Chris Rutkowski: conversation will come up again, you know, I
didn't see something but, you know, on both so on so it
certainly saw some.
John Greenewald: When it comes to Canada, one man has arguably
spent more time than anyone digging through that country's
UFO files. And his name is Chris Rutkoski. He became so well
known with investigating the unknown, the Canadian government
enlisted his help to be their official consultant on UFOs. And
that's exactly what he did. For more than 20 years,
Chris Rutkowski: we have a continuous record of UFO
investigations at one level or another in some depth or
another, right from the dawn of the early beginning of flying
saucers to now
John Greenewald: join meters as Chris steps into the vault, to
explore what the current situation is with Canada and
UFOs. And what has he discovered in the nearly five decades he's
been looking into the phenomenon. 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 live stream or your podcast of
choice. I'm your host, John Greenewald, Jr, owner and
founder, creator of the black vault.com. And I'm always
excited about shows where I get to number one, speak to a
friend. But number two speak to somebody incredibly
knowledgeable. And of course, about documents. And what we're
going to be diving into, we're kind of traveling back to
Canada. We've talked about it on this channel, a little bit in
the past. But now this is the man in my view, the top
researcher from that country, Canada, Chris road. kowski.
Chris, thank you so much for taking some time and joining us
today. Glad to be here. It's an honor to have you your name
comes up obviously all the time. Well, last time I talked about
Canada, we talked about your last time I've seen documents
we've talked about. The audience saw it in the introduction, but
your newest Canada's UFOs declassified this book is
available for ordering now I highly recommend it just got my
copy myself, literally just hours ago before the show as
fate would have it. So pretty excited about that. So everybody
make sure that you check that out. Chris, you've been on the
program before but I if memory serves, I think it was before I
even started doing a video broadcast. So I'm just going to
treat this like you've never been on the show before. And
that way my audience which has been growing considerably since
then get to know you a little bit. So can I start with you
having a little bit of your background and go through about
how you got into UFOs? And what is it exactly that you do?
Chris Rutkowski: Sure. I'm a science writer. And I have
degrees in astronomy and education. I started into the
UFO thing back in the 70s. So yeah, I'm I'm that old. And my
mentors actually included both Allen Hynek and Stan Friedman
met them both in the 70s. And I was absolutely fascinated to
listen to them. back then. I was just starting into university.
And getting into astronomy and my astronomy prof was really
upset that people were calling in to report UFOs. And he
thought the whole thing was nonsense, nothing to worry
about. And yet these people were calling interrupting his
research. So I said I happened to be in his office one day, I
said, Why don't you just let me take the phone calls for you. My
my own little desk is right around the corner. And he said,
Sure. So I ended up taking the calls from people and I ended up
talking with people and listening to their stories. I
would travel out to their home though to the farm houses,
listen to their stories. I could explain, of course, most of what
they were reporting as stars and planets and planes and whatnot.
But there were some cases that were a bit puzzling. And I just
sort of shrugged my shoulders and thought, Well, I'm not sure
what these were. But there had been some flaps and waves going
on in Canada in the 70s. And both Hynek and Friedman had come
up and the media has sort of latched on to them to get more
into permission. And the media is had asked if there was
somebody locally who was doing it. And my, my prophets sort of
pushed me out in front of the, the media by having the lecture
to the largest in the lecture to the largest Hall in the
university, which is like 500 people about what I had heard
from all the witnesses. And I've sort of became overnight the the
UFO guy. And it's been quite an interesting ride a little bit
after that I published my first book in the, in the early 90s.
And I know I've done some TV shows, you know, like yourself.
I, you know, I was actually on the original Unsolved Mysteries,
talking about some Canadian reports and cases. So I sort of
been involved in immersed and I'm fascinated with the UFO
phenomenon and my background in astronomy, and comes from a
scientific perspective that, you know, I don't think we have any
proof that the aliens are here, there's some interesting
evidence that suggests that something unusual is going on.
I'm a bit of a doubting Thomas, but I call a spade a spade, if
something seems to have an explanation, I will say, Hey,
that's a good explanation or a bad explanation. But at the same
time, there are cases that are unusual in about the 1988 89. I
took it upon myself to create what I call the Canadian UFO
survey. And I worked with researchers across Canada to
combine all the data that had been reported to various groups
and organizations. So I had a snapshot of what really was
being reported as UFOs. And you know, we've ever stuff that was
on in on TV and radio and and tabloids, and magazines and
books. But what were people really seeing what was really
being reported. So I gathered up the data, and we started
publishing the Canadian UFO survey, which is now in its
33rd, year, 32nd year, something like that. And we've amassed
something like 25,000 separate UFO reports from Canada over
that 30 year period. And it's not just reports from the
average person, the person on the street, but going into the
government documents a little bit. Canada, the good Canadian
government has a quite an interesting record of
investigating and recording UFO reports. You know, there Canada
actually had two UFO projects itself, your listeners might
know of them project magnate and project second story, they were
concurrent with the early blue book in the 50s. And in about
the 1966 ish period, the Royal Canadian Air Force, which had
been the main body that was investigating UFOs at the time,
they had to sort of sided with Bluebook, and saying that there
really isn't anything of defense interest or security interest in
the UFOs. So they sort of wanted to shuffle it off on to
somebody. So they, they convinced something called the
National Research Council of Canada, which is kind of the
equivalent of the Smithsonian, I suppose, a scientific body that
was very national. And the National Research Council took
on the task of taking the UFO reports, having things reported
to them. They're interested primarily in looking for
meteorites. And the idea was that a lot of the lights in the
sky that were called UFOs, are actually meteors. And if you had
enough triangulation of points, you can find the meteorites on
the ground. That's why they were investigating UFOs. And what's
curious is, the National Research Council of Canada
itself, didn't really have a lot of scientists. On board, they
had some, but you know, Canada is pretty large, just like the
United States. They needed an organization or a body that, you
know, had offices pretty well everywhere. So they actually
enlisted the help of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, because
there are detachments right across the country and in many,
many towns and cities. And so the Royal Canadian amount of
police investigated UFO reports from the citizens and also some
professionals and fed them through the National Research
Council. And so they're this body of documented UFO reports
from the from the investigations of the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, and from the analysis of the National Research Council,
to about 1995 When things changed, and I'll get to that a
little bit later. But, you know, from after Bluebook died,
they're still where these reports are being investigated
by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and National Research
Council. And as a matter of fact, the the Royal Canadian Air
Force was still involved, because there were reports from
military personnel that were finding their way through to.
So. And we have these documents, as a matter of fact, the Library
and Archives Canada, which is the equivalent, again of I
suppose, the National Archives and in Washington, you know,
collected these these papers and reports, and they digitized
about 9000 of them and made them available to the public and
Canada. And so a lot of people, including you, I noticed you
have them on your site, and a few other people have them. So
there's like 9000 documents, which, you know, herald the UFO
investigation era of Canada, from 1947. And I think the
digitization stopped in about 1981 82. But of course, the
investigations and the documentation continued after
that point. But, you know, think about it 9000 pages of documents
on UFOs for in government files is nothing to sneeze at. Really.
John Greenewald: Yeah. And I know what documents are talking
about. And I want to jump in really quick, just to clarify
something. So post project Bluebook. They mean, in Canada
continued the investigations. Was there a reason why was there
a scope that they publicly would announce? Was it a national
security interest? Was it a, you know, was it something else? I
mean, what was the reason? Because after 22 years, the US
has not wasted time, there's nothing there. Whether that's a
lie, or real or not. And regardless of that, what was
Canada's mindset? Did they feel that there was much more to
this?
Chris Rutkowski: Well, because the National Research Council
was the body investigating, they looked at UFOs as a scientific
problem, not the defense problem that the Royal Canadian Air
Force was looking at. So because they're treating it in a
slightly different way. They're trying to come up with other
explanations. There was some studies of that were done by the
University of Toronto Institute for Aerospace studies, for
example, in from space science perspective. So there were there
was a different perspective. And it wasn't from defense, it was
from a scientific viewpoint. And that is pretty different
approach when you think about it between the blue book approach
and then something later, as a matter of fact, I'd have to say
that the scientific approach is more akin to what we're seeing
now from, for example, the Galileo Project, getting
scientists involved. And yet scientists had been involved in
Canada, throughout the 60s into the mid 1990s.
John Greenewald: So what was keeping them involved in this
from that scientific perspective? What what are you
seeing in the documents? Or maybe hearing from, from those
scientists? What was it that kept them going?
Chris Rutkowski: Well, they considered it a scientific
problem. And they were convinced that if they could educate the
public enough about what these UFOs were, and certainly many of
them were turning out to be stars and planets and
satellites, and whatever, that they were doing a service to the
Canadian public by educating the population. So it was kind of a
an education approach. And that's what kept many of them
going. But they got really jaded towards the end. And by the
1980s. There, the amount of investigation that was actually
occurring had dropped off quite considerably. And by looking
through some of the documents, some of the exchanges between
the investigating scientists and the researchers and the public,
you could tell that there was some sort of a little bit of
snarkiness, a little bit of discord brewing. And as a matter
of fact, some of the public sort of rose up and said, What's the
what's wrong with these government officials telling us
that what we're seeing is nothing more than stars and
planets, we know what we've seen. We know stars and planets
when we when we see them. As matter of fact, they're probably
trying to cover something up. And this actually was a source
or one of the origins of the conspiracy theories. And
unfortunately, some of it came from Canada.
John Greenewald: I know that you said that you obviously have a
scientific background, or the same reasonings applying to you
meaning that you felt that there was maybe an educational aspect
to this to help the people. What what kept Chris going since the
1970s to today? Well, that's
Chris Rutkowski: a good question. I find the UFO
phenomenon fascinating. And when I say that, I mean not just the
reports, but the books, the ziens the conferences, the
everything from the average person on the street witness to
the contactees to the way that the scientific establishment is
treating the UFO phenomenon. I find it as a as a social issue,
a psychologic Galicia, in fact, I've said in one of my books,
that if UFOs are not ultimately a physical phenomenon, they are
at the very least a social or a psychological phenomenon. And in
any of those cases, it's worth investing some research and some
money to study it more carefully, because it really
affects a lot of people. When you think about it, the polls
have shown that about 10% of the North American population,
Canada and the United States believe they've seen a UFO,
that's a significant number. And that suggests that, you know, if
there's something going on, we should be looking at it a little
more carefully.
John Greenewald: So I have to ask the million dollar question
comes up all the time, you know, in chat rooms, and social media
and so on, especially those that aren't acquainted with UFOs. As
much as maybe you and I are. The question mark Always leans
towards, Hey, is it alien? You know, is there that extra
terrestrial route to the cause of these phenomena? I use plural
or the phenomenon? Let me ask you, before we kind of dive
deeper into the evidence, and what you've seen, is, is that
still a possibility to you? Are you convinced of that
possibility? Or do you feel that there are a lot of fascinating
aspects to this? But aliens is probably last on the list? Hmm.
Chris Rutkowski: Well, I'm certainly a doubting Thomas,
there's no question of that. But at the same time, my astronomy
background, you know, talking with other my colleagues, you
know, the the usual argument stars are so far away, if they
have planets with life, you know, it's hard to get here from
there. We don't have any evidence that interstellar
travel is possible. But you know, I side with the the group
that says yes, but our son is an average star. And if there is a
star that's maybe a little bit older than our Sun, let's say,
you know, let's be conservative and save 500,000 years or two, a
million years, a planet orbiting that, that star might have a
little bit of a jump on us. And perhaps if there's a
civilization on that planet, it's not that they will have
been able to break the laws of physics, but they might be able
to bend them in ways that we can't quite conceive of at this
point, and be able to travel between the stars. So it's a
possibility. But I don't see any, you know, real strong
evidence that they're here. There's no question that some of
the UFO reports and some of the cases are very puzzling. But
that doesn't automatically mean that the aliens are here. And
I've you know, I've talked to many abductees, I actually had a
abductee support group for a while, during the the 80s and
into the 90s. And, you know, I understand I've sat and listened
to many people tell me their stories. I understand the
implications. I understand the the arguments either way, but I
just don't think we have the absolute proof yet to make that
quantum leap and say that the aliens are definitely here.
John Greenewald: But I got a project a little bit over 40
years, what do you know, the exact count, I was just kind of
rough estimating from the I don't know when in the 70s. But,
you know, we're over 40 years you've been in this field,
right? Something has to, I mean, I'm curious too, and I totally
get that aspect of it. And I'm only 26 years I'm approaching 26
years in this and researching it. What would you say is
keeping you here that long? I mean, Curiosity can only take
you so far. Is it truly only that?
Chris Rutkowski: Well, only curiosity? I'm fascinated by it.
I I take it as a personal challenge to look at cases that
come my way. I'm interested in the statistics. I guess one of
the things that keeps me going is that I try to cut through a
lot of the nonsense that's out there. Be like I said at the
beginning, I'm a science writer, my day job is actually writing
science articles and digesting and you know, simmering down
some scientific concepts that might be published in Nature,
New Scientist or Scientific American, and making them a
little more palatable to the average layperson so that they
have a better understanding of science. So I'd like to try and
present and liaise with the scientific community that there
is something interesting going on with regard to UFOs. I've
actually published a number of articles in peer reviewed
journals. That seems to be what, what some people are interested
in these days. So I've actually already done that. And I've been
trying to look at the actual data. And I've been working with
individuals, such as Jeff Dettman, here in Canada,
crunching the data to try and find is there anything really
meaty in the UFO phenomenon, reports. And there are some
interesting cases, as I mentioned, and the Canadian us
UFO survey by itself. There's something like 750, to about
1000 UFO reports in Canada alone every year. And a small
percentage of those are unexplained, let's say one or
two or 5%, something like that. But when you're looking at a
body of 30 years worth 25,000 reports, you're looking at a few
100 reports now that are interesting enough to take a
closer look at some of them are well documented. And what I
found is that when I look into some of the documents, stuff,
those are the research that's been done and the investigations
that have been done previously, there's some meat in there. And,
you know, it's, there are some intriguing questions. And so
from a scientific standpoint, I want to know, what was seen what
was reported, how did the scientific community approach
this? And, you know, is is there a way to present this material
to that greater scientific community, so that, you know,
they can embrace it and understand it a little bit more.
John Greenewald: I know the audience kind of perked up when
you said peer review, would you mind giving a brief overview? Is
that is that the survey that you've been talking about?
That's peer reviewed? Or was it another paper or papers? No,
Chris Rutkowski: I've actually published in peer reviewed
journals. A couple of them as a matter of fact, the there's a
journal called perceptual motor skills, which is a psychology
journal. And I've also had a letter published in a medical
journal about UFO experiences. And I've actually published in
astronomy journals on on topics related to UFO is doing or
transient phenomena and things like that. So, you know, I've
been trying to look at the UFO phenomena from a scientific
perspective, and putting my money where my mouth is saying,
Okay, here's scientific community, this is what you
know, you should be taking a look at and studying a little
bit more.
John Greenewald: So let's zero in on that. What should they be
looking at? Is this based on documents that you've received
from the Canadian government?
Chris Rutkowski: Some of it is related to Canadian government
documents, absolutely. Some new developments and your viewers
and listeners might know that some Canadian politicians have
recently come out of the closet, so to speak with regard to UFOs
have made presentations and stood up and parliamentary
committees, the Canadian Parliament version of Congress
and said that we're concerned about UAPs. And that there
should be, you know, a concerted effort to understand what, how
many ufps there are, what's the nature of them, and you know,
considering what, what is being done to study them, and to
approach them from a more rigorous manner. And the
Canadian government turns out to actually be taking things
seriously. Quite recently, just last year, as a matter of fact,
there was a briefing made to the Canadian Defence Minister on
what the Canadian government was doing with regard to UFOs. And
this actually spun out of what was going on the United States
with regard to you the UMP Taskforce, there had been
obviously some questions among the Canadian military and
politicians about what was going on. and Canadian ministers of
defense are kind of like the Secretary of Defense. And they
come and go a little bit faster than the Secretaries of Defense,
so and there was a new one that was just coming into power in
2021. And his staff was asked to give him a briefing on the state
of UFO investigations and UFO research in Canada. And I had
actually been contacted by the Canadian Forces in the Ministry
of Defense. For information about this, because I had been
keeping track of the UFO phenomena for some time, I had
actually been at the National Research Council, working with
some of the astronomers. So my name I had been associated with
UFOs. And so they they quoted me in this briefing, and I actually
had never seen this briefing until somebody filed an access
to information request and in Canada, they're out called
access to information in the United States their freedom of
information, requests. And they had filed for the briefing and
they didn't get the briefing, they got the PowerPoint slides
from the briefing. And I was actually mentioned on one of the
PowerPoint slides by the, by the Defense Department, you know,
briefing, the Ministry of Defense, which was kind of cool,
I suppose. And they talked about how that how many cases there
were, what the the history of the investigations had been. And
basically what I told you earlier in this podcast, and
that was the status as of June 2021. And since then, you know,
the some additional politicians have come out. And in Canada
have to also note that the UAPs are still called UFOs. In
Canada.
John Greenewald: As matter of fact, labeled correctly, it's
what you're saying the Canadians are doing, the Canadians are
very proper.
Chris Rutkowski: Yeah, this is good. And, yeah, in 1985, the
National Research Council itself got out of the UFO business,
because it was going to be a line item in their budget. And
they didn't want to see UFO investigations as part of their
budget. So they figured what are we going to do? So I'd have
actually had been in the National Research Council in
Ottawa, visiting with some astronomy colleagues. And they
were mentioning that what are they going to do about the UFOs?
And I said, Well, you can always send them to me, I'm interested
in the subject. And that was the last I heard of it, until about
1999, when I started getting the UFO reports. And these were
reports, sent to military bases, some from military personnel
themselves, some from the general public, and documenting,
you know, what people have been seeing. And I included them as a
matter of course, in my Canadian UFO survey. So since I began the
Canadian UFO survey, I've actually been including the
National Research Council, UFO reports, and then the ones that
have been coming to me directly. So we actually have a complete
record of UFO reports in Canada from 1947, to now, many of them
coming from government documents from the National Research
Council, from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. And then, in
2000, another organization called Transport Canada, which
is the equivalent of the FAA started being responsible for
the UFOs. And there's actually a form that pilots can fill out in
Canada, where it says, If you see a basically, if you see a
UFO, you know, tell us about it, and it's filed as an incident
report. And so those reports are, are available as well. So
we it's interesting that, you know, throughout these
iterations of various organizations and government
departments, we have a continuous record of UFO
investigations at one level or another in some depth or
another, right from the dawn of the early beginning of flying
saucers to now. And I've made this point and people have
criticized me for it that I think Canada has sort of been
ahead of the curve in terms of the United States on this
because we have these documents. And they are available. And
we've been analyzing the data all along. And what do we know
about what's been happening in United States after blue book, I
mean, people like Paul Dean, and yourself and a few others have
found some documents here and there. But we don't have a
continuous record up until, you know, some of the revelations
that came out just a few years ago, when it was discovered that
there was a project between 2007 and 2012. That ran, but we don't
know exactly the details. We don't know the cases. Even the
UAP taskforce report that came out last year. We don't know
what those reports actually were, we don't know what was
seen. We don't know where they were seen from. And, and yet, we
have here in Canada, and it's pretty substantial record of
cases. And Canada does share responsibility in NORAD, of
course, with the United States. So there's some bleeding back
and forth. And I, I suspect that NORAD, you know, it has full
access to what the Canadians have, if so, that must mean that
the Americans must have what has been coming through Canada, and
we don't have don't have that information at all.
John Greenewald: I want to go back when you were saying and
correct me if I'm paraphrasing this wrong, but essentially that
the Canadian government was sharing the UFO reports they
were getting directly with you. Right. And and is that still
going on? Or are they kind of shifting how they're
investigating these things here in 2022?
Chris Rutkowski: Yeah, as a matter of fact, once it came out
that I had been receiving the Canadian or the UFO reports
through national defense bill might have It rang off somewhere
in Ottawa and somebody said, Exactly why are we giving a
civilian access to some of these reports? And so I would say that
most of the the cases that I've received, dried up about about
that time, so
John Greenewald: And when was that? When did that dry up when
they
Chris Rutkowski: probably in the mid 90s, mid 2021?
John Greenewald: I gotcha. Oh, wow. You know, somewhat
recently, somewhat recently. Yeah. So how many cases? Do you
think prior to the dry up? Did they send over to you?
Chris Rutkowski: Oh, well? Well, there's several levels. The
Transport Canada files themselves, have somewhere
around 500 cases between 2005 and 2020. And I have probably
another 500 600, between mid 1995 Until now, and there's
probably some overlap in there. So it's one of the projects that
I'm working on, is trying to take a good look at these scan
them. And I'm trying to make them available. As a matter of
fact, I had hoped that by today, I would be able to announce that
at least some of the missing years of the National Research
Council files that hadn't been made public yet might be
uploaded. And I've been going through it doing things like
taking witnesses names and phone numbers and things like that, so
that everybody can have access to these. And it's quite a slow
process. concurrently with all this. I was asked by the
University of Manitoba, about five years ago, what I was going
to be doing with all my UFO files and my collection of UFO
books, and zines and whatnot. And I said, I'm not sure exactly
what would you consider donating them to the archives. And this
was all about the same time when, you know, the the
acquisition of archives of of UFO materials was really
starting to go into high gear. Certainly, Jen Aldrich, and a
very Greenwood and people like that have been doing this for
some time. Recently. Marla, David Marler has been doing some
of this and collecting vast materials and it's sending, you
know, sending a lot of them to Sweden to their collections out
there. But the University of Manitoba had asked me for mine,
and so I have actually been donating all of my UFO files,
and all of my books and zines. As a matter of fact, you can see
behind me there's not very many books on these bookcases.
Because just two days ago, I donated the last of my UFO books
to the university archives. And so they have all my documents
and UFO reports and books and zines and so forth. And they're
going to be digitizing it slowly. I mean, Stan Friedman's
collection has been donated to the government of New Brunswick,
their archives, and the archivists sit there said that
it's probably going to take 10 to 15 years just to index what
Stan Friedman has. I have no idea how much how long it's
going to take for the University of Manitoba to do mine. I have a
lot less than Stan's, but it's pretty substantial.
John Greenewald: Wow. That's good to hear, though that that
eventually this stuff will be digitized, or that's the the
aim. So that's good. I want to take you back to the files a
little bit. Obviously, you've collected quite a bit over the
years, and I want to kind of hone in on either something
you've covered in the book. I'll let you take the lead here. But
when it comes to the government files, do you have a top one,
two or three cases that make you go? Wow
Chris Rutkowski: Hmm. Well, I'm gonna have to talk about Falcon
Lake. No question is that for people who don't know it, you
should google google of Falcon Lake UFO report. In 1967, it was
actually the the reason I was actually on Unsolved Mysteries
the first time. They recreated it. And the idea was back in
1967, a fella was doing some amateur prospecting was a bit of
a rock hound. And he went into the bush and this was May of
1967 he encountered a Hollywood style flying saucer, for lack of
a better description. And I had landed he touched the sight of
it a blast of hot gas came up out of the sight of it when it
took off. Set his clothes on fire. left marks on the ground
the usual Will you know trace case that type of thing. This
fellow was examined, he was at an emergency room in a hospital.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police investigated the Royal
Canadian Air Force investigated. And their investigations
amounted to something like three or 400 pages that we now have.
And we have all those documents, ranging from interrogation of
the witness to discussion with where he's where he worked,
interviews with the family analysis, there are site visits
out to this place. And what's curious do you have it has
basically all the things you would want in a UFO case, a
witness who could talk about what happened, there was
materials found at the site. As a matter of fact, radioactivity
was found at the site and the material was analyzed by the
Canadian government, the site and the investigation was was
done by the Canadian military, the Royal Canadian Mounted
Police, the documents are available. This fellow was
physically injured, we have the medical records from from the
studies of this fellow. And in addition, a year later, he went
back to visit the site kind of for old times sake, and dug down
a little bit in the rock over which this UFO had hovered, and
found some radioactive metal that he brought back and that
radioactive metal was analyzed by the University of Chicago, I
think Arizona looked at it certainly some Canadian
institutions. And that metal is also radioactive. And that a
piece of that metal is still in existence has never been
mentioned in any of the discussions of, you know, crash
retrievals, from UFOs. And yet, the analysis was done starting
in 1968. And there have been a number of analyses done over the
years, and has been investigated and studied three ways from
Sunday. And everybody should know about this case, because it
has all the details that you would want in a in a really good
UFO case.
John Greenewald: I'm not very familiar with it. So if you
don't mind the potentially ignorant question when they did
the analysis on the material beyond the radioactivity, what
was the makeup of the was it aluminum? Was it? What like,
what what what was it? Did it match anything?
Chris Rutkowski: Yeah, it's a very strange thing. It's almost
pure silver. And when I say pure silver, I mean, pure silver,
people have said, well, you know, there's silver veins and
stuff like that in this particular area, because it's
the Canadian Shield and so forth. No, this wasn't silver,
or this was pure silver, that is radioactive. And the site is
actually fairly isolated. In fact, the easiest way to get to
the site, believe it or not, is by horseback. Sort of mini mule
train. It's accessible to the public. As a matter of fact, you
can take a horseback ride with our Canadian Canada's mini
Roswell, there's some souvenir stands, that you can get T
shirts and whatnot, you can take a horseback right to the site.
But the material is very, very puzzling and why there would be
melted silver, radioactive silver in a crack in a rock, you
know, a mile from civilization? I don't know. Now, does the case
prove that aliens exist? No. Is there evidence that it's a hoax?
Well, no, because the fellow never made any money. He wasn't
trying to get famous. As matter of fact, he's shutting the
publicity. And the Royal Canadian Mounted Police and the
Royal Canadian Air Force both said in their final reports that
they could not explain the case. It's also included, by the way,
in the Condon report. And but Condon report had a different
take on it. They were fairly convinced it was a hoax, simply
because well, what else could
John Greenewald: it be? That's the easy fallback. Yeah. But so
there's a
Chris Rutkowski: difference of opinion between the Canadians
and Americans. I have decided with Canada, of course. But it's
in a very strange case, those documents and I mentioned
there's three or 400 pages of these documents. And it's it's
certainly one of the best documented UFO cases. That's
just one of the cases that we've looked at over the years. There
are many, many others are in fact in my will before
John Greenewald: and I don't mean to interrupt you, I
apologize. But one last question before we do move on to another
case. Where's the piece now? Where can you say my Well, yeah,
is it behind you on that? Is it on the bookcase as it were?
Chris Rutkowski: It's not on this bookcase? Let me just say
that. Okay. All right, the
John Greenewald: next room Gotcha. Yeah. But is it so so
Joking aside, can you say I'd like it, do you? Well, again,
I'm not trying to push too much. We can't say you can't say but
you haven't or is it at a university,
Chris Rutkowski: we do have as matter of fact, some of the
artifacts from this particular case have already been given to
the archives, the actual undershirt, that this fellow had
been worrying when it got blasted by the by the UFO that
was retrieved, it's still intact, well, kind of intact as
as undershirts from 1967. I have undershirts that older, fine,
but 1967, they're a little it's a little tattered. But you can
see the burn marks on it, his cap that he was wearing, and a
few other artifacts, plus the metal and you know, that's all
going to be going to, to archives, the metal was studied,
was put through an electron microscope, trying to remember
whether it was two years ago, it was, yeah, just before the
pandemic, so I guess three years ago? And there's no question,
you know, it's it's definitely silver, and it's certainly
radioactive.
John Greenewald: Was there anything unique about the burn
marks? I don't know if those were analyzed. And yeah, the
birthmarks are quite
Chris Rutkowski: interesting, because on the side of the, this
craft, there's kind of an exhaust vent, like you would
find, you know, with, with, with holes in it, and whatever. And
when this gas was blasted out of this exhaust vent, when the
thing took off, the pattern of the burns on his body, and on
the shirt matched fairly well. And it's, people have said,
well, he was burned by radiation. Well, no, he wasn't
burned by the radiation factor, radiation is very unusual to
find, because, you know, he was actually taken for a full body
count to a nuclear facility here in Canada, where he was, you
know, not radioactive. But the some of the soil and material
from the site had been radioactive. As a matter of
fact, some of the documents that we've found, show that the Royal
Canadian Air Force's laboratory was unable to ship the material
from one part of the country to the other because it was so
radioactive. And that is another document that shows that there
had been some discussion about cordoning off this entire area,
which happens to be in kind of a, a resort area, not where he
where he was, but to get to it, you'd have to go through a
resort area. And they were going to close off the resort area for
the entire summer to protect the population of a concern for
safety. So, you know, the the radiation is a significant part
of the story. But he himself was not burned by radiation.
John Greenewald: And before we move on, because I want to ask
you about other cases as well. But after 50 plus years, nothing
like a classified platform piece of technology, something either
American, Canadian or whatever, has ever been presented as
something that could take kind of credit for this incident. I
mean, is there anything that's come along that makes sense to
you? From a skeptical standpoint? Like, oh, okay,
maybe this is it?
Chris Rutkowski: Well, yeah, I mean, one of the, this fellow
was was quite unique in terms of UFO experiences, because he
never talked in terms of aliens. He had a military background
himself. And he was convinced that he had seen some kind of
secret military landing vertical takeoff craft. And this was 67.
So this was just at the beginning of Apollo. In fact, I
think the tragic. Apollo one accident wasn't called Apollo
one, of course, but as I think the accident occurred, just
previous to this. And so it was in the news that NASA was going
to the moon. And so you know, he thought that's what this thing
was because he said, you know, what else could it be? It's some
sort of metallic craft. He said, it certainly looked like the
side was sort of some sort of burnished metal, couldn't see
any rivets. There were lights coming out of it. So he said it
must be some sort of a, an American craft of some sort. And
yet, nothing matching the description has been seen before
since the argument is if NASA could do this, why did they
waste too much time on Saturn V's that type of thing. There
was something called the Avro car, which was produced in
Canada. And some viewers might be familiar with it. It was it
was the flying pancake that had been developed,
John Greenewald: but it got more than three feet off the ground.
Chris Rutkowski: Did it Yeah, it really didn't work very well.
Some people have suggested there might have been a secret program
that continued developing it. And that's what we were seeing.
But, you know, there hadn't been another sighting of anything
like this, of this description of this configuration. So, if it
was a secret craft, we simply don't know what kind it was. We
don't have any proof that it was Aliens. And the, the possibility
of a hoax is always there. But we you know, it would be of the
caliber of of Barnum and Bailey because it's certainly one of
the most elaborate contrived on record and the fellow certainly
didn't profit from any of this. So it's a it's one of those that
we simply have to classify as unexplained at this time.
John Greenewald: It's also intriguing if the hopes comes up
in the discussion that you didn't jump to aliens or
something fantastic like that. And extraordinary that he
rather's tried to stay a little bit close to Earth, pardon the
pun, but explanation. So that's always an intriguing part of any
story, but let alone that one. But with that fascinating case,
is there any others that stick out in your mind that that
really kind of show you that this phenomenon is worth
setting?
Chris Rutkowski: Well, the fact that the Canadian government
itself thought that cases were worth studying is worth noting.
And one set of documents that we found in the in the archives was
something called the Robertson briefing, not the Robertson
report. People in the fall, as you know, it's something called
the Robertson briefing, there's a military personnel named
Robertson. And he was asked to prepare a document very similar
to what happened with me in 2021. But he'd been asked to
prepare a briefing for the chief of defense staff, which was the
person who's directly in contact with the Ministry of Defense
gives him all the information tells him what's going on in in
Canada. And the minister of defense at that time was a fella
named Leo Kaddu, who had just taken over from somebody that
UFO fans will know Paul Hellyer, who was Minister of Defense up
until that time, but Hellyer had left and Kegel had come in, and
the chief of defense staff wanted to brief Leo Kavya on
what the military knew about UFOs. And so he produced a 28
page briefing document describing the what Canada knew
about UFOs describes what was going on in the States, and then
described the number of cases that had been reported in
Canada, the number of cases that they thought were really good.
And listed six reports and six cases that Canadian military had
investigated that they could not explain. That's in this
particular document. One of them was the one that was the case
that I just mentioned, the Falcon Lake case. And there were
five others, including a radar case, that that came from a
radar base here in Manitoba, oddly enough. But there are a
number of other cases that were evaluated and found that they
they couldn't explain this was the Canadian government couldn't
explain out of all the cases that they had been receiving.
And so that went into this briefing document and the
reverse of the 2021. We have the briefing document, but not the
slides that went with them. So it's, and we've tried to locate
them, we failed to try and get the slides because among them
were maps and photos and that type of thing. But they've been
they haven't found them. But we have the briefing document. It's
very curious that, you know, we that the Canadian government had
been doing some pretty intense investigations back in, in the
1960s, into the 70s. And, and certainly after that,
John Greenewald: in the last 1015 minutes or so that I have
with you. I want to make sure that I get into kind of the
present day you fall ology we've established you've got an
amazing background to yourself, and you've been around a long
time. When it comes to the overall conversation right now.
How do you feel about it? Do you feel that that this topic is
moving forward in a good direction or bad?
Chris Rutkowski: Well, I find it intriguing that there's a lot of
interest in now from in the United States regarding a
congressional investigation. Now, I caution people that
Gerald Ford lobbied for a congressional investigation into
UFOs before He was president, he went back in 1966. The
investigation occurred in 1968. And then the following year Blue
Book was cancelled. So be careful what you wish for, first
of all. Secondly, what we've heard so far is that there, you
know, there appears to be some desire to investigate UAPs. And
for some make an allowance for military personnel to come
forward without any stigma. And, as we understand it, no, they
there's like 400 cases now that have been presented. But a lot
of them are historical people sort of, had been hanging on to
and couldn't tell anybody. And so we don't actually have the
really good data that people are looking for. I mean, there's a
push now for instrumented observations, whether you're
looking at nightcaps made our nodes or to whatever Avi Loeb
is, at his group are planning to do. And certainly MUFON has
some, you know, instrumented work that's being worked on
right now to whether those will actually be insufficient number
to actually allow some instrumented observations of
UFOs. I'm not sure there's certainly all sky cameras that
have been going for many, many years, throughout North America
and around the world. And there have been some odd lights that
have been detected on those, as well kind of already have
instrumented detections, but I understand the need for for more
instrumental detection. But I'm, I'm concerned that there would
be some view of throwing the baby out with the bathwater that
we have, well, just Canada 25,000 reports from both
military personnel and civilians, of UFOs. And if
that's not considered valid data for, you know, for science to
examine, that's a concern because, you know, it is data,
one has to only go back a few years relatively, to note that
when Sputnik was launched, the United States relied on civilian
observers to keep track of what and when Sputnik was flying
overhead and using amateur radar with amateur radio operators to
keep track of its beeping. So civilians played a very
important role in that. And certainly, with regard to
aerospace, with the development of the pumpkin seed, and other
stealth aircraft, civilian aircraft spotters, were
providing valuable data with regard to how these aircraft are
flying. And you know, the civilians play a very important
part in the nature of observations of unusual objects
in our airspace. In the case of Transport Canada, and I've made
the case a number of times, that they're asking pilots to report
UFOs. And there are many reports of pilots seeing lights moving
around their aircraft, structured objects that may or
may not be drones, or who knows what, but things that appear on
radar that shouldn't be there and things that that aren't on
radar that should be there. And, you know, whether the traffic
collision avoidance systems are going off, when there's nothing
around, does that mean that there's some problem with the
technology? Or is there a problem with the pilots? If so,
you know, these are aircraft and commercial aircraft are flying
hundreds and hundreds of people on every flight? Is there a
safety factor? Are people in danger, because there's
something wrong with the pilots, if they're reporting UFOs that
aren't there, or the the devices themselves are malfunctioning? I
think this argues that there should be a greater attempt for
science and other other faculties to investigate and
study the UFO phenomenon. So I'm hoping that with an increased
interest and an attempt from the United States military, and
hopefully from the Canadian military and other military
organizations around the world, that we'll be gathering enough
data that perhaps we can come to some better understanding of the
UFO phenomenon. So that's where I'd like to go. And I'm hoping
that the civilian aspect is going to be part of it.
John Greenewald: I hope so too. The one thing that I talked a
lot about on my my channel and I kind of want to juxtapose it
with your thoughts about what's going on in Canada, is despite
what the general public thinks, that even though Congress is is
uttering the words UAP or the acronym UAP and the words on
identified flying object or so on, all of that is great. But
we've established that we're really not going to get a lot of
data us the general public. The public report last year was kind
of silly. There was still some gems here and there. But we
really didn't learn much of what was already being bantered
about. We just got a couple of statistics. And we don't know
what these things are. And there's some cool attributes
that we can't explain. That's pretty much it. Right? We don't
have anything more than that. But I think the general public
thinks this is some new path to a disclosure that there's a
newfound transparency to this conversation. And I guess in a
way, you can argue that but for me, I see it deepening the
security classification. Gaiden, here in America, pretty much
shows that anything related to UAP is going to be classified
secret and top secret right off the bat. So the secrecy in my
opinion, is strengthening its deepening. And even though we're
hearing UFO and UAP, more, doesn't necessarily mean there's
transparency. I don't think we've had the conversation.
Before today, we're the mid 2021, you kind of saw those
reports, stop. I was always encouraged by that level of
transparency in Canada, that they were taking in reports from
a government and or military level, and giving it to somebody
like you that was in the private sector or civilian, and somebody
who would actually do something with it, and could contribute to
the conversation.
Chris Rutkowski: Yeah. Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry. No, no. And
John Greenewald: that's where I wanted to throw it back to you
is, can you juxtapose Canada's stance right now to America's
which, and this is just my opinion, is deepening secrecy?
Is Canada doing the same thing?
Chris Rutkowski: Well, again, because Canada shares NORAD or
partners with NORAD with the United States, I think there's
there's going to be some, some overflow from one side to the
other. And it is interesting that, you know, up until 2021, I
was getting these, these confidential reports, and doing
something with them, because in the private sector, I think
that's, that's the advantage of the private sector, we can do
things we have many, many resources. And by conferring
with colleagues, we can certainly advance the knowledge
in this particular field. And I'm, I suspect, that even though
you know, my, my source of, of UAP, and UFO information has
dried up from one aspect. There's no question that because
Canadian politicians are now moving forward on this as well,
that there's going to be some pressure on the Canadian
government to do something. And something not necessarily, in
conjunction with the United States, I think there's
certainly some national pride that has to be involved here.
It's a matter of fact, one of the Canadian politicians has,
has agreed to make a public statement at my book launch in
September. And that's, and I don't know what he's going to
going to say. But it's going to be something about, you know,
the government's position on UFOs, or an encouragement of the
government position on UFOs. And I suspect that in the coming
weeks, months years, there'll be some more information. And
matter of fact, there have been, I think, five or six times just
over the past year, when Canadian politicians have given
presentations or asked questions in parliamentary committees,
about UFOs. I haven't heard that in Congress. Congress seems to
be busy with other things these these days. I don't know what,
but at least in Canada, there have been some questions of the
minister in charge of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the
minister in charge of the Canadian Security Intelligence
Agency, and the minister in charge of transport, and
therefore, you know, and also involved in nuclear capability,
because there has been some questions about are there UAPs
over Canadian nuclear facilities? I was asked to
provide a list of UFOs from my 25,000 database, from Canadian
Nuclear plants for that particular politician, and I
found 50 Just concerning one particular nuclear facility.
Now, does that mean that aliens are fascinated with Canadian
nuclear facilities? No, it simply means that, that, you
know, there are UAP reports concurrent with the locations of
the facilities facilities, but it does raise the issue that,
you know, if if there are some cases that are unexplained,
which, you know, are any of these particular cases, the ones
around nuclear facilities, and that's the ones that the
politicians want to know about.
John Greenewald: So the 50 over the course of what you've
collected at first didn't sound impressive, but 50 cases at one
nuclear facility?
Chris Rutkowski: Yeah, that are concurrent with one nuclear
facility.
John Greenewald: So do you have a tally of how many overall of
all the nuclear? I don't know how many nuclear facilities are
are in Canada? So?
Chris Rutkowski: No, there's, I don't know how many there are.
There's, there's, there's three or four alone in the province of
Ontario. And we did a similar one for one of the other
facilities. And there are also, you know, some significant
numbers, you know, 20 3040, something like that over that
one. But it's related to, you know, trees falling in the
forest, that you know, that that population distribution is
related to UFO reports. So the greater population in a
particular area, the more that there will be a potential for
UFO reports, and we get more reports so that there's a
concentration of UFO reports coming from populated centers
like Toronto, and Vancouver. And it turns out that at least one
of the nuclear facilities happens to be quite close to
Toronto. So, you know, it's hard to say, yes, these nuclear
facilities are, are being flown by by UAPs? Or is it that, you
know, people are living nearby the nuclear facility? And that's
why they're seeing UFOs? It's an interesting question. But this
just shows you how much potential there is for private
sector research, and probably military sector is here to into
the UFO phenomena, putting aside the whole alien thing. This is
quite interesting. And I think it's worth studying.
John Greenewald: Just to close up that thought on the nuclear
facilities, it obviously came up with a congressional hearing
here in brief when they were talking about that, in your
expertise and background going through those, you know, 1000s
of reports, do those numbers stick out beyond, you know,
potentially just populated areas? But did they stick out as
weighted to those meaning? Is that a lot? Or if I came to and
said, Chris, I want to know, how many are near a ballpark, you
know, a stadium? And, you know, would you find 10 times as many?
Or would you find a fraction? That's what I'm trying to kind
of gauge is?
Chris Rutkowski: Is it statistically significant? Yeah,
John Greenewald: that's how much more eloquent way to put it than
I did.
Chris Rutkowski: And we haven't actually done that. I mean, I
simply came up with the list, and now we have to go back and
take a look at them. But and I caution people, you know, when
people say that there's a, in fact, there's a photo that was
published on a on a Facebook page, just the other day, that
said that there's a, you know, this UFO was hovering over this
nuclear facility. And what they were the the object turned out
to be the planet Saturn. photographed, you know, over the
edge just happen to be that it was the direction of the nuclear
facility from the witness. But the interpretation was that the
UFO was over the nuclear facility, which it wasn't
obviously. But that's the type of thing we have to be careful
of when we hear UFO is seen over nuclear sites. Is it really over
the nuclear sites? Or is it seen in the direction of the nuclear
site? And that is something that really has to be taken a closer
look at?
John Greenewald: Here's my last question for you just out of
everything you've collected, but broadening it a little bit. I
won't hold you to the exact number. But do you have an idea
of those 1000s of cases that you've collected, how many you
would consider unidentified
Chris Rutkowski: out of the 25,000, in the Canadian UFO
survey, and I'll just add, that's just from 1989. Till now,
I also have a body of files from previous to that. But just for
the 25,000. You know, if we're looking at and I think we
calculated, let's use 1%. As a as a value, you know, you're
looking at 250 cases, over 30 years, that are relatively high
quality, perhaps the witnesses were police, or pilots. And
there has been some, you know, additional documentation.
Perhaps this is a file from the National Research Council or
from national defense or something like that, or was
investigated by myself or one of the many colleagues that are UFO
investigators in Canada, that that do a pretty decent job. So,
you know, top 250 cases, that's still enough to work with.
John Greenewald: That's awesome, Chris, I really enjoyed our
conversation as I usually do. But thank you so much for taking
the time. I'm for those of you again listening and or watching
here on YouTube. Canada's UFOs declassified that is Chris's
newest. And Chris I had no idea how many books you actually did
right and you wrote quite a few but prepping for the show. I
kind of looked him up and had no idea and they go back 20 years I
think is when you if
Chris Rutkowski: this were, this is number 10. The Canada's UFO
declassified man good
John Greenewald: good for you. i I've written a couple but the
can't even imagine. I have them. They're good. I appreciate that.
Thank you. I'll give you your $10 After thank you okay. No, I
appreciate that. But, yeah, a lot of respect for what you do.
And thank you so much. In closing, is there a website that
you can point people to social media that you prefer? How can
people get in contact with you?
Chris Rutkowski: Sure. I mean, I'm, I'm on Twitter as you
follow as you research on Facebook. I'm an admin for UFO
updates on Facebook. And my website for the Canadian UFO
survey is Canadian UFO report.com. And I have a blog,
which is u forum UFO R U m.blogspot.com. Where I talk
about interesting developments and new phonology and make
available some hitherto unseen UFO documents.
John Greenewald: Very, very cool. And to make sure that the
audience gets all that I will ensure that it is all in the
show notes. If you're not sure where those are, if you're on
YouTube, just look below in the description. If you are
listening on any podcast platform, iTunes, Spotify, you
name it, it's under the black vault radio. There should be a
description there for you to click on all of Chris's links
and find out more information. Chris, thank you again for your
time. Truly, truly appreciate it.
Chris Rutkowski: Thank you for having me.
John Greenewald: Anytime you're always welcome back and thank
you. And thank you all for watching and listening. This is
John Greenewald, Jr signing off, and we'll see you next time.