that I
guess. You know, perhaps, even if some of the, you know, more
exotic sightings turned out to be drones with advanced
propulsion technologies. I mean, even if that were the case, that
would be significant, it would mean that somewhere on Earth, a
group of people or a government has perhaps harnessed a new
energy source and has created a new method of propulsion, that
could be, you know, completely change humanity, perhaps make
fossil fuels obsolete, etc. You know, if that is earthly
technology, I think that's still huge and has huge implications.
And if it is earthly technology, shame on them for not changing
the world and getting rid of all this fossil fuel. Yeah, and
John Greenewald: I'm awesome perspective. I'm glad I asked
you the question. And I want to ask you one part before we dive
deeper into the documents themselves, essentially the same
question. But in the eyes of the Canadian government. Do you feel
that what the people that you have talked to? Obviously not
every call you do is on the record? But when you reach out
to these agencies, and maybe politicians, I'm not sure,
exactly. You know, who everybody you've interviewed? Do you get
the feeling that they see this as? Yeah, there may be some kind
of earthly drone, whatever explanation to a percentage, but
they feel that it's actually bigger? How would you answer
that, with what you view from the government side? And
potentially politicians, if you've talked to them?
Daniel Otis: I guess my answer to that would be sort of
twofold. There's no, there's no institutional acknowledgement of
history. Right. You know, the ODNI report that came out in
June, you know, was an official acknowledgement of a mystery to
a certain sense, if anything, that hasn't happened in Canada.
But there are individuals within governments, within governments
within opposition and Parliament's in the bureaucracy.
There are individuals who are interested and individuals who
are, have open minds to the possibilities of what the
sightings could represent. I can say that with certainty, you
know, but there's no institutional reflection of
John Greenewald: this. Next question may involve some of the
new documents you got, but out of everything you've seen thus
far researching the topic? Is there one thing that stands out
to you that made you go? Wow,
Daniel Otis: I think there's been a few reports, I think,
earlier, I mentioned, particularly some of the
military reports, I was pulling from Canadian bases, in the
1950s. And 60s, when you have multiple Air Force officers
standing outside and then writing their own individual
witness testimonies that all line up, and they're seeing
things that are, you know, just moving in ways that are hard for
us to explain, you know, it's 1952, and something's moving
faster than any fighter jet they've ever seen. And then it
makes a right angle turn. Like, what is that? I don't have the
answer for that. It's reports like those, are there any single
one? I don't know, I, for me, it's sort of been, you know, as
you know, anyone who's really dives into the data and the
documents knows that, you know, a lot of times it's pretty
sparse. Like, if you look at these 290 pages that we
released, most of these reports are just a sentence or two,
right? Like they are, there's not a lot of description, and
there's not a lot of detail. But I think it's sort of, for me,
it's been the cumulative effect, you know, going from, you know,
just this past year, looking back in history, 70 years to the
1950s Seeing a degree of continuity. And you know, that's
just genuinely impressed upon me that there's an unanswered
mystery.
John Greenewald: If we haven't covered it already, would you
have an idea why they are so small, and only a sentence or
two?
Daniel Otis: I think I think it's particularly with the ones
that are coming from pilots. It, it just has to do with the
nature of it, you know, they're, they're flying the radio into
the tower, they, you know, say a sentence or two, the tower
checks to see if they have traffic in the area, then the
tower calls the Air Force to see if they're picking up anything
on radar. And you know, that's it in terms of the actual
dialogue, that transpires between the pilots in the tower.
That's what gets, you know, reported in these reports, and
it's minimal, you know, they're not having lengthy conversations
on their airplane radios. Unfortunately, years ago,
John Greenewald: I had Chris Rutkoski. On the show, he's a
great guy, great researcher, known him a long time. I want to
bring him back. So I don't know the answer to this. But back
then the last time I talked to him, there was kind of a share.
It seemed like there was a sharing of data that He in the
in the private sector would get these reports and get them
forwarded over from the Canadian government. Is that still going
on? Do they share this data with the private sector?
Daniel Otis: Yeah, this is interesting. So Chris had
Chris's Winnipeg based EU ufologist. very respected in the
field. He's, for the past 30 odd years, he's done an annual
survey of Canadian UFO sightings that's in compass, something
like 20,000 reports. It's quite a quite an interesting body of
research. And for about the past 20 years, Chris had a
relationship with both Transport Canada and the Canadian Air
Force, whereby when they were getting, you know, some of these
UFO reports from civilians, as well as from, you know, aviation
professionals, that they were forwarding them to him. That
relationship appears to have ended without notice this past
year. I asked Chris about it. And he said, You know, one of
the things perhaps, growing public interest and growing
public scrutiny on the topic has, perhaps me the government a
little more cagey about sharing that information. But yeah, I
mean, there's even Canadian Air Force and NORAD procedural
documents that include Chris's name and contact details. In the
release the 290 pages that we released, there were several
reports from an Air Force base in Quebec, Canada, and they
included Chris's name and his fax number on the bottom of the
reports as the intended recipient. So you know, there
was pretty much for the past 20 years, in, obviously, in an
unofficial capacity, Chris was really the closest thing Canada
had to a UFO office. So these reports were coming in, he was
using the data for most of them in his annual survey, but the
reports themselves were not being released. And, you know, I
asked Chris about that. And his explanation makes sense, you
know, he wasn't in a position to show you know, things like air
force reports. And, you know, these intelligence reports that
were coming in, some of them contain private information, you
know, the copies I received through access information
requests, the private information gets redacted
people's names and phone numbers, for the most part. But
he wasn't in the position to be putting this material out there.
I believe a lot of the material that was in the release in my
most recent story, a lot of it, not all of it, but a lot of it
was stuff he probably would have received over the years, I
wouldn't be surprised. But, you know, the body of his work is is
impressive, you know, I think he's had something of admission
to try and, you know, documents in point form pretty much every
UFO sighting that need in Canada, it's quite an impressive
volume of work.
John Greenewald: Yeah, he's always struck me as a straight
shooter. And that's why I've always respected him because
he's just kind of a an actual investigator, while others you
know, more speculate and so on. He just is kind of a straight
shooter and goes for it. So I didn't know that about the, the
potential breaking of that, that sharing of information. So I'm,
I'm so
Daniel Otis: when I, when I asked Transport Canada about it.
They told me this is how I told you before they were dismissive.
They told me that they were giving reports to Chris for as
research for his fiction novels. You know, like, that's, that's
the sort of stance they took. And they basically said that
they've reevaluated their position and decided to stop
that. But the Canadian military and comments to me have said
that as far as they're concerned, you know, it's they
still go to Chris, I have the current procedures from Canadian
from Canadian NORAD headquarters and the Air Force, operational
command center and Winnipeg, Manitoba. UFO service reports.
CRV is unidentified flying objects is the first thing on
the list of examples. And then you go to the next page, I'll
cover up his email address. But Mr. Chris Rakowski, you know, so
they say, Oh, he's still on there. They say this is still
valid, and this has not been altered. So he's still on there.
I hope Chris keeps getting stuff. I hope he keeps sharing
it with the world. Because if they stopped sending stuff to
him, the only way to get this is through the access to
information system. Now, it's not like they sent him
everything. Over the years. There's been some I mentioned
some reports that had a more defense Nexus, for example,
something detected fast on NORAD radar, like things like that
they weren't sending but the aviation reports, the weird
ones, civilian reports, stuff like that. He was getting a lot
of it over the years.
John Greenewald: Mike, my gut immediately went to the and
maybe I'm just conspiracy minded, that the DoD spearheaded
this, the American Department of Defense saying, hey, look, we
need to squash this. You know if we're going to be sharing
Information, you can't be giving it to the private sector.
Because here, I mean, I've I've, with ample evidence at this
point, have shown that whatever UAPs whether they be connected
to drones, and that drone report that I brought up a little bit
ago, was was still redacted. One of the photos of what is clearly
a quadcopter is redacted. So there's a lot of secrecy around
all of this. So I just kind of go towards it's the Americans
again, they're getting into, you know, they're they're
classifying everything. Have you heard rumors of that? Is there a
potentially that sharing of information?
Daniel Otis: I I've heard rumors of information being shared
between Canada and the US to a certain extent, but not like,
I've heard rumors about, you know, UAP information being
shared, I found full on evidence of UAP case data being shared
with NORAD and American Air Force. And American Air Force
bases, like there's reports that include, you know, service
reports of UAP sightings, then that information is being shared
with the US, but that's being shared with NORAD, as part of,
you know, an operational update. It's not being shared to the
specific UFO people within the US, US Defense apparatus. Right.
So, you know, the language in the American legislation is that
they want to be sharing data with international partners, you
know, correct me if I'm wrong. I'm, I've heard rumors of that
kind of thing happening with government. But I don't have
anything in hand to show you and say, Hey, Canada and the US are
letting each other peek at their UFO reports. I can't prove that
yet.
John Greenewald: Sure. Sure. Yeah. And I'm curious to see
because and it kind of gives me a new angle to approach because,
you know, going back many years, and you likely have heard, I
think you and I chatted on the phone about this. But when I had
gone to NORAD with a FOIA and this was many years ago, before
I knew that they weren't subject to FOIA. And then they did their
whatever internal procedure, I forget what the number is, where
they try and honor the spirit of the FOIA. But since they're
under Canadian control, American law doesn't apply. But they have
a records processing procedure that they follow. Long story
short, they said they found no type of service reports, UFO,
nothing. And when I called the Department of National Defense
on the phone, the guy at that time who answered who had no
idea who I was or why I was calling, I asked him about this
and he had a stack of the UFO service reports on his desk. And
I was always surprised at that, but it's solidified how the
American side of NORAD will lie about it, because when I got the
DMD to send them to me, NORAD letterhead was all over it,
meaning NORAD telling me from the American side, no, no, we
don't, we don't collect that. And then the Canadian side said,
Here you go, and gave me a big stack of them. And it proved, in
my opinion, a complete fabrication on the side of, of
NORAD. So to go back to your point about the sharing, I would
imagine that the government, the American government would try
and reach out and tell the Canadian side All right, you
know, let's stop the private sector sharing. We can
investigate these. So when it comes to sharing, the American
government will share going this way, but I don't think they'll
share going that way. And again, that's just speculation. But I'm
now I'm fascinated to try and drill in to see if there's any
communication between what was the taskforce, but now the aeoi
MSG and the Canadian government. But anyway, I, as I digress
there,
Daniel Otis: further to that release, you know, I read your
piece on that. And I think there's a two fold reason why
that comes so easily. I think one, because Canada doesn't,
again, doesn't really see this as a defense or national
security thing. They there, they don't they have no reason to sit
on this stuff. But at the same time, you know, while it seems
to be a little bit easier to get data in Canada, you know, we
can't get comments on it. Like you can get statements very
clearly talking about unidentified objects, you know,
from from Pentagon spokespeople, like that sort of openness
doesn't happen here. But I think the other reason it worked for
you as well is just the nature of the how NORAD is constructed
in Canada. We could get a little nerdy on this. The Canadian
NORAD headquarters is called a Combined Air Operation Center.
So it's a combined center that includes, you know, search and
rescue personnel, Air Force personnel, NORAD personnel, etc.
And, you know, there are us there are, you know, US military
personnel stationed in Canada the same way Canadians are
stationed in you know, nor on facilities in the US, but you
know, the The staffing of it, they're all Canadian Air Force.
So through our access to information system, well, NORAD
itself may be immune from, you know, access to information
laws, the squadrons and the individuals who report into it
in Canada or not, right. So if you're working on in NORAD, you
know, in NORAD affiliated unit, it's still a Canadian Air Force
Squadron at a Canadian Air Force Base, and it's just has, you
know, it reports into this Combined Air Operation Center.
So it just the structure of how NORAD is here allows us to, to
get information about our operations.
John Greenewald: And see that's what's nice, because the this
side of NORAD the differences it sounds like you have other and
correct me if I misheard that but other avenues to access
something to where our side, the minute even touches NORAD, they
go, sorry, nothing applies, and there's no way to get it. And so
the way that that was written, which was Jana 140 60, which was
the joint Army Navy Air Force publication, the one that I
believe you were referencing earlier, that applied to both
Canada and America, the US Air Force had their own specific
internal regulation or instruction is more accurate,
called 10 Dash 206. And with them, the Air Force is
absolutely subject to the FOIA. But those service reports went
all the way to NORAD. And that was it, that was the only copy
couldn't touch them. So according to them, they never
took a single one under this 10 Dash 206, which I know, is a
complete fabrication. But regardless, it went there. So
that that's nice to hear that on your side, there were other
avenues to approach it. versus our side, the moment it got
forwarded to NORAD from our side from the American FOIA it was
shut down. So anyway, just a note for me
Daniel Otis: that you know, when I do request to Canadian or add
the request code to the go to the, you know, the units, the
units that are reporting in into NORAD. We got to get something
straight here. servies service, I keep hearing people use so
many. So, anyways,
John Greenewald: yeah, I was trying to split the difference
because you had said service. So service is how I was told many,
many moons ago is the pronunciation.
Daniel Otis: I see. I hear I hear service. And I've heard
that being said from some Canadian service service. Yeah.
Should we stick to one?
John Greenewald: Like the UFO phenomena, I believe there are
multiple ways to say it. So we can go with that. To be honest
with you. I don't know. I remember. When I, when I first
wrote about it, many, many moons ago, I was told, forget what
office I was talking to. It was a Air Force Base. But they were
they were saying it was it was service. And I remember actually
asked, was it really its service? And they said yeah, and
I remember in an email to a member of the Air Force had
spelled it out phonetically. And they did like v e. S. O, you
know, they're just kind of set. Again, they could have been
wrong, too. So I was trying to find the difference between
service service and yeah, they,
Daniel Otis: it could be Tomato, tomato, but if anyone out there
who's writing that Jan app, whatever in the 1950s. And you
give us a call, we'd love to.
John Greenewald: Yeah, there's a proper pronunciation. I'd love
to and it's probably neither. So we're both wrong. And it's
something you know, completely different. See
Daniel Otis: Irv servies. Like, I'm trying to think I have a six
year old who's learning how to read and I wouldn't be able to
explain to her why those eyes all have different
pronunciations.
John Greenewald: Yeah, it's so communication instructions for
reporting vital intelligence sightings? I can't, I can't
really figure out why they always said that. It just always
stuck with me. So yeah. So what I want to do here now is just if
you want dive a little bit deeper into your newest article,
and again, Mike, my congratulations for you digging,
I have so much respect for your work, and you actually taking
the time to do something original, you know, I mean,
you're not what I call copy and paste journalism, you are out
there, doing the work, digging in and getting things that no
one else has. So I want to take that time. And I know my
audience likely recognizes it as well. Thank you for doing that.
Because there's not a whole lot of people that do so. So my way
of saying thank you,
Daniel Otis: I appreciate that. And thank you for recognizing
that. Listen, I was reading and researching and learning
everything I could about this for a long time before I started
writing about it. And it was really only when I was starting
to pull in information through our FOIA system, that I felt
that I could have, you know, a meaningful contribution to the
conversation that you know, that's when I started writing
about the subject. You know, when this Canadian data started
coming in, and I saw that it wasn't it wasn't appearing
anywhere else right. But thank you. It's been you know, I've
been working as a journalist for about a decade, written for over
two dozen publications. And certainly this, this uapb that
I've given myself over the past almost years has been one of the
more exciting and fulfilling chapters and I journalism
career.
John Greenewald: Exciting is a good word for it. So and, but
But yeah, that the regulations,
Daniel Otis: it takes a special kinds of call sifting through,
you know, piles of papers, exciting and fun. But I think
you know what I mean,
John Greenewald: speaking of getting nerdy, that's my cup of
tea, I will take a stack of documents any day. And speaking
of a stack of documents you had sent me and we don't have to do
this. But I can bring it up here. I think you said that
these were some of the the best of your newest batch. Yeah. Do
you want to go through any of them? Yeah,
Daniel Otis: well, I mean, we can just flip through, you know,
this, if you were doing an interview about my story, and I
mean, these are the documents. These are a sample of 10 reports
out of, you know, the hundreds that were contained in the 290
pages. This first one I think I mentioned earlier in this
interview, I mentioned the case where two civilians both saw
lights hovering over the Atlantic Ocean, they were in how
they were in Nova Scotia, which is an Atlantic province here.
They called in a search and rescue center located in
Halifax, Nova Scotia, the search and rescue center notified a
NORAD affiliated Canadian Air Force squadron. That squadron in
particular is responsible for identifying all air traffic
approaching North America. Once they got this report, they
reviewed NORAD radar data, and you know, they got hits, they
got hits, that correlated almost exactly to the time and location
of the sighting. So the first couple pages here, this would be
a copy of the report that the Air Force would have sent to
Transport Canada. And what's unique about this one is there's
a supplementary page right after these, and you don't really see
this, yeah, usually there's just like one or two lines of detail.
But in this particular case, they gave us a little more
detail because they you know, picked up something on radar. In
the last paragraph explains, this is an area that has good
low level radar coverage, there's no explanation why there
are only three points all at exactly 12,800 feet, with no
points leading up to or continuing. Basically, they
picked up something that suddenly appeared at one
location, just over 12,000 feet, and sort of slowly moved around
in the general vicinity, and then disappeared. And here's the
report, and it.
John Greenewald: And this particular just so we kind of
zooming out here, so we can kind of see, I'm looking at a couple
screens here to make sure my audience can see it too. But
this particular form, safe to say created by Transport Canada
is DND.
Daniel Otis: This would have been this would have been
created by personnel at the 21 Aerospace control and Warning
Squadron, which is located at CFB. North Bay in Ontario. It's
part of the Canadian air defense sector, which is a NORAD task
group that deals with identifying air traffic. So what
would have happened in this case, was the search and rescue
officials in in Halifax would have notified this Air Force
Squadron, and then the Air Force squadron would have filled out
this report, and then they fax this report to transport the
fastest report to Transport Canada. Does that make sense?
It's
John Greenewald: Oh, yeah. No, no,
Daniel Otis: it could be a game of broken telephone. But usually
in most of the reports contained in this release, the reports
themselves come from air traffic controllers, with the private
company nav Canada, they call the Air Force, the Air Force
fills out a form and then faxes it to Transport Canada. But nav
Canada also communicates directly to Transport Canada,
and those types of reports are contained in the release as
well.
John Greenewald: I know you briefly covered this in the
beginning, but was your AIA request, specifically for these
these types of reports? Or like how if I may ask, Did you word
it all UFO related reports all
Daniel Otis: so you know the release the 290 pages were from
two requests. I asked for all let's go with service. This
time. I asked for all service reports. held by Transport
Canada The first time I asked them that question. They told me
to go SDN D because they don't deal with this. I probably
pronounced it wrong. Yeah, there you go. But I kept asking and I
asked more specifically. So these reports come from the
aviation operations departments at Transport Canada. That's the
first 104 pages And then the next 186 pages come from the
Transport Canada department that's responsible for creating
public facing aviation incident reports.
John Greenewald: One other question, where did I see oh,
here it is. I always look at least in on the American side, I
find it interesting on on classification and original
classification. What was it? What is it? So on and so forth?
Do you see a lot of these all of these as unclassified, like this
one?
Daniel Otis: This one is Yeah, I think what's also interesting
here, this was faxed to Transport Canada, the fax
machine is alive and well, in official Canadian institutions.
You can see the fax numbers up at the top. Most of them, the
reports contained in this release are unclassified
reports. That being said, if you pick up my vice contributor
page, there's other stories I've written that are based on
classified military reports. So there's, you know, there's
reports like these that are these are because these are
usually coming from civilian groups like air traffic
controllers, they're not classified, but there are
incidents and other reports on other incidents, etc, involving
involving things with secret classifications, etc. My
previous story was dealt with a lot of secret, classified stuff,
it was particularly I had targeted the logbook entries for
that one particular Canadian Air Force squadron that receives the
reports, and then does the radar checks. So I wanted to see what
the internal mechanisms are within that Air Force squadron
when they receive these reports, and I was able to obtain daily
logbook entries actually think of some sitting on my desk right
here. Yeah, they're basically highly, very, you know,
classified secret. And it basically shows in real time,
the day to day operations of this unit. So, you know, that's,
yeah, I recommend if people like looking at Air Force documents
and things like that, recommend having a look at that story,
because there's some cool details in there.
John Greenewald: Did when you say that they were, you know,
formally classified or secret. In that instance, is the
Canadian government just blacking out a bunch of stuff?
And that's why you got it? Or are they actually declassifying
it for you? And you're seeing what was secret? Maybe five
years ago, or 10 years ago?
Daniel Otis: It's hard to say unlike the United States,
Canada, Redax in whites? Yes. You know what I mean? So when
John Greenewald: the US has adopted that over the last
couple of decades to sad oh, really?
Daniel Otis: Oh, that's unfortunate. Because although
it's harsh on the eye, and it kills all the ink in your
printer, at least when something's redacted in gray or
black, you know, where that things redact? Sure, but when
it's in light, you have no idea if some if there had been data
there, or if something's been scrubbed off a page, like if it
becomes really hard to determine what you're being told, and
what's not being told, especially in a log entry like
this, you know, because all the entries before a UFO sighting
are blanked out all of them after so in this case, you can't
really tell what the response was. But there's been other
instances I found where you can see the response.
John Greenewald: In I talked about, obviously, the FOIA on
this channel a lot and one thing that I look for with FOIA
documents is the citation of why something is either whited out
because they do white out. And you can kind of tell sometimes
there's a black border around it or so on. But they put a
citation there what exemption authorizes them to redact it.
Does Canada do the same? Do you have any indicator on? Oh, yeah,
Daniel Otis: absolutely. So in the letter when they released
the documents to you, it explains which part of the
Access to Information Act they were employing to redact stuff.
The most common one is, I believe it's 19. A, I hope I'm
not wrong. It has to do with personal information and
privacy. Yeah, games, personal phone numbers. There's other you
know, there's been I've seen exemptions for national
security. For you know, confidential third party
information is one they like to use. Sometimes that one annoys
me a little bit. Yep. But yeah. Well, I'll give you an example
of a case like that. We were looking through these actually,
maybe we'll get to it when it involves one of the reports
that's in here. Basically, I was able to determine the file name
of air traffic control tower audio for one of these UFO
reports. And they won't give it to me because they say it's
confidential third party information
John Greenewald: is there a way to appeal that meaning? All
these
Daniel Otis: don't worry. All the appeals are filed. I react
in different ways. I'm on it. I don't I don't give up at the
first No. You know, like Yeah, To be a little more tenacious
than that, right? You can't accept no for an answer. If I
know something's out there, I'm gonna try it. from every angle I
can, you know, and in this case, this is a, you know, tower audio
with a pilot describing a UFO encounter. So yeah, that's
pretty cool. And I'm gonna keep going after that one.
John Greenewald: I love those types of finds that you look at
a document and sometimes are easily overlooked. But those
file names, what I go after emails, you look for
attachments. And even though my FOIA for the most part, will
always say all emails with certain keywords, including
attachments, a lot of FOIA agencies won't do it. And so you
look for it. And it kind of essentially tattles on them,
that there was an attachment in the email, but you don't see it.
But now you have a file name, and you can file another FOIA
request or appeal and say, Hey, wait a minute, I asked for this,
and you didn't get it. But I love those little fines, because
I often often liken this whole process to a tree branch, you
know, and your trunk is that first FOIA and it just branches
off into 5 million other you know, things and I absolutely
geek out over stuff like that. You had mentioned that maybe
we'll get to it. Is it in this release that you want to look?
Yeah,
Daniel Otis: I mean, we could just so these past three pages
you've gone through here, these are reports from NAV Canada.
Again, nav Canada is the private company that operates air
traffic control. These are all aviation incident reports that
nav Canada air traffic controllers would have received.
So the first one that you pulled up there involved, actually,
that one was from NAV Canada employees themselves. That was
air traffic control staff in, in Alberta. So a bright, very fast
moving object. There was another citizen one in here, I don't
know which one you're on now. I think we're on
John Greenewald: looks like Winnipeg, let me see if I can
zoom in a little bit. I actually have a question this one before
I lose it. Yeah. And it may actually be in here. I just
didn't see it. So in this particular instance, on on the
same point that you and I were chatting about, you have this
nav Canada report, and then it says that a service report was
filed, right get those or is that
Daniel Otis: I have some of those, not all of them. I have
pending requests for a lot of that kind of material. But
that's what that's kind of when they see a report was filed.
They're not really that's when they're calling the Air Force.
And that's a verbal report. And that verbal report turns into
this with the emblem, and then the forms that get filled out
like you saw
John Greenewald: Gotcha. There's some chicken scratch writing on
it. Gotcha. Okay. Here's another one risk of collision.
Daniel Otis: This one's interesting. Yeah, this one, I
was a staff writer at the Toronto Star at the time, which
is one of our biggest newspapers here in Canada. And I remember
this happening because it made the news but not on the UFO
angle. This involves a case from Ottawa or capital to Toronto,
where I live by Porter Airlines, it saw some sort of large donut
shaped object directly ahead in its flight path. It took an
evasive maneuver. And when it took a sort of, you know, dive
to avoid this thing. Two of the flight attendants got thrown
into the cabin structure of the plane and God injuries. This is
a unique report, it's longer than most. And it's specifically
because the workplace injuries that these flight attendants got
when they One of them hit the wall, I believe in one hit the
ceiling. The injuries made it necessary to conduct a federal
transportation safety probe. So while usually the reports are
just a sentence or two, in this case, they dug a little deeper.
That's why you see about a paragraph and material there.
Because this this, this one comes from the Transportation
Safety Board of Canada. It's a bit of a unique one. It's the
one of the only ones I found that had a little more fulsome
investigation. And it's particularly because there was
an injury.
John Greenewald: So five to eight feet in diameter, an
upright donut or inner tube. Now granted, I'm kind of seeing this
for the first time. I know you just sent it over to me, so
forgive me. It wasn't solved. Do we know what that thing is?
Daniel Otis: No. I tracked down the investigator sent him some
emails, took a few emails before he replied, but he eventually
did and said, No, it was never positively identified. One
interesting thing about this case was had they positively
identified it as a drone, for example, if they would have
continued the investigation, there would have been an even
more detailed investigation. So because in this case that they
couldn't figure out what it was. This is where the investigation
ended, because there was nothing actionable, you know what I
mean? There's no one to give a ticket to or to penalize or a
regulatory thing that needs to be changed because of the
incident. Right? So because there was no couldn't identify
it. And then they couldn't do anything actionable with this
report. So it got left as a mystery forever and ever and
ever.
John Greenewald: I just loved that all of the UFO type reports
are now using food as descriptors. Like we got
doughnuts, which in my opinion is much more than a tic tac. But
anyway, moving on. So here's another this Transport Canada
report.
Daniel Otis: Yeah, so these these again, so here, this would
be the information that's being sent from the private air
traffic control company to Transport Canada, the federal
department. So these now we're seeing emails, and these are
emails that are being used to create public facing aviation
incident reports.
John Greenewald: And those are published online. Those are the
ones that you can
Daniel Otis: call that the it's called CAD systems called
caterers. But it's spelt differently than it sounds just
like our surveys that go on around C A, D, o r s, and it
stands for I had a written in front of me real fast. It stands
for civil aviation daily occurrence report system, this
is a totally publicly accessible database, you can find a version
of this report in there. So these get edited changed.
Usually, they just get sort of shortened a little bit even
more, believe it or not, and then they get published online.
Most of them not all of them, but most of
John Greenewald: them. And that kind of leads into my next
question, did you find evidence that everything really does go
into the system? Or do you feel that there is a separate other
occurrence database that maybe have some more interesting?
Okay,
Daniel Otis: I would, I can say with certainty, again, and any
of the sort of defense related reports that have a defense
Nexus or search and rescue where there's something actionable
that the military has participated in, that will not
go into this system. This system is the UFO reports that are in
here are for the most part, aviation related. You know,
we're talking major Canadian airlines like Air Canada
WestJet. I believe there's a Delta case in there. And that's
pretty recent. There's a bunch of different US airlines,
there's international airlines, and they're just seeing things
weird. This one here that you have on the page right now, this
one was from July 2021. This involves the Canadian military
transport plane on its way to evacuate vulnerable people out
of Afghanistan, as well as a Dutch KLM flight from Boston to
Amsterdam, if I recall correctly, they're flying
parallel, sort of over the North Atlantic, and they both report
seeing a luminous object that disappears into a cloud.
John Greenewald: Wow. That's fascinating to see these. Yep.
And then the difference with this whole wing operation center
instructions,
Daniel Otis: this one was contained in the release as
well. This is a UFO report form that's specific to CFB
Bagotville. It was the that's the Air Force Base I mentioned
in Quebec. That's one of the main stations for f 18 fighter
jets. So their wing operation center, you know, like their
main operation center, had a UFO report form. And most of the
release contains a handful of these. Most of them are
civilian, written in English and French. And they contain a fax
number for Mr. Chris Rakowski, as well as contact information
for Transport Canada. So again, just showing this I found this
pretty interesting, because again, it shows that there are,
you know, procedural guidelines for what to do with these
reports in Canada. You know, and they go to transportation
officials and for and they go to go to Chris, are you ufologists
in Winnipeg? Yeah, I'm
John Greenewald: just happy faxes are still alive. Old
school guys that just wants a fax periodically. So
Daniel Otis: it's amazing. Yeah, I the fax machine is alive and
well with the Canadian Forces.
John Greenewald: Fantastic. Well, what is I can talk to you
all day. And honestly, I think we should do this on a daily we
should just pull up documents and go through them together,
because I love that kind of stuff. So I appreciate you doing
that with me. What's next for you? You're working on another
story, are you can you talk about it? What's going on?
Daniel Otis: Ah, yes. I'm always working on stuff. I'm always
working on more than one thing.
John Greenewald: share all the secrets right now.
Daniel Otis: You can expect I guess you can expect stories
from me upcoming involving? Well, I guess what we'd like to
call are credible witnesses, Not to disparage witnesses or who
were but you know, there's that sort of class of police
officers, soldiers, pilots. Expect the story for me involved
in on the Record interview with someone like that. As well as
I'm digging hard to you know, find out what Canada knows and
particularly what sort of you information is being shared
between Canada and the US. So I always pull in threads. More
stories are always they're always coming. And plus I think
I have about at least 80 pending access to information requests.
So I you know more who knows what surprises will come in down
the road? I'm excited to find
John Greenewald: a that's what I love to hear at. You said eight,
zero.
Daniel Otis: I need a list for you because I know you like this
kind of stuff. Yeah, let's
John Greenewald: start from number one.
Daniel Otis: No, I since in the past year, I filed 133 I've
received results for 41 no responses for 47. There's at
least 40 Sorry, there's 88 completed 45 still in progress.
That's awesome. There's still there's still stuff coming. And
I hope some of it's good because some of those are pretty
specific requests.
John Greenewald: Double those numbers by Monday and we'll be
in good shape. No, I can't keep
Daniel Otis: up to you, sir. Anyway, you're a FOIA machine.
John Greenewald: Well, I appreciate that. But hey, I
can't thank you enough for taking the time to talk about
this. Congratulations again on the article. For those that are
watching the YouTube channel just check down below I've got
everything linked. Daniel, what is the best way you'd like
people to? To reach out to you I know you got your Twitter handle
there, which is d s. O T I 's that the best way any website
did you'd like to throw out there?
Daniel Otis: You can find me on Twitter at d s odus. I'm pretty
active on there. And often, you know, if I let's say I get some
documents, additional documents that come in on a story I've
already written about, and I'm not gonna write a new article,
Twitter's where they end up. I'm always sharing what I have. I
think people should be transparent with data. You know,
governments have been hiding so much from us for so long. Let's
not hide stuff from each other. Right? So find me on Twitter at
Dr. Sodus my personal website is Daniel oldest.ca.ca. That's
Daniel lotus.ca. Contact informations there if anyone
wants to reach out and yeah, thanks so much for having me.
This was a lot of fun.
John Greenewald: Anytime you're welcome back anytime you get
anything you want to share it please feel free to let me know.
But thank you again for taking the time. Thanks so much. My
pleasure. And thank you all for listening and watching if you
are listening to the audio podcast version, just know that
I broadcast most of these if not all of these interviews in a
video format on the YouTube channel to get there go to www
dot the black vault comm slash live that will bounce you to the
channel. Subscribe, see this interview? See all sorts. And
please, if you could YouTube watchers hit the thumbs up audio
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listed under the black vault Radio. Thank you again Daniel.
Thank you all for listening and watching. This is John
Greenewald Jr signing off. And we'll see you next time.