113: Aliens & Espionage: Crop Circles and the CIA Coverup
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Hey, it's your buddy AJ from the Y-Files. And Hecklefish. Right, and Hecklefish. We just wanted to tell you that if you want to start a podcast, Spotify makes it easy. It'd have to be easy for humans to understand it. Will you stop that? I'm just saying. Spotify for Podcasters lets you record and edit podcasts from your computer. I don't have a computer. Do you have a phone? Of course I have a phone. I'm not a savage. Well, with Spotify, you can record podcasts from your phone, too.

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In 1974, a group of scientists beamed a message into space. The message, meant to be received by an intelligent alien species, described life on Earth. Written in simple binary code and using the most powerful radio telescope on the planet, the message was broadcast to a dense cluster of stars in the constellation of Hercules. This exercise was just ceremonial, a way to demonstrate new technology in radio astronomy.

Nobody was really expected to receive it. And even if they did, it wouldn't be anytime soon. The nearest star in the direction of the broadcast is 25,000 light years away. So the telescope was tuned to 2380 megahertz, aimed at Hercules and fired up. The scientists congratulated each other, shook hands and went on with their lives. But 27 years later, something very unexpected happened with that message beamed into deep space. Someone wrote back.

One morning in 1966, George Pedley was working his farm in Tully, Queensland, Australia, when he heard a strange buzzing sound. He climbed down from his tractor and started walking in the direction of the sound. Then he saw a circular craft slowly rise above a section of swampland not 50 feet from where he was standing. The craft hovered for a few seconds, shot straight up into the sky and disappeared.

When George went to investigate, he found a large circle of reeds had been pulled from the swamp and flattened into a disc. The circle was 30 feet across, two feet thick, and arranged in a clockwise swirl. Because of the swirl and the thickness of the reeds, locals called the formation a UFO nest. But what this actually was, was a crop circle.

Since the 1960s, thousands of crop circles or crop formations have been found. They've been seen on every continent in almost every country on Earth. But the epicenter for crop formations is Wiltshire in the southwest of England. Crop formations range from the very simple to the very complex. Formations can be circles, stars, and other geometric shapes, but some are pictograms, though nobody knows for sure what they mean.

Though every formation is different, they have a few things in common. Recognizable patterns that are created very quickly, usually at night. The creation of these patterns is always associated with some kind of light, either a beam of light or an orb of light. Whatever that is, that's being worked out. Oh my God.

Though crop formations seem like a new phenomenon, there's evidence they've been appearing for a long time. In the 9th century, Abigard, the Bishop of Lyon in France, wrote about parishioners who were possibly engaged in devil worship or paganism. They were collecting seeds out of flattened circles in the fields and using them for fertility rituals. In 1686, Robert Plot, a professor at Oxford, wrote about crop circles.

He even drew pictures of a couple that appeared near his home. He said they were formed by a flash of light. And once they were formed, animals wouldn't go near them. Around the same time, a pamphlet was released called "The Mowing Devil."

It describes how a farmer woke to see a bright light in his field that he thought was fire. When he went to investigate, he found a crop circle. It's called the mowing devil because the farmer said the circle was so neatly mowed that it could not have been done by a mortal man. John Leland served as librarian to Henry VIII. He wrote about patterns appearing in grass overnight. In 1937, a British science journal reported circles found in a field of barley and even included one of the first photos taken of a crop circle.

In 1945, this photo was taken by a balloonist working for the RAF Parachute Training School.

In 1952, the US Air Force investigated circles found in Kansas. In 1963, Sir Patrick Moore, an astronomer writing for the New Scientist Journal, investigated a formation in Charlton. In the wheat fields were features taking the form of circular or elliptical areas in which the wheat had been flattened. One very well defined was an oval, 15 yards long by four and a half broad. There was evidence of spiral flattening.

And in one case, there was a circular area in the center in which the wheat had not been flattened. One of the texts discovered in the Dead Sea Scrolls is the Book of Enoch. Enoch talks about lightning leaving marks on the earth. So these formations have been seen since the beginning of recorded history. Even though thousands of circles have been found and many people claim to witness them forming, no one had ever caught it on camera until 1996.

John Whaley was camping out on a hill in Wiltshire called Oliver's Castle, named for a fort that was built there many years ago. Around 3:00 AM, something caught his eye. He grabbed his video camera and captured footage of several glowing orbs hovering over a field. Then, like magic, here's the formation from the air. Nobody can agree on what crop circles mean, though most people believe their messages. Now, this is frustrating to many researchers. They say whoever's making these, why don't they just speak English?

Well, in 2001, they did. Intelligent, the, uh... Intelligent, the control. You see, the object came down and it stopped burning. Nothing random about it. There's no movement in prevailing wind. I can't think what that is. The definitive piece of evidence.

In 1974, the Arecibo message was sent from Earth to a cluster of stars in the Hercules constellation. It's called the Arecibo message because that was the name of the giant radio telescope used to transmit it. The team that created the message was led by Dr. Frank Drake,

with assistance from Carl Sagan. The message was 1679 binary digits that could be converted to an image, designed to convey information about civilization on Earth. It starts with a representation of the numbers 1 through 10. This provides a key to the rest of the message.

Next, atomic numbers of hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, which are used to make up DNA. Carbon is at the top because it's the most dominant in forms of life. The message shows more information about DNA, including the double helix structure. For the bottom, a figure of a human, its average height, and the population of the Earth, which was a little over 4 billion at the time.

Next, our solar system, starting with the Sun and moving out to Pluto. The Earth is shifted up to identify the planet sending the signal.

At the bottom, a graphic representing the Arecibo radio telescope. Now, the nearest star that could possibly receive the message is 25,000 light years away. So we couldn't really expect a reply for another 50,000 years. But on the morning of August 14th, 2001, a formation was discovered right next to the Chilbolton radio telescope. Now, even if you don't know the full design, when you're on the ground, you can tell you're in a crop circle. There's structure and uniformity to it.

But this new formation was different. It was a mess. It wasn't symmetrical. Nobody could make sense of it until it was viewed from the air. A face. And three days later, this appeared. This became known as the Arecibo Answer. The formation uses the same 23 by 73 grid. The top line shows the numbers 1 through 10, just like the original, but the reply shows silicon as the main element for life, not carbon.

Their DNA is shown as having a third string. In the center is a humanoid figure about four feet tall with a large head, and their population is about 21 billion. Below the figure is their solar system. They appear to occupy three objects in the system, the third and fourth planets, and then there's another shape that could mean a planet or some other object or structure.

On the human Arecibo message is a picture of the radio telescope, which was used to send the message. Whoever sent the reply seems to understand this. So what is this design meant to represent? Well, just a year earlier, this formation appeared in the same place.

Is this the same object? Is this crop formation a representation of a machine used to communicate through space? Again, frustrated researchers and skeptics agree on something. Why don't they just speak English? Well, almost exactly one year later, this formation appeared. My brain, my brain just exploded. Once again, we see a face, but that's not a human face.

And just like the Arecibo message was broadcast in binary code, the disk formation also contains binary code. And for the first time, we get an actual literal message. The code was translated to letters using ASCII, the encoding standard for electronic communication. Beware the bearers of false g-g-gifts and their b-b-broken promises. Much p-p-pain, but still time. B-b-believe. There is g-g-good out there. We oppose d-d-d-deception.

Whoever it is that wants to communicate with us is using many different means. In 2004, Robert Ridge was deer hunting a few miles outside of Roswell, New Mexico. Half buried in the dirt, he found a strange rock.

On the rock is a geometric carving. Robert grabbed it and didn't think it was anything more than a cool rock someone lost at some point. But he didn't keep it a secret. He showed it to friends and anyone who was curious about it. It didn't take long before strange discoveries were made about the rock. For one, it's magnetized lodestone, which is not a kind of rock found in that area. And under a microscope, the Roswell Rock is extremely smooth. There's no carving marks or indication of sandblasting.

But the most fascinating discovery is that in 1996, eight years before the Roswell Rock was found, this crop formation appeared. The designs match up.

Some people think this design is a message. Others think it's a map. Still, others think the Roswell Rock, the Arecibo Answer, and all crop circles are nothing but a hoax. But who would create such elaborate hoaxes, and why? Well, in 1991, we would get the answer when a British newspaper ran a front-page story with the headline, The Men Who Conned the World. Oh, no. Oh, no.

On September 9th, 1991, two retirees in their 60s confessed to starting the crop circle phenomenon in 1978. Doug Bauer said the idea came to him one night in a pub. He was living in Queensland in 1966 when the Tully UFO left behind that circle of reeds. Doug thought it would be fun to trick people into thinking UFOs were landing in wheat fields in southern England.

He enlisted the help of his friend, Dave Chorley. All they needed to make a crop circle was a wood plank, a bit of rope, and a twisted piece of wire. At first, their designs were simple and crude, but over time, they became more and more complex. - And you could center this through this ring

walk straight towards it, and lo and behold, you've got the lovely straight line that you could wish for. International media picked up the story, and the mystery was solved. Crop circles were nothing more than a couple of amiable old fellows playing a prank, and that was that. That's it? End of story? It's kind of disappointing. Oh, we're just getting started.

Oh, go on. Doug and Dave might have created a few crop circles, but their story has a lot of holes. They demonstrated their circle-making technique, and the results were janky. Most crop formations, even back then, were much more precise. Doug and Dave's formations were out of alignment every time. The more complicated the design, the worse the formations were. During one demonstration for a news crew, Doug attempted to reproduce one of his circles and accidentally made it twice as big as it should have been.

Then he just gave up on making it. And their story changed over time. They said they started making circles in 1976. Then it was 1975. Then it was 1978. In fact, they never could agree on the year they actually started. Now, they claim to have created certain circles and then later said they didn't, but they helped people who did.

And Doug and Dave said they created this famous crop circle in 1983 called the Cheesefoot Head Circle. Doug showed a diagram of it, but his diagram had footpaths in it. The circle had no paths. It had no disturbances of any kind. When asked how they created the circle without making tracks in the crop...

Doug said they pole vaulted into the field. Did you just say pole vaulted? Yep. He said in an interview that you should have seen us running through the fields with our sticks sailing over the corn. I would like to see that, actually. Oh, me too, pal. Apparently these men, in their 60s, pole vaulted into fields carrying their wood boards. They laid down a perfect crop formation and pole vaulted out again.

Now, Doug looks pretty fit for an older guy, but he's getting winded walking in a circle. Pole vaulting seems a little outside of his athletic range. They also added details to their story as other crop circles were found. One day, a couple of people investigating a circle found

told Doug they were looking for a jelly-like substance that was found in a formation. Doug told them it was probably waste ejected from a plane. Later, Doug had a story about making a crop circle, and while he was doing it, he got hit in the head with a piece of frozen waste ejected from a plane's toilet. And he called those Boeing bombs. Right. Yeah, big old frozen chunk of poopy. He stumbled back to his car, dazed, with blood trickling down his face.

The problem is planes don't dump waste over that area. It would be illegal, dangerous, and disgusting. Another story came out about people finding bits of metal thought to be meteorites at crop formations.

Soon after that, Doug and Dave's crop circles had little bits of iron scattered all around. So, a few things. Did Doug Bauer and Dave Chorley create some crop circles? Yes. When Doug and Dave came forward, about 1,500 crop circles had been seen in at least 23 countries. Well, you can't pole vault in Belgium. Right. Even Doug couldn't do that. But they inspired a lot of copycats.

Soon most crop formations were man-made. So is there a scientific way to tell if a crop circle is not a hoax, but genuine? There is.

Most crop formations are man-made. The vast majority are. And there are telltale signs of this. Sometimes spotting a man-made crop circle is as simple as finding a footpath through the field leading up to the design. But often crop formations intersect the lines made by tractors called tramlines, which can hide tracks. To spot a hoax, we look at the plants themselves.

Man-made crop circles done by flattening plants with boards are destructive to the plants. You'll see cracks and bruises on the stalks. On the ground, the crushed plants look messy. The leaves and flowers will be mashed to the ground. Marks will be visible on only one side of the plant where it was stomped by a plank of wood. Many of those marks are creases where you can actually bend the stalk. Genuine crop circles don't look like this at all.

First, the lay of the pattern will flow like water. There's a gentleness to it and elegance. And many times the stalks are layered and even braided. In genuine crop circles, most plants aren't damaged. They'll continue to grow horizontally and then after a few days return to their vertical position. In this formation found in May 2005, the flowers weren't damaged at all. They were somehow laid down gently.

A group of clumsy men with wooden boards couldn't do this. We know this because it was tried. A group of crop circle makers attempted to reproduce this formation. From the air, it looks pretty good. But on the ground, the man-made version is a mess. The plants are trashed.

You don't.

You don't. Another sign of a genuine circle can be seen, especially in wheat. In late summer, when wheat turns gold, the kernels become heavy and bend over from the weight. They also become stiff and are impossible to straighten. But the wheat within a crop circle, the kernels have straightened out and can't be bent. So what would do this? Radiation.

Wheat stalks are separated by structures called apical nodes. These are like the knuckles on your fingers. In the 1990s, biophysicist William Levengood started analyzing plants taken from crop circles. His team found the nodes in crop circle wheat were elongated, and in many cases they were ruptured. Oh, a rupture on an elongated node? I think they make a cream for that.

There's no way you could hoax that.

People who claim to have witnessed crop circles being made, and there's quite a few witnesses, report seeing a mist over the pattern immediately after its form. This mist is actually steam coming from the plants that were flash-heated by microwave radiation. While experimenting with radiation, Levengood found crop circle seed had a huge increase in growth

compared to non-crop circle seed. By exposing seeds to short, controlled bursts of radiation, they grow bigger and faster than seeds not exposed to radiation. Another experiment showed that wheat harvested from within a crop circle has a much higher amount of protein than wheat outside the circle. So there's evidence that whatever energy is used to create crop formations

is leaving residual traces of this energy in the area. Some crop formations are covered in a dusting of microscopic spheres of magnetized iron.

Specifically, meteorite iron. Researchers call this a magnetic glaze. These spheres are usually found around the perimeter of a formation, and they're distributed linearly, not randomly. Because the iron particles are magnetized perfect spheres, it means they were melted and formed within a highly energetic magnetic field. When people are inside crop formations, many are affected by electromagnetic radiation. Just look at this.

As part of an experiment,

A woman with an enlarged thyroid sat in a crop formation for two and a half hours. While being monitored by a doctor, her thyroid shrunk by 40%. Often cameras, watches, and other electronic devices stop working inside a crop circle. In fact, pregnant women and people with pacemakers are discouraged from going near one. Now, to skeptics, all this talk about energy sounds woo-woo. But I just showed you the real effects on plants and people.

Now it's fair to say that the elongated nodes and growth rates of wheat could be a coincidence. It's also fair to say that the physical reactions experienced by people could be psychosomatic, all in their minds. But skeptics, how do you explain this?

These are called ghost formations or ghost circles. This is when the design of a crop formation is still visible after the field has been plowed. Sometimes a ghost formation remains through the following season. Sometimes it remains for two years before finally fading.

But this doesn't happen with all crop formations. Nobody knows why, but it could have something to do with where the patterns are found. A study was done in the early 2000s of all the crop circles in southern England found that year. The study showed that 98% of all non-man-made formations were over chalk aquifers. And by the way, chalk aquifers can be used for generating electricity. Everything keeps pointing back to electromagnetism.

If there's an epicenter for crop formations in southern England, it's Silbury Hill. Silbury Hill was built thousands of years ago. It's 129 feet tall and covers an area of about five acres. Nobody agrees on what it was originally used for, but every year crop formations appear near it.

sometimes right next to it. And by the way, the whole thing is one giant pile of chalk. Not far from Silbury Hill is Stonehenge. Crop circles appear there too. One of the most famous of these is called the Stonehenge Surprise. On Sunday, July 7th, 1996, this formation appeared near feet from Stonehenge.

It's been called one of the most complex and spectacular crop circle designs ever seen. The design is a julius set, a type of fractal. Fractals are visual representations of mathematic formulas that repeat themselves at different scales. Zoom way in or way out, the pattern is the same. Look at how close Stonehenge is to the formation. Look at the visibility.

Stonehenge has 24-hour security. The guards saw nothing unusual the night before. Crop formations also appear near Avebury, which is in the same area. The Avebury Henge is massive, twice the size of Stonehenge. Now,

A ley line is believed to be an invisible path or energy line that connects sacred sites. Ley lines are thought to create a network of energy across the Earth, influencing the flow of energy and aligning with cosmic forces. The area around Stonehenge is on one of those ley lines. If crop formations are an attempt at communication, they're clearly using mathematic concepts. And this would make sense. Math is a universal language.

But what do the messages mean? What story do they tell? Are crop formations proof of space travel? Do they offer an explanation for space travel? Are crop formations a map? Are they blueprints for a machine? Well, the answer to all those questions is yes.

Over the years, crop formations got more and more complex. What started out as simple circles became patterns like this. This is the famous Milk Hill Galaxy Spiral, found in 2001. The spiral consists of 409 perfect circles, a thousand feet across, spread over 700,000 square feet. And look at how clean the design is. That's not even flat ground.

This formation is a hard one for skeptics to deal with. Remember, England is pretty far north. In the summer, the days are very, very long. The night the spiral was made, there was only about four hours of darkness. It would take a huge crew of people to lay down this pattern in four hours. And by the way, it was raining the night it appeared. You'd think the field would be full of muddy footprints by the army of hoaxers it would take to make this. But nope, the Milk Hill Spiral is pristine. ♪

Fractals are a common theme with crop formations. Geometric shapes and other expressions of mathematic functions are also quite common. Even complex math problems are expressed. Squaring the circle is a problem in geometry first proposed in Greek mathematics. Squaring the circle involves using a compass and a ruler to create a square and circle with the same area.

Now this has been proven impossible since calculating the area of a circle requires using pi. And if you remember your math lessons, pi is an irrational number, meaning it can never be exact. So you can never get the area of a circle to equal the area of a square.

But there are methods that allow you to get close. And these methods have been seen in crop formations for years. Crop formations often use other mathematic concepts, like the golden ratio and Fibonacci numbers. Here's a formation that, when it appeared, people found very confusing.

Then a mathematician solved it. It's a representation of pi out to 10 decimal places. The lengths of the arcs represent each digit. There's even a decimal point and an indication that the number continues forever. But there are also designs that at first glance look like geometry, but not exactly right. That's when some researchers had the idea to stop looking and start listening. This particular circle resembles what's called a cymatic pattern.

A cymatic pattern is a shape that forms when sound waves vibrate a material like water or sand. Ernst Chladni was a German physicist and musician who documented cymatic patterns. He proved that different sound frequencies create different patterns, and these patterns could be predicted and repeated. Could the builder of this crop circle be telling us that this sound frequency has special meaning? If it does, how do we apply it? Well, let's look for more clues.

In 2011, this double spiral formation appeared on Windmill Hill, the location of another ancient site. The same day, another double spiral appeared near Stonehenge, just a few miles away. Dr. Jerry Kroth thought these formations could represent neutron stars. And although it's very rare, sometimes neutron stars collide and form a magnetar. What makes magnetars unique is their incredibly strong magnetic fields, which are among the strongest known in the universe.

These magnetic fields are thousands to billions of times stronger than those of neutron stars. A magnetar's gravity is so strong that it dramatically warps spacetime around it. In theory, this warping of spacetime could lead to an Einstein-Rosen bridge, better known as a wormhole. A wormhole, again in theory, can connect two very distant points in space, essentially creating a shortcut

that allows you to travel to a location faster than light could get there in a straight line. Now, I'm aware this is a lot of in theory and possibly and maybe regarding these crop formations. After all, magnetars are so rare that in the entire galaxy, only 10 have ever been found. Well, 11.

Because the following day, literally the day after these crop formations appeared, a new magnetar appeared. I don't mean it was always there and was just discovered. I mean, it wasn't there yesterday and it's there today.

Then in 2022, this crop formation appears. Two sections of concentric rings connected by a line. It's been theorized that this represents a wormhole. It shows two points in space surrounded by warped spacetime and then a portal between. The outer ring represents the bending of spacetime. Now maybe this crop formation is just a design with no special meaning, but that would be rare.

Almost all crop formations have a message or purpose. So let's assume for fun that all these messages are puzzle pieces, that when the pieces are fit together, they show proof of a wormhole and a map of how to get to it. But how? How do we do that? Well, that's the question that electrical engineer Nicola Romanski asked. Nicola saw this image of a crop circle that seemed to be meaningless. It didn't have a recognizable geometry. It wasn't symmetrical. But Nicola had an idea.

He brought the shape into his 3D software and extruded it around the center axis, meaning he spun it around to make a shape. So Nikola found more crop formations and did the same thing. He rotated the designs around a central axis to create their shapes in 3D. And after a while, he had a collection of what appeared to be blueprints, instructions on how to create some kind of machine. So what did he do? What do you think he did? He built it. Ah!

Nikola Romanski reached out to filmmaker Charles Maxwell and asked for help. Maxwell was working on a documentary about prop circles. Nikola needed help and funding to build his machine. This machine, he thought, was a vehicle that ran on zero-point energy, could alter gravity, and reach light speed. How can you not build it? So they enlisted 3D designers and machinists. They hired electricians and fabricators. It took over three years, and they finally had their prototype. No!

It didn't work. No. Well, they got some plasma to ignite, but they ran out of money. No. The entire process is in the documentary, which I linked below. The truth is, whatever they were building probably wasn't going to work. But it's possible that Nicola was onto something. That the secret to zero-point energy, gravity, and space-time all comes down to one thing. Spin. Spin.

Whenever government whistleblowers describe reverse engineering UFOs, spin is always a core piece of the technology. According to Mark McCandlish, a former aerospace designer, UFO anti-gravity and propulsion are achieved by rotating liquid mercury. The infamous Nazi bell-shaped UFO, the Glocka, was said to use similar technology. Bob Lazar talked about studying Element 115 when he worked at Area 51. E115 is said to power alien spacecraft.

And while Lazar made those claims in the 1980s, there was no such element. But in 2003, E-115 was discovered. A whistleblower came forward just a few weeks ago. He claims to have been a military contractor working on reverse engineering UFOs.

He said their engines use counter-rotating cylinders with element 115 as the power source. Russian physicist Nikolai Kozyrev believed the twisting and spinning of space-time called torsion was the secret to unlocking gravity and unlocking everything.

In 2019, an engineer working for the US Navy filed a patent for a plasma compression fusion device. This is a machine that can generate a tremendous amount of power, like terawatts of power in a small package. The device is about the size of a car, but can put out as much energy as a nuclear power plant.

If it's real, the energy is clean and unlimited. His invention is based on spin. The scientist is Salvatore Paes, and he currently works for the US Space Force. He's filed quite a few interesting patents on behalf of the United States government.

Propulsion engines, room temperature superconductors, inertial mass reduction devices, and high frequency gravitational wave generators. This may sound like science fiction, but the U.S. military is taking these patents very seriously. Every single one of them is based on spin.

Now, I don't know if it's irony or poetic justice, but it could turn out that nature's most mysterious secrets, like gravity, won't be discovered in a lab. It's possible that unlocking the secrets of nature might be done in a field of wheat. Crop circles are a controversial subject. The history of the crop circle community, if that's what you want to call it, is filled with intrigue, lies, and double-crosses.

Today, if you bring up crop circles in any mainstream venue, you'll get eye rolls and laughter. But that wasn't always the case. At one time, crop formations were taken seriously by the media, the government, and the general population. A new type of science emerged called seriology, named for Ceres, the goddess of agriculture and grain crops. Journals were created. Articles about crop formations were mainstream. Nick Pope spent over 20 years investigating UFOs for the British Ministry of Defense.

He said the army started investigating crop circles in 1985. Then glyphs started to appear in southern England in 1989, and crop formations were becoming complex. There seemed to be an intelligence at work. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher asked her cabinet to find out what the hell was going on. The following summer, Operation Blackbird was launched. ♪

Blackbird was a three-week surveillance operation with the goal of filming a crop circle forming in real time. The project was planned by prominent crop circle researchers Colin Andrews and Pat Delgado. It was sponsored by the BBC and Japanese national television. Not only did the project have the blessing of the British government,

But the crops to be filmed were on land owned by the Ministry of Defense. By working with the MOD, acres of farmland could be cordoned off to keep out hoaxers and prevent any genuine crop circles from being trampled by a curious and excited public. The military had every inch of the field covered with cameras. They had night vision and even infrared cameras to detect body heat. If a circle was going to form, it would definitely be seen.

This was a huge event. Millions of people around the world watched. And every day, Colin Andrews would appear on TV and describe the day's events. On day two, a crop circle appeared. And Colin Andrews went on television and spoke very enthusiastically about the discovery. And then everything came crashing down.

The formation was a hoax, not just a hoax, but an embarrassing one. The design was crude and placed in the center of the circle was an astrology board game. Colin Andrews, a serious investigator and the face of the crop circle phenomenon, was humiliated. Somebody's had a laugh. They've had a joke. They've actually done none of us any good. That sets these sort of things, only set the research back.

In the span of an afternoon, the field of crop circle research went from mainstream science to fringe theory. And it's been there ever since. Hang on. What? If the army had the whole thing blocked off and covered with cameras, how come they didn't see nothing?

It was a setup. It was a setup. Well, allegedly. Totally a setup. Colin Andrews believes, and I think there's plenty of evidence to support his theory, that the Army intentionally wanted to discredit him and the entire crop circle phenomenon. That doesn't mean the military didn't believe in crop formations. Quite the opposite. At the same exact time the highly public Operation Blackbird was going on, the Army was running a secret surveillance operation a few miles away on Silbury Hill.

In fact, they allegedly have film of bright orbs flying over the fields just to the south of the hill. But this operation only became known later. It appears that Blackbird was sleight of hand. Get the public focused on Blackbird while the real operation took place a few miles away. Even now, when crop circles or glowing orbs appear, it's not uncommon for military helicopters to show up.

Not only do the helicopters patrol the area, but they'll also chase the orbs around the countryside. Clearly, the military believes that crop formations are something more than simple hoaxes. But after the Blackbird fiasco, none of this mattered. Crop circles were debunked,

and Colin Andrews became a fringe character. Colin's partner, Pat Delgado, was so disheartened by the Blackbird hoax that he retired and gave up his research. Sounds like Deep State wins again, eh? But that's not the end of the story. Go on. Colin Andrews may have become fringe in the public's eye, but he was a serious investigator, and crop circles were a real phenomenon. Even without mainstream support, he continued his work.

and plenty of people supported him. Believers in crop circles were now fringe believers, but they still believed this could be a problem for the government. They couldn't allow crop circles back into the mainstream, so British intelligence began a disinformation campaign, and to help them spread disinformation,

They brought in the best. CIA. CIA. In his 1999 book, Cosmic Top Secret, The Unseen Agenda, author John King got Colin Andrews to sit for an interview. Colin knew that the only way hoaxers could get onto that field during Blackbird was if it was an inside job. When Colin made the announcement that a crop circle appeared, he hadn't even seen it yet. It was pitch black.

He was pressured to make the announcement, so he did. He didn't report what he had seen with his own eyes. He reported what was described to him by the army. As soon as the sun came up, he knew it was a hoax, but there was nothing he could do. He had a deal with the military that they would provide people, equipment, and land, but he had to cooperate with them. Big mistake. You shake hands with the military-industrial complex, you're making a deal with the devil. Yep.

According to Colin, phase one of the disinformation campaign was to debunk crop circles with Operation Blackbird. Phase two was Doug and Dave, who showed up a year later.

Doug Bauer and Dave Chorley admitted to being the makers of prop circles. And to this day, that's the official explanation. Colin doesn't think they're part of the intelligence community, but he believes they were used by and compensated by people in the IC. They were paid? Oh yeah, they were paid thousands of dollars for their story. We know this for a fact because they were only paid half up front. They had to sue for the other half. Deal with the devil. Next came phase three. A freelance journalist named Jim Schnabel arrived on the scene.

According to Colin Andrews, Schnabel was CIA. Now, James Schnabel was not an official CIA officer, but he certainly could have been an agent. If you search his name in the CIA database, you'll get plenty of hits. And Schnabel's name is always connected to paranormal cases like crop circles and remote viewing. Anyway, Schnabel was conducting private interviews with everyone involved with Blackbird and with other crop circle researchers.

He was driving wedges between people, misquoting them, and pushing the narrative that crop circles were debunked. Colin Andrews became convinced of Schnabel's CIA involvement during a spooky conversation. Schnabel had recorded and read to Colin the details of private conversations Colin had one evening while sitting in his car alone.

And Colin Andrews has other evidence that he was being bugged and surveilled. It has to do a lot with invoices and stuff, and I'll link below if you want the specifics. He literally has the receipts. He has the receipts.

And look, it's very, very common for the CIA to use journalists as assets. More common than people think. People talk to journalists, so they're useful at collecting intel. And people listen to journalists, so they're great at spreading disinformation. You may have heard about Operation Mockingbird. This was a project where over 400 American journalists were working as direct assets for the CIA. Carl Bernstein exposed how at least

10 journalists and editors at the New York Times

were CIA operatives for years. This is still happening right now, and I can prove it. But covering that and Operation Mockingbird is a full episode. And if you'd like to hear the whole story, let me know in the comments. Now, whatever your favorite newspaper is or your favorite news channel is, assume 10% of editors, reporters, and media personalities are working for the CIA or FBI in some capacity. Yes, it's that many. JFK warned us this would happen. He certainly did.

Colin Andrews remembers a direct approach from a CIA operative. He met a man who claimed to have seen a crop circle being formed while he was out one night studying foxes. Oh, sexy broads. No, actual foxes. Ah. The man used this story as a way of being accepted in the crop circle scene. People got used to seeing him around. Well, a few weeks later, this man knocks on Colin's door. They

They go for a walk and the man asked Colin tons of questions about crop circles, their locations, what he thinks they are and on and on. But Colin started to get annoyed when the man was asking if he knew if the Russians were involved. At the end of their talk, the man tells Colin, you're one of us now. I said, what do you mean? And he said, and it sounds even funny coming out of my mouth, but he said, CIA.

The man told Colin that there was a large amount of money waiting for him in a Swiss bank account. All he had to do was state publicly that crop circles were a hoax. Colin could go on researching circles all he wanted. The CIA would help him become the number one crop circle expert in the world. They would give him special equipment. They would give him a staff. They would give him a budget. But when he came across a real crop formation, he was to call this man and nobody else.

Colin Andrews passed on this offer, but the man harassed him with phone calls for a while after that. Soon the calls became so threatening that Colin contacted the British Ministry of Defense, but they said there was nothing they could do. What? Well, they said it was out of their jurisdiction. Was he in England? Yep. That is a bunch of bulls**t.

Yeah, Colin was annoyed. But after a short time, the call stopped. Eventually, Colin Andrews moved to the U.S. And here he was approached by a Pentagon analyst who introduced him to a writer named Rosemary Ellen Guiley. You might know her name from her many appearances on the Coast to Coast radio show.

She wrote 49 books and even hosted her own radio show all about the paranormal. Colin said Rosemary went to, in his words, every extreme to try and convince him to co-author a book with her. And she wanted to work on the book in his office, which would give her access to Colin Andrews' entire database on crop circles going back 30 years. She was persistent, but he turned her down. Colin is convinced without a doubt.

that Rosemary Giley was a CIA asset. Again, Rosemary Giley was the perfect candidate for an intelligence asset, especially since she was a regular guest on Coast to Coast, where she would be heard by millions of people. She would be allowed to continue her work in any way she wanted, but from time to time, she would be instructed to disseminate information provided by the intelligence community. It's more common than you think. So yeah, Rosemary Giley was the perfect asset. I can't...

I can't help but notice. You're speaking about her in the past tense. Yeah, she died in 2019 at the age of 69. Man, it's kind of young to die, isn't it? Isn't it? There's another Crop Circle's character with an interesting story.

John Lundberg is an English artist and documentary filmmaker who founded the website circlemakers.org in the early 90s. He's responsible or claims to be responsible for some of the more elaborate crop formations that have been found over the years. On the Circlemakers website, which is still around, there are links to the many crop formations that the group takes credit for. There's no doubt that the Circlemakers created complicated and often very beautiful crop formations.

But Crop Circle researchers Robert Hulse and David A. Caton think there's more to John than meets the eye. But in our opinion, the whole circle makers website and Lundberg and co are all part of a disinformation campaign, possibly funded by government.

Robert Hulse said at one time, the CircleMakers website had a recruiting link that took you directly to the recruitment page for MI5, British Military Intelligence. Hulse believes that the CircleMakers group is funded by British intelligence and was specifically created to spread disinformation. Hulse believes the CircleMakers goal is to muddy the waters and confuse serious crop circle researchers.

to make it as difficult as possible to determine what was and wasn't a genuine crop formation. Now, there's no hard evidence that the Circle Makers or its founder are connected to military intelligence.

But in 2009, researcher Richard D. Hall dug into Lundberg's background and found a lot of interesting information. Lundberg got his master's from the Slade School of Fine Art in London in 1992. At this time, Slade was next door to the then-secret headquarters of MI5 at 140 Gower Street. It was literally next door. The two buildings shared a courtyard.

Paul makes the point that intelligence agencies often recruit final year college students. That's always been true and is still true today. Lundberg started making crop circles immediately after graduating. Paul notes that if you view the HTML source of circlemakers.org, the second keyword is MI5. Now that was in 2009, but even today, the site's keywords contain entries like MI5 and CIA. And something I just noticed while researching this episode

Why is alleged CIA asset Jim Schnabel a keyword on this site? In 2004, the CircleMakers website teased Colin Andrews, who at the time was raising money for his research. CircleMakers said that if the fundraising fails, Colin could just join MI5 PsyOps and retrain to be a crop circles maker. Now, PsyOps is short for Psychological Operations.

which is the use of psychological techniques and tactics to influence the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of a group of people. And this is a type of strategic communication used by military intelligence and government organizations all the time. It sure is. Just turn on the news. Well, that's true. If you spent an hour reading the news today, you consumed government intel.

Believe me. Now, Hall acknowledges that these references to MI5 seem just too blatant, but he believes they're a double bluff. Meaning, if we sarcastically connect ourselves to the intelligence community, people will think we're joking. Nobody would be so obvious. But this is absolutely a real and effective psyops technique. Hall found that the website was hosted in Pittsburgh. Now, at the time, and even today, to some degree, it's uncommon for British organizations to host their sites in the U.S., and

And Hall found that the administrative contact for the domain belongs to a colonel in the US Air Force. Now, it could be a coincidence, but the man has an unusual name. Now, I'm not going to name him here, but I'll link to Hall's research down below. Richard Hall looked into CircleMaker's finances, trying to figure out how they pay their bills. Lundberg had registered a couple of companies, but they were inactive.

But there was an interesting quote on the CircleMaker's website. "You'd be surprised how expensive running a successful website can be. Don't panic. We're not going to ask you for money. Our retainer, from sources we'd rather not disclose, has kept our virtual head above water." What does that mean?

A retainer? From who? Who's financing them? Making crop formations is technically a crime. It's trespassing, vandalism, destruction of private property. One investor would fund that and become complicit in those crimes. Plus, there could be civil liability. If you create a crop circle and a bunch of strangers show up and tear up my field, I could sue you for that. Even if they're minor crimes and rarely prosecuted,

It doesn't sound like a good investment. Paul did a land registry check on the apartment where Lundberg was living at the time. He found that technically there are no apartments listed on the deed. Paul dug further and found that there are four apartments, including Lundberg's, that have their rents paid by the local government.

So did Richard Hall reveal that John Lundberg is, in fact, an asset working in media whose job is to spread disinformation about crop circles? Well, the evidence Hall provides is purely circumstantial and coincidental, so there's no way to know for sure. In fact, some of Hall's evidence is so far-fetched, I left it out of this episode. But a few years after Richard Hall conducted his research, Lundberg directed a documentary, a documentary that I've referred to multiple times on this channel. It's called Mirage Men.

Mirage Men covers Richard Doty, a retired special agent who worked for OSI, the United States Air Force Office of Special Investigation, Air Force Intelligence. Richard Doty is, according to Mirage Men, one of the chief architects of the military's campaign to disseminate lies to the UFO community. In other words, to

to spread disinformation. Doty's job was to muddy the waters so UFO researchers wouldn't know what sightings were real and what were hoaxes. Now this is, according to Hall, Hulse, Caton, and many others, exactly what the Circle Makers have done and have been doing to the Crop Circles community for years. There's a reason why John Lundberg would make a great intelligence asset, and Rosemary Guiley, and James Schnabel, and countless other writers, journalists, and media figures.

They already work in the paranormal community. They're trusted by that community. They continue to do their work, but every so often they spread a little bit of disinformation to that community, a little nugget to steer people away from the truth. This is why you shouldn't trust anyone in the media. Whether it's your favorite news anchor, TV show host, podcaster, blogger, or writer, be wary of anyone with influence. These media personalities may seem trustworthy. They may seem like they have your best interests in mind,

But some of that is just a performance. Not all of it, but some of it is a performance designed to sway your opinion or even alter your entire belief system. The intelligence community does not want you to know the truth about crop circles, UFOs, secret space programs, or alien technology.

That's a fact. Millions, perhaps billions of dollars are put into black budget programs designed to distract and confuse you from the truth. When CIA needs to spread disinformation, they look for trustworthy people with large audiences to deliver their message. So keep your eye out for clues. An intelligence operative, an agent, an asset could be anyone.

Thanks so much for hanging out with us today. My name is AJ. You know Hagglefish. Hi. How are you? This has been the Y-Files. If you had fun or learned anything, do us a favor, like, comment, subscribe, share. That stuff really helps the channel. And like most topics we cover on this channel, today's topic was recommended by you. So if there's a story you'd like to see or learn more about, go to the Y-Files dot com slash tips. And special thanks to our patrons who make all of this possible. You guys are the heart of the channel, and I can't thank you enough for being so generous.

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