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An insight into the character, personality and passion of the leading figures in the Investigation and Intelligence industry who have shaped the way we gather, analyse and utilise information and intelligence.
If people say to me, do you believe in the UAP phenomenon? I say, it's
not a question of belief. It is a reality. Right. And
this phenomenon exists. There are different
varieties of non-human intelligence that are either
visiting us or coexisting with us. And the evidence is
absolutely overwhelming about that. A lot of people
who've had these experiences, UAP experiences,
whether close encounter with a craft or abductions,
have inevitably ontological shock. I think it
is almost unbelievable that they are having to live in a
society where the official explanation is that they're not
recognizing the phenomenon. I think fundamentally the
concept that there is other extraterrestrial, other non-human
intelligences here is something which people have a right
to know. Welcome to the Intelligence Advantage
Podcast, where I, Gary Miller, get to talk to the movers and
shapers in the investigation and intelligence industry And
find out exactly how they got to where they are today.
Today, I'm thrilled to be joined by a good friend and
fellow lawyer in the form of Jonathan Kaplan, KC.
You'll find Jonathan's name associated with some of the most
amazing cases, both in the public inquiry
field, in the media law, and as well
as criminal and corporate liability.
But I think it's fair to say, Jonathan, that recently your claim
to fame is this wonderful book that I have read
cover to cover, Not for
Disclosure. And we're going to be talking a
lot about that, but a little bit about something about other things.
Welcome, Jonathan, and thanks for taking time to join me. Well, thank you
so much, and I'm very pleased to be with you. Thank you.
So I always try and start off with a bit of who is
my guest, and particularly as you and I share some
Hebraic origins, just a little bit. And I believe
you're also involved in, or were involved in,
maybe still are, is it the Wiener Holocaust Foundation?
Yes, I'm a trustee of the Wiener Holocaust Library, actually.
Library. And so I just wanted to scratch a little, and you tell me when
I'm scratching too much, is Where do you hail from? Are
the Kaplans— were you a Kaplanovich, or where were you
from? My great-grandparents hailed
from Poland, which is now Russia, from Vilna,
but it's now, I believe, Russia. And when they arrived,
the only signature my— sorry,
great-great-grandfather could make was a cross on a piece of
paper. And the name Kaplan was
adopted. But it's the unusual non-American
spelling with a C and not a K. And
a number of Caplans of that family anyway, who came here,
half went to America, who we've recently discovered. The other
half landed here in the United Kingdom. And we
were actually from spread out from Glasgow
to Leeds to London. And I'm part of the London
contingent. And my father was a GP, a general
practitioner. So I've been brought up in London and educated in
London. So are you a North London boy by heritage? No,
I was Chiswick. My father's practice was in Chiswick and
lived there. And it was, it's known as the first London
garden suburb. And it's now a very trendy place to live,
but it was lovely then, so I can't complain. It was lovely. No. Your dad
did well. So am I right in saying you, you can track your
English ancestry back to the great-great-great-grandfather, or
have I— Correct, I can. And one of them then went on
to be a rabbi in
Dumfries, and I've actually got a cup that was presented to him in
1886. Oh my God, that's
amazing. Yep, absolutely. That is amazing because,
um, Not that it's relevant to this podcast, but
I can only claim English ancestry back to my
mother and father. All of my grandparents were born
in all points north, south, well, all points Eastern
Europe, like you, Poland or Russia or whatever. So
you really are, you are a proper Brit, Jonathan. The
disadvantage of that is that I can't get a second passport today.
And so I'm dearly looking to try and find an Irish relative,
but I haven't found one yet. No. Okay. So you are
brought up in Chiswick, GP dad, any lawyers
anywhere to be seen or heard? What was it? No lawyers.
Doctors. And I was never gonna be suited for that.
And no, I'm the first barrister in the family. And
indeed, I think lawyer of any kind. And I was torn
actually between being a journalist and being
a lawyer. And I did, in those days when I left
school, before you went to university, you had a
mandatory 9 months off. You could not go up to university
until October. And I left school in December and I got a
job, which these kind of jobs just aren't open to young people today.
Right. I got a job working for the BBC in America. interviewing
people, believe it or not, for Radio Times,
for BBC, for radio, a few for television.
And actually, I enjoyed myself so much, I wasn't sure I wanted to come back
and read law at university, but I did. And
I must say I was lucky I did go the legal route. Well, I kept
up some writing. I was just fortunate to get involved in some very interesting
cases, met some very interesting people. And
life's been fortunate in many ways. Yeah. Yes.
And probably there started some kind
of a scintilla of your interest in media, having been
thrown into the mix at an early age.
And when you did law, you were a Cambridge boy, yes?
Correct. And as you were progressing through the—
is it a 3-year course or was it in those days? 3-year degree course. Yeah.
So when you're coming to the end of your final year, did you seriously
think about which branch of the profession, or were you
absolutely convinced that the barrister— No, I was convinced I wanted to
be a barrister because I wanted, I had fixated in my head
that I wanted to address juries and do advocacy.
And a lot of that came from an American program at the time called The
Defenders, which was a father and son on the
steps of the Supreme Court who defended the innocent
and prosecuted the guilty. And I saw myself
in that role. But of course, it's a much
tougher role to fulfill. Okay. I don't even
remember that because one of the things I noticed, having got my eager
beavers to do a little bit of DD on you, Jonathan, is
that you are one of the few people that is still
breathing, that I've had on, or breathing longer than me,
that I've had on the podcast because you are a '51 baby and I'm a
'54 baby. I am. Yeah. So your Defenders
may well have, I may well have missed that by a year or two. I
thought you were going to say something as trite as LA Law and you could
see yourself sitting around the table. No, no, no, no.
This was the original legal drama. Yeah. Okay.
This probably predates Perry Mason, does it? Well, I think it's about the same time.
Okay. So you would decide that the
barristerial profession, and a topic that of course sadly is
again in the headlines, or at least in our consciousness as Jews
in England. Did you face any
discrimination at all as you were trying to find chambers
at that time? Yeah. So in fact, as a
Jewish person, as a Jew, I applied to get into
my, the school that you, you, you go into the age of 8 until 12.
And, um, from there you go to senior school from my
preparatory school. And I passed the exam
and the headmaster rang up my father and said, look, the good
news is your son has passed the exam, but I'm
very sorry to tell you that we already have one Jew. so we can't accept
him. But the call came back in December
and he said, look, the Jewish boy is leaving, so we can now accept your
son. And I think in those days people just accepted that was
the way things were. And it was part of the governance of the
school that it was for boys to be
educated in the Church of England and like limited number of
quota of other boys. But I must say, I've never
discriminate. I've never experienced, fortunately, I don't think,
discrimination through my student life
or working life. Although, of course, today
I feel very sorry for the students around the world, Jewish students around
the world, because they are paying a heavy price for being
Jewish. And, um, it's quite wrong. And I
just am so saddened that they're real
educational experience is being marred by this
attitude. Yeah, it's really sad. But when
you were looking for chambers, for example, there was no
difficulty. You didn't, as it were, limit your focus
because of discriminatory, either actual or
perceived discriminatory issues. I knew there were chambers that
didn't have Jewish people in them, but I don't think
But you've gotta remember, of course, that there was Jewish Masters of the Rolls and
senior judges who were Jews. So I don't think there was any
antisemitism in the legal world,
so to speak. There might have been in some chambers, but I didn't cross it.
The fact of the matter is, in those days, there was no formal
application process and it was who you knew. And I
didn't know, because my family hadn't been in the law, I didn't know any barristers.
My father fortunately had a patient who was a film director.
Sorry, not next door. The film director was working with John Mortimer, who
was the QC, famous QC who wrote the Rumpole
series. And John Mortimer kindly agreed to meet me for lunch
and he arranged my pupillage. So I'm grateful to him and
to Rumpole for seeing me off in my legal
youth. Excellent. What a auspicious
start to have Rompuy of the Bailey behind you. I love it.
And so was— were Five Paper in
existence then? Have you been there man and boy? So I went to another
chambers, which was run by a man called Louis Hauser,
who was Jewish, funnily enough, but who never actually
got to become a High Court judge. He should have done. He was a very
competent senior much-respected QC.
And there were always rumors that there was some, I don't know
quite how it worked, but that there was some antisemitism that had prevented him from
going on the bench. But from there, I went to another chambers in Crown Office
Row, which had some very bright people in them, lawyers who
went on to achieve a great deal. Ralph Gibson, who went to the Court of
Appeal, Roger Tolson, who went to the Supreme Court, Rupert
Jackson, who went to the Court of Appeal, And I was there for a while,
but my interests really lay in media and crime. And
having done a case with John Matthew, who was a very celebrated
criminal practitioner— I remember John. He came out to Hong Kong quite a lot,
didn't he? He did. And he invited me to join his chambers. And
then I moved there, and that's where I've been ever since. Excellent.
Excellent. I remember meeting John because you, myself, John,
Midge are all connected by virtue of Hong
Kong. cases that he had and et cetera.
Interesting. So you clearly had a penchant for
crime in the nicest possible way. Do you remember the first— Yeah. Not
the yes, you did, no, I didn't kind of crime, but interesting crime.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you remember the first
day you were on your feet and you were flying solo and
what kind of experience that was? It was a very embarrassing experience.
I was sent to the Crown Court to do an appeal from a
magistrate's court. And what was the offense?
I don't remember actually. It was something pretty minor, but this is something that hadn't
figured in my legal education. I saw the judge robed
sitting on the bench, and next to him were 2 people in
dress and a suit who I assumed were not judges. Of course, they were
magistrates who'd been sent to sit on the court. And I
wanted to announce my attendance. So I went into
court and waved at one of the magistrates and indicated,
could he come so that I could write down my name? But of course,
there's some rather quizzical looks, and
that's the way you learn. And I think it's learning the hard way. Yeah. Yes,
absolutely. It's often the protocol
that trips you up rather than necessarily
making, hopefully making a mistake in the law.
So, um, if I remember correctly,
your interest in all things ET-ish,
if I may cheekily use that phrase or that, um,
abbreviation, came from a program that my brother
and I were absolutely addicted to in the day
called Tomorrow's World. Am I right? That's where you first— It
was a science program, as you know. Yeah. by Raymond Baxter,
and he had a variety of topics on every week. And
this topic absolutely, for some reason, jumped out of the
screen at me and caught my attention. And it was the story
about a flying saucer that had followed a passenger
plane. Mm-hmm. And they were doing the pilot and passengers,
and it was the most extraordinary story. And at that age, I was
very keen to find out what I could about the subject. And you've gotta
remember, this was pre-internet, so it wasn't easy. How
old were you, Jonathan? What was the age? I was, um, 17.
And anyway, from there, my
interest continued. I joined the board
of an international scientific magazine which focused
to a large part on these kind of phenomena and had some very, very good
consultants. One of them, uh, who's very well known today in this field,
is a man called Jacques Vallée. My editors were
doyens in the field, a man called Gordon Crichton, who's quite well
known. And one of my jobs was to deliver each copy of
the magazine by hand to Prince Philip's equerry
because he was fascinated by this subject. And so I did that
and I worked on the magazine, but we were all in those days
very jealous of protecting our reputations.
And people who were interested in flying saucers in those days
were regarded as being something of a crackpot. So
the magazine was put together rather as you put together, I imagine,
a political underground magazine. And we
worked quietly but got the magazine out around the world, got
quite a big following. And through that, I met Gary, a
lot of the leading researchers And
just to jump forward in time a bit, when I became a Queen's Counsel and
a King's Counsel, through the people I'd met,
I also gained the trust of very
significant people in the intelligence services, particularly in the
United States, who began to talk to me
confidentially. And having that type, I mean, the
King's Counsel today are 10 a penny. But the title
opened doors for me, which I think otherwise wouldn't have been opened.
And I was able to find out a lot of what was
going on in classified circles because they knew I
would, they could trust me. This is before when you got on the
board, this was before you had become a barrister
even. So how did they verify or why and
how did they accept your credentials other than just a a newbie who
was interested? Well, I was at Cambridge University.
Okay. That makes— I was on Varsity Magazine at Cambridge. Ah,
okay. Cambridge newspaper. And I'd written a piece at the time
about a committee that was studying this in
the United States for the government called the Condon Committee.
And that went— that piece was picked up by other newspapers
and they in fact knew about me and I was
able to secure a junior role and then get onto the
editorial board. Right. And if you
can, this is like 60-something or nearly
60 years later or whatever it is, maybe more
over the period that you've been researching and
interested in it. Is there one point
in time where it kind of everything becomes
clear and you are absolutely convinced
that your, whatever it is you thought might
have existed is absolutely right here. If that
happened, what was it? Yeah, I have no doubt whatsoever.
If people say to me, do you believe in the, this, the UAP phenomenon? I
say, it's not a question of belief. It is a reality.
And this phenomenon exists there are
different varieties of non-human intelligence that are
either visiting us or coexisting with us. And the evidence is
absolutely overwhelming about that. Now, that's not just me
saying that. That is a number of people who— the game has
changed in recent years because— Right. Since Congress,
and in particular the Oversight Committee, has begun to investigate this
subject and has begun to realize that it has been
misled by the 3-letter
intelligence agencies for 80 years. They've become much
more forceful in their hearings
and list of interrogatories to government and other, other
people. And there are a number of senior
intelligence officers who have now left their
positions. They can't speak in detail because of their NDAs
and the law. But they've come out and confirmed that
these are— this is a real phenomenon. Right. And
Marco Rubio, he knows a lot about this. He's noted the
number of intelligence and senior armed forces people
that are saying this is a real phenomenon and a threat to national security. And
he said, look, we place our trust in these people. They have got the highest
clearances. Either they are all getting together to fabricate a
story, or we have to listen seriously to what they say.
And their story is very consistent. This is a real
phenomenon. The non-human intelligence
aspect of it is real, and we need to wake
up and take account of it. And that's one of the reasons I've written the
book, Not for Disclosure, which Penguin kindly
have got behind to stimulate informed debate.
Absolutely. And have you personally had an
experience that whether or not it's
evidence or not, that you felt, gosh, that was pretty spooky,
that felt like something of that kind? Have you ever had that
yourself? No, I've, I have not seen a
UAP, but that isn't the trigger
for my acceptance of the reality of this phenomenon.
The trigger is the evidence that I've
had from reliable people, the evidence that exists from reliable
people of all cultures, not just in America, around the
world, the similarity between the experiences
that they have all had, the quality of that evidence,
the corroborative data that has been collected
on very sophisticated equipment. And
I would say also, these aren't just individual cases.
These are cases involving often groups of people, mass
sightings such as happened over Phoenix,
Arizona, where a huge craft was seen by
thousands and thousands of people and photographed. Military
personnel are coming forward from nuclear
missile bases around the world Russia as well as
America, nuclear stockpiles, England as well, where
UAPs have appeared over those sites and have interacted
with them. So this is evidence of a very high
quality, and there's a lot of data,
recorded data, from naval vessels,
aircraft that have sophisticated recording equipment,
not just radar, many other sources of evidence.
And the evidence is overwhelming. And all, if I may
say so, really superbly
sewn together in your book, which I'm
rereading now because my poor little brain
can only retain a certain amount of data. So talking
about Congress and its mission, is that
mission still active during the Mr. T administration or has it been
It's very active. And I would say there are 2 committees that have been looking
at this, the Oversight Committee in the, in Congress,
which is staffed by representative congressmen, and the Senate
Intelligence Committee. I've actually been present at a
briefing to 2 of those committees in Washington. But the
particularly active committee is the Oversight Committee.
And one of those who is leading the charge there is
Congressman Burleson, B-U-R-L-I-S-O-N,
and he is making considerable headway
with the assistance of whistleblowers in
writing detailed interrogatories, not just to
agencies like the CIA, but to private defense
contractors who have been in possession
of anomalous craft. And who are trying to reverse
engineer them. And those efforts are underway now.
There's a huge pushback by the Pentagon and others
against that kind of disclosure. But the committee
is very motivated, and Burleson
and his colleagues are pushing hard to really obtain
what disclosure they can. I'm not sure how successful they're going to be, but they
know that there is material there. They've been given notice
of precisely what it is by whistleblowers, and they're trying to
obtain it and to disclose it in public sessions.
And this whole thing about disclosure,
whistleblowing, it's a conundrum in a legal
sense because is there any defense to
a senior intelligence officer or
whatever position they're in, disclosing formally
stuff that they've seen, and they've signed the equivalent of the Official
Secrets Act. Does it matter that the
government of the day is lying to the people? Is
there any defense at all legally to that kind of disclosure, Jonathan?
Yeah, I mean, funny enough, I was in a case here in the UK many
years ago defending a man called Clive Ponting. who
leaked documents about the sinking of the General Belgrano during
the Argentine War. Yeah, the Falklands. And our
defense was that it was in the interests of the state that he did that
because the Prime Minister had lied on the floor of the House of Commons.
And that was a constitutional defense. And in fact, we succeeded. But
in this American context, there is a mechanism they can go
through, and it's through a system involving what's called the
intelligence General, I believe, who works
with Congress so that if you have information
relating to an undisclosed UAP program,
you can go through the Intelligence General and
pass certain information to Congress in very
strict conditions. When I say Congress, I mean cleared members of
Congress and in a SCIF, which is not a public hearing.
Although there are limits to that. And what also is going
on, and which I refer to in the, in the book in Not for Disclosure,
is that there is still a great amount of intimidation
and threats to these witnesses. I know
that those threats and intimidation are being
practiced even against staffers who are
on these committees and are investigating
aides to the congressman, and staffers have been
intimidated quite apart from the actual government employee.
So there is a few hurdles to overcome, and there's some very
brave people who will need to come forward if we're going to
get anywhere. And do you think any of
the developments that we've seen over the last, I don't
know, let's say 10, 20 years, such as AI,
do you think Any of that has come from intelligence that has
been derived from non-humanistic
individuals or intelligence? So
the programs which are underway are special access
programs where they have what has been spoken
about in sworn testimony to Congress. They actually have crashed
craft which are not from our civilization, and
they have biologics as well. Now, I know those are difficult concepts to
accept, But that is now an accepted fact in
Washington. Those craft, those biologics
are in the possession of the United States,
and they're the subject of special access programs, which are
highly secret. And they've all been farmed out,
a lot of them, to private defense contractors to take them
outside the oversight committee of Congress. so far as
they can, outside the Freedom of Information Act. Now,
those special access programs are the ones which
are engaging private defense contractors to try and reverse
engineer the craft and see what technology can be
gleaned from it. Now, there are reports that they've been
successful in some areas. We don't quite know what. We can guess, but very
unsuccessful in other areas. And we know that
very similar programs are underway in
China and in Russia. Right. So there's a
technological race between the superpowers to
unlock as much of this technology as they possibly can.
Of course. And just focusing back on, on our
little kingdom that is diminishing as we—
in importance as we speak. Which of the
governmental bodies is responsible for this and what part
are they playing in both looking for or concealing
evidence of this occurrence? Well, that's a very good question.
And the short answer is, although in the past,
I'm going back now to the 1940s, we
were called in to liaise with the Americans about this problem and
crashed craft, goes back that long. And a man called Sir Henry
Tisdall, who was the chief scientific officer to the Ministry of
Defense, went to meet with Eisenhower and the Secretary of
Defense and came back and set up a very
secret flying saucer working party. The decision after that
really was that we were going to leave this matter
to the Americans, and we would rely on them to
share with us such intelligence as they would. Now,
the fact of the matter is that we are concerned, obviously, to
protect our own airspace. We're concerned to protect
our oceans, but we do not have a budget or
a policy for dealing with UAPs except
the Ministry of Defense objectives, as I said, of protecting
our airspace and our oceans. We don't have a budget. We don't
have, so far as I know, having spoken to people in
intelligence services here, any clear major
programs that are seeking to explore this.
We've got very small teams within the MOD. We've got very small
teams within GCHQ signals intelligence that
look to pick up the signal, the signatures, electronic
signatures of these craft. But we rely very much on the Americans.
And we're a member of Five Eyes, which is a group of
intelligence personnel from England, New
Zealand, Australia, Canada, and the United States. And
we recently participated in a caucus group set up
by the Americans on UAPs for Five Eyes,
which should result in even more sharing of intelligence. Does
that mean we can— for some reason,
our friends from outer space don't like to
show themselves in the UK as much as they do in places like
Arizona? No, no, this is an international phenomenon.
There are plenty of UAP sightings here in the
UK. I see. Plenty of sightings in the air,
in our oceans, craft that have landed,
people who've had very close experiences. There's also a separate
or connected, I believe, phenomenon where people are actually
abducted. I know that's another concept that's difficult to grasp, but there are
many similar abduction phenomena here in the UK. As
there are in the US and all around the world. As you were
researching your book, talking about abductions,
have you ever had the opportunity of speaking with
somebody who says they have been abducted or somebody who
treated somebody? Yes. So this is a phenomenon
which is strange. It's where people usually
either driving their cars in some remote area or late
at night, Or even in their bedrooms, encounter
non-human beings,
and they're then transported to a UAP craft where they're
medically examined. Now, that sounds an extraordinary
story, but it's— that story is one that
is repeated thousands and thousands of times across
the world. People having very similar experiences.
Tissue samples, semen over being
taken from them, and then they're returned. And I met
many years ago the professor of psychiatry,
Professor John Mack at Harvard, who made a
study of this phenomenon and came to the conclusion that these were very real experiences.
And Harvard were almost going to put him on trial for
his publications. But of course, the rest of the academics
appreciated that his academic independence was Important.
So he was a leading expert
investigator and met hundreds of people around the world.
I've also spoken to current and past, um,
CIA officers who've told me of their own
personal abduction experiences. And the
CIA is well aware of this and has
a group that is monitoring this kind of phenomenon.
And I haven't yet started to work— oh, actually, that's not
true. I've decided to acquire one
additional item, my Hunt for Skinwalker.
But your bibliography is thankfully
crammed full of books and articles that we could
pick up and read. In the course of pulling this all
together, did you ever— get approached by
people who warned you off or tried to discourage you?
I haven't. I have to say I've got my concerns now
because there's a lot of material in the book which I
have no doubt the intelligence agencies, particularly in the
United States, do not want to see published. And it
concerns the departments that are involved, the methodology
involved, How they've kept this secret, what are the
mechanisms and the departments they've utilized to
collect craft, the special access programs. I've gone into
detail about the mechanism which has been in operation for 80
years, and I've revealed some other information which I know they
won't like, but I've decided it's important to give.
I haven't included confidential information where the source
did not want me to do it for fear of them being identified. But I
have given a lot of other confidential information, and I think it's
important because this subject needs to be
looked at. It needs— intelligent people want to know
where to find reliable information. They want to know what the strands of the
phenomena involve, and they want, I think,
to be able to see it warts and all.
And I'm anxious academia gets involved. I'm anxious
we have this debate, so I've published as fully as I can.
And it's— I don't know if it's encouraging, but it's not discouraging
that you've been approached by a couple of MPs. Isn't it about time
that one or more of the universities had a
course in extraterrestrials, in a
variety of the abbreviations you use, that we ought to make it a
recognized— Yes. Top subject? I couldn't agree
more. This is not on any curriculum. It's
staggering. Religious studies are, I mean, and for example, you can
read all about the jinn, who are a
species of smokeless beings who are
referred to in the Quran. There are many books published and
studied in, in, in, but other non-human intelligences
simply are ignored as being too borderline and risky.
And that's because of the stigma which the
Central Intelligence Agency has been able to generate going
back to the 1940s. It's slowly evaporating now, but
we've still got a little way to go to get universities and schools to—
and we need a syllabus. But I'm pleased to say I've been invited actually by
my old college at Cambridge to go and— by the master of the
college to go and talk to the students in October. So
I'm certainly going to go and do that. I was just about to say, I
can think of no one better to prepare, whether or
not you and I like ChatGPT or the equivalent, it certainly
makes life in certain respects easier. I
can't think of anyone better to prepare a syllabus
and to say to Cambridge, come on guys, put this on the
map. Well, yeah, and I'm hoping that they will
do that. It's going to need funding. And I want to actually hope we can
get it included in, I mean, there are some frightening aspects
about this topic, and I do go into the dark side of this phenomenon,
but I'd like to see this on the syllabus at schools,
actually. Yeah. The whole subject as we go into space of non-human
intelligence is critical. And you can go
back through our history, you can look at the way
that beings have been treated as fairies or
goblins, or actually people coming from the sky. You can
look at sky paintings by primitive groups in our
earlier civilization. This all needs to be studied and put into context
and brought into the modern day of what was
the flying saucer, what then was the UFO, and now is the UAP.
I couldn't agree more. And one of the things that, um, I want to try
and do— I know your schedule is a busy one— is set up
something, an event at Mishcon to, because
just coincidence. Well, I'd be delighted to participate in that. Yeah. So by
complete coincidence, when I was chatting to the barrister whose
name I referred you to in our WhatsApp chat,
I said I was talking about you and how I was enjoying the book. And
he almost went into, you know, liftoff.
He said, oh my God, I've been so interested. I want to meet Jonathan. So
I believe there are a number of lawyers. There's something,
and I don't know whether that's what was calling you.
There's something about somebody trying to conceal and
dissemble that is abhorrent to
most lawyers, I think. And the
more you try and con me,
the more I'm determined to uncover what the con is.
And I think this will be an enormously enjoyable evening.
We'll do some drinks and have questions and answers at
MishCon. And I will start working on this as
soon as we finish our podcast. Well, Gary, that's excellent.
I'd love to participate. Yeah, that would be amazing. So
you haven't thankfully yet been approached by anybody. You did
mention quite sensibly But who knows? I mean,
how does your family feel about Jonathan coming out and
putting his name? Have they had weird and wonderful comments?
Actually, they've been very supportive, I have to say. And I think my—
you know, they're a bit nervous, but I think— I hope when you look at
the book, you can see that it's not just about
somebody who sees a light in the sky. This is really
some core material which cumulatively is
shocking. And I go into great detail. I've got new government documents
which we've unearthed. I go into detail about the government cover-up. I
give a lot of footnotes at the back for people to look
at the sources that I've used and relied on apart from my
confidential sources. So I think they've seen that it's
serious work and I've just had their support. And
I've had, Gary, a lot of letters from around the
world from people in universities,
professionals, all kinds of people that I'm very pleased to say enjoyed the
book and are pleased finally that this subject has
been put together within one volume and
is an accessible overview of the phenomenon
in all its complexities with quite a lot of new material.
And I know we're getting close to the witching minute, but
What can we do, people like me,
apart from bringing you into Mishcon? When I speak to others, is
there an association, an organization that
we can join or create in the UK
that will coalesce and have regular gatherings and
meetings and exchanges? I think we should. I mean, they have these
organizations elsewhere in the world, and I think we
want a credible one where we've got a lot of serious
people who are interested, that want to have
discussions, learn more about recent developments. And
that's something you and I should seriously think, I think, of
starting. Absolutely. And there'll be many people.
I'm never surprised by— well, sorry,
I'm constantly surprised actually by the number of people who are
fascinated by this subject. I was speaking to a Supreme Court judge
actually, funnily enough, for lunch. I'm not gonna give his name and I don't know
too many of them, but anyway, he was saying, oh, Jonathan, what's your next case?
And I think he was expecting me to say, oh, I'm doing this, that, the
other. And I said, well, actually I'm working on a book. And he said, oh,
what about? And I said, well, actually it's about UFOs, which are now called
UAPs. He said, how fascinating. He said, I've been
so interested in that subject for a very long time
and I very much look forward to reading your book. Excellent. And
I think you'll find again that within the legal fraternity, there's
something there that calls to us when we know we are being
lied to. Well, in America, there's a group of lawyers
of similar ilk who have got together and are
working with Parliament to try and encourage
more parliamentary activity and indeed helping draft
requests, FOIA requests of government
to release information. And certainly that's another area which
we could certainly utilize young lawyers to assist on.
Absolutely. And to end up on a legal
point, and we may well reconnect
later, but I think I've got plenty of wonderful material, is
coming back to this question of legal justification, legal
punishment. For example, we know that spying goes on.
We know that sadly people are shooting
at, they are removing
spies that are thought to be acting against our interests, and
yet the world accepts that that has to remain private.
We don't demand that we want to know how many spies have we got
in Russia, in China. Where do we draw the line as
to why we should know more about this
area rather than something like that? Help me
rationalize that. Well, I think this area covers a lot of things.
I'm not in favor of publishing too much
detail about the technology if it's got a military application, because
I can see that one government will say that that will
help our adversaries. But if this technology, and some
say it has, has discovered free energy, or
anti-gravity, then those are things which should be disclosed
because that would remove our dependence on fossil fuels.
So there's some things, fiber optics, I believe, is another development that's come from
these reverse engineering programs, night vision. There are various things that can be
revealed. But I think fundamentally the concept that there is
other extraterrestrial, other non-human intelligences
here is something which people have a right to know. And
it's going to affect a lot of concepts, basic concepts, which
might be destabilizing. So, I mean, it's something we need to think about, but it
could have an effect on religion. Not necessarily. It could have
effect on people's feeling of safety and regard for
law and order if they feel that we are not in control
of our airspace and that we can't be protected
from abductions or something like that. It could have effect on our
understanding of consciousness, reality. I personally
believe that life and death, our understanding of that, is a part
of this phenomenon. And this in some way is wrapped up. That's
another philosophical conversation to have, but I think it touches a
lot of fundamental concepts. So I think we need more
disclosure. We need to understand more about who we are,
who else may be here with us. And we need, because you and I are
lawyers, we need to make sure that there is a fundamental
protection for people like you,
like others who have gone the distance and
believe that what they are doing is in the interests of
mankind, is in the interest, and that it's not just— you're
not just threatened or intimidated with going to prison for contempt of court
or whatever. We need to look at that. We need to look at that. And
the other thing is this: a lot of people who've had these
experiences, UAP experiences, whether close
encounter with a craft or abductions, have
inevitably ontological shock. I think it is almost
unbelievable that they are having to live in a society where the
official explanation is that they're not recognizing the
phenomenon. And in certainly in past decades, people have been
told they're hallucinating. They're mad. Their reputations have been
destroyed. And that simply isn't a fair state
of state. And we need to give support to a lot of people who have
had experiences of this phenomenon. Well,
Jonathan, techno glitches and all, it's been the most
fascinating conversation. I will release you
from any further time this evening. Let's look at
what we've got, which is rich in, in wonderful
information. And I am absolutely positive that you and I
will reconnect again, both on the podcast,
but also in some of the other aspects that you and I have touched
upon and try and get some coalescing
of right-thinking people behind this momentum.
Wonderful. I'm most grateful. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you so much.
Thanks, Jonathan. Take care now. Bye now. Bye. Thank you for
listening. And if you enjoyed this podcast, please click and subscribe to
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