Dr. Phil on UFOs, Government Secrecy, and His Search for Proof
[RUSH TRANSCRIPT BELOW] What does the U.S. government actually know about UFOs or unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAPs), and what aren’t they telling us? Have non-human intelligences visited Earth already? And what do we know about them?
There are few people who have interrogated the facts around UAPs as carefully as Dr. Phil. He and his team were given exclusive, early access by President Donald Trump to confidential files on these mysterious objects.
“The one thing that I know and can confirm without question is that our government has been lying to us for 79 years. They’ve been telling us that they have no evidence; [that] they have nothing that is unexplainable; that there’s not anything in their files that suggests that there might be something suggestive of non-human intelligence … that’s a lie,” he says.
“We’re talking about people that are admirals, generals, experienced lifetime pilots … seeing anomalous aerial phenomena that are doing things that our aircraft can’t do. They’re flying at speeds we can’t fly, doing maneuvers that would create G-forces we can’t sustain, or that our aircraft would come apart,” he says.
“And some of these have no visible signs of propulsion. Some of them don’t have heat signatures,” he continues.
In this episode, Dr. Phil reveals what he and his team have uncovered.
Views expressed in this video are opinions of the host and the guest, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.
RUSH TRANSCRIPT
Jan Jekielek:
Dr. Phil McGraw, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Dr. Phil McGraw:
Well, I’m proud to be here. I’ve been waiting to be asked.
Mr. Jekielek:
You’ve had this access, a deeper level of access, from what I understand, to these six tranches of information that the White House has disclosed. Before you saw these files, where did you actually stand on UAPs [Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon] or UFOs [Unidentified Flying Object], or what do you actually call them? I’d love to know.
Dr. Phil:
UAP is a contemporary term for UFOs, and I don’t think I’ve moved my stance. I think I have a healthy degree of scientific skepticism. I don’t know, and I think surveys and research say that over 70 per cent of Americans think we’re not alone. They think there are people here. But I think there’s a big difference between thinking that theoretically and the gravity of it actually being confirmed. There’s a big difference between saying, yes, we’re probably not alone, and having somebody tell you, we’re not alone, because that changes the whole order of things.
It changes human exceptionalism. It changes religious value systems. The nearest galaxy is Andromeda, and to get there would take two-and-a-half million years at the speed of light, which is what—don’t quote me—but it’s like 186,000 miles per second. We can’t travel that fast. So if they were able to get here from there, then they would have to be technologically superior to us, which would be disquieting for a lot of people. So it changes things.
It’s not just, oh, well, we have new neighbors. It does change a lot of things, but I have not seen the one thing that I know and can confirm without question is that our government has been lying to us for 79 years. They’ve been telling us that they have no evidence; they have nothing. That is unexplainable, that there’s not anything in their files that suggests that there might be something suggestive of non-human intelligence. Move along, folks. Nothing here to see. That’s a lie.
When President Trump gave the order to open these files, declassify these records, we saw in there the Robertson Panel was formed in 1953, and that it was commissioned for the sole purpose of misdirection and lying to the American public, and threatening military pilots and then subsequently commercial pilots if they disclosed what they were seeing from the cockpit. So there has been a government cover-up, lying to the American people for 79 years, which is infuriating to me. Are we stupid? That bothers me. So that much I know for sure because we found it in the documents.
Mr. Jekielek:
No, I spoke with a very prominent American who’s now unfortunately passed away, who flew U-2 missions with the Air Force in the 1950s, who told me just kind of out of the blue over Christmas time one year that he encountered these things, he explained to me what he said. I thought it was astonishing because I’m very much on the skeptical side in terms of what is around and what is being seen. But so, the big difference you’re saying, the thing that’s changed in your thinking, is your realization that there’s been a clear cover-up, a clear misdirection, maybe a lot of disinformation as well. Is that correct?
Dr. Phil:
People who have nothing to hide, hide nothing. So, if you say, look, we have a program where we want to misdirect and deflect what is in the database. Why? Look, these people that are making these decisions, they’re no different from you and I. I mean, these people worked in different jobs in the public sector. They didn’t get some kind of wisdom once they got elected into office, where they now have some level of intellect or wisdom that makes them better stewards of this than the American people. That’s offensive to me. I don’t think we should be entitled to know everything.
If the War Department, for example, is planning something that they’re going to do, you don’t publish what you’re getting ready to do so your enemy can know what it is. We don’t need to know that until after the fact. I don’t think we should know that. If there are things that a strategic advantage would be lost if it was disclosed in advance, then we shouldn’t know that. That’s not our job. There are experts, military experts, that do know more than we know.
What are we going to do with that information if we had it in advance? We shouldn’t know everything.But when we’re talking about something like this, there’s a degree of national security that would be involved.But then there’s a lot of it that doesn’t impact national security. And I don’t think American people should be lied to about that. I’m very skeptical about this.
I’ve been studying this. My team and I have been studying this. As these various tranches have come out, six of them now, some of them we’ve seen, some of this information we’ve been given in advance. So we had the opportunity to really do a deep dive. I have yet to talk to anyone that has actually seen an aircraft that was not of terrestrial origin.
Well, we don’t know. One of the popular theories is that these may be coming from the seabed. We know more about the surface of the moon than we do the ocean floor. And really, a serious theory is that, whatever the origin, they may be coming from the ocean floor, which is a possibility, but I’ve yet to see an aircraft. I am told by credible people that I have confidence in that we do have spacecraft that have either crashed or landed and been retained in our possession.
Mr. Jekielek:
Like those that are not of human origin. That’s what you’re saying.
Dr. Phil:
Yes, they’re saying that they’re made up of metallurgical substances that we don’t have on this planet. I’ve talked to people that say there are those that have been in the presence of and seen that now. If that’s true, if we have those, and I said, are we talking one or two? and I’m told, no, it’s more than 50 and less than 100. If that’s true, I would like to see them.
Now, here’s the problem. I want to see them, but I’m not a metallurgist. Listen, I’ve spent 20 years in Hollywood. I’ve seen things made that looked awfully real, and you go up in styrofoam. I’m not sure that I am qualified to know the difference, but I want to see them.
I’m told that there are people that have seen cadavers of pilots, that these aren’t drones, that they are flown by non-human intellectual biologics, and that we have those cadavers. I’ve been told by some that we have had pilots that survived and were detained. I want them to show me. I want to see it. And until I do, I don’t believe it.
Mr. Jekielek:
You’re saying that you believe these people that you’re mentioning, you believe that they’re credible, but you need to see the evidence as a kind of final step. I’m just trying to understand because you’re saying you’re not sure, but you’re saying these people are credible.
Dr. Phil:
Well, they are. We’re not talking about people that don’t have a scientific background or a scientific history. We’re talking about people that, A, have no reason to lie. We’re talking about people that are admirals, generals, experienced lifetime pilots. We’re talking about people that don’t have a history of fabrication, exaggeration, sensationalism that are reporting.
First off, the people that are reporting this, in terms of sightings and what they’re seeing in the air, they’re talking about seeing anomalous aerial phenomena that are doing things that our aircraft can’t do. They’re flying at speeds we can’t fly, doing maneuvers that would create G-forces we can’t sustain, or that our aircraft would come apart, moving at speeds like 40,000 miles an hour and making right turns.
If any aircraft we have were to do that, it would look like a yard sale. They would just come apart with G-forces anywhere from 50 to 10,000. We don’t have the ability to sustain that. We don’t have G-suits or any compartmentalization that would allow a human pilot to survive that. So it’s either a drone or there’s a pilot in there that can sustain those forces. And some of these have no visible signs of propulsion; some of them don’t have heat signatures.
Mr. Jekielek:
So, what’s going on?
Dr. Phil:
How is this happening? And the people that are reporting this are not people who make things up. In fact, it’s detrimental for them to report it because of the skepticism. If you have an experienced pilot that starts reporting this, they say, is this guy hallucinating? Is he or she not stable anymore? Should we take them out of the cockpit? So, there is an incentive not to report this instead of to report it.
But some have come forward and reported it. A lot of them report it anonymously because if they do report it, it creates problems for them, and they just don’t want that; they don’t want that heat. So it makes me curious. And so I want to know, do I think that these things are real and that there are these alien craft out there? I have a healthy degree of skepticism. Somebody needs to give me evidence. And I think the disclosure process that we’re going through right now is barely scratching the surface. I think it’s a joke.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let me ask you this. Okay, I’m going to give you two choices, two statements. I just want to know which one you land closer to. One is the government knows much more than the public has been told. Okay, let’s leave that one for a sec. The other one is the government itself doesn’t know what these things are. Where do you land?
Dr. Phil:
Those aren’t mutually exclusive. I think the government knows a lot more than they’re telling us. And what they’re telling us is, what they’re not telling us is, there are a lot of these things they don’t have an explanation for. The things they’re telling us are the ones that are resolved.That’s what they’re telling us. They’re saying we saw this and it turned out to be a weather balloon. We saw this and it turned out to be an atmospheric phenomenon. They’re telling us the ones that can be explained away. They’re not telling us a lot of the ones that can’t.
Mr. Jekielek:
I think it’s 20, I read that it’s 20 per cent of the cases that are public now are not explainable.
Dr. Phil:
Yes. And the videos that they’re showing, these grainy videos, they do have very clear 4K video of these things that aren’t being disclosed. Why? I mean, why do that? I mean, give us the best data that you have and let it be analyzed independently.
Mr. Jekielek:
Let’s talk a little bit about the White House and their effort. Why now?
Dr. Phil:
I think President Trump decided the American people are entitled to know. So he said, we’re going to declassify these documents. There are a lot of people in this space that are working on getting to the bottom of it, that believe that this information is fractionalized in different areas of the government. A lot of people believe that some of the hard evidence has been moved outside the government to defense contractors to avoid Freedom of Information Act access, and that presidents over the decades have been regarded as temporary employees. And so the attitude is, we’re not going to tell them everything that’s going on because they’re going to be out of here in two or three years.
If they’re a one-term president, they have four years max, and by the time we get through all this debriefing, they may have a couple of years left and then be out there, and they could talk about things, so they don’t need to know. Those in the Defense Department or National Intelligence think, we don’t need to be telling them everything we know. There are some that believe the presidents don’t have all the information.
President Trump gave the order to sign the executive order to declassify this information, and after that, the order to release people from non-disclosure agreements, but even that released them to talk to the AARO [All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office] and the intelligence services, not the public. Those are the gatekeepers that aren’t releasing everything to the public to begin with. So it’s still a Rubik’s Cube of trying to get the information out. I don’t think we have real disclosure at this point, is what I’m telling you.
Mr. Jekielek:
Have you spoken with the president about this?
Dr. Phil:
A little bit. He’s sincere in wanting this disclosure to happen.
Mr. Jekielek:
Why do you think it’s slow? And I mean, I can sense your own kind of frustration at the limits of what has been disclosed thus far?
Dr. Phil:
Yes, there are a lot of theories, but to steal a phrase from all the president’s men, follow the money. I think that’s the script that made that phrase famous. You know, follow the money. You heard me say these things move at incredible speeds with unknown propulsion systems. Imagine if you can reverse engineer that, and it doesn’t appear to be, from what’s seen, if this is happening with no heat signature in some cases.
In some cases, there is a heat signature, in others, they say it’s not.And they have maneuverability that our aircraft don’t have, speeds we don’t have, sustained G-forces we don’t have the ability to do. If that can be reverse engineered and created with a new energy source and maneuverability, there’s a tremendous advantage there. That could revolutionize everything. And this isn’t just happening in the United States, of course.
A lot of these reports have come from Russia, India, Germany, all around the world. So, you have to assume the same thing is happening internationally. If some country succeeds in reverse engineering this, if they actually do exist, and you could reverse engineer that, what a tremendous advantage. You could have it across the board, not just in terms of weaponry and all, but a new energy source. It could change the economics of the world.
Mr. Jekielek:
Why do you think the White House chose to come to you, of all people, around this issue? And what do you think they hope to achieve?
Dr. Phil:
I saw a tweet the other day where they were trolling me and said, so the government’s been lying for 79 years, and then they decide to tell the truth and they call Dr. Phil. What about UFOs? I got a kick out of that. I’ve had a dialogue with the White House about this. I think the reason that they’re in a dialogue with me about it, to the extent that they are, is because I have a different sensitivity to this. I’m not the only one with it, but it’s really fundamental to me.
For argument’s sake, let’s say this is true. Let’s say that we’re not alone, and there are non-human intelligent life forms. This can have a huge impact on the psychological mindset, psychological well-being, and the value system of our entire population. And it’s going to run the gamut. Some people, and I’m one, would say this is really exciting, and I can’t wait to interact with these people, these beings, these life forms. What can we learn?
I would love to sit like this and interview one of them if we could find some way to communicate. I would love to do that. That would be exciting.There are some people that would find this very disturbing. There are some people for whom this would create a tremendous existential crisis. At a spiritual level, or religious level, we’ve operated under this concept of human exceptionalism, that we are at the top of the food chain here, that there are humans that rule over this whole domain. Everything is downstream from humans.
What if all of a sudden we find out that’s not true? There are more intelligent beings, more evolved beings, and we’re down a huge notch. Watch that first step. It’s a doozy. These people, these beings can think and do things that we can’t even imagine.That’s a real thought.
Mr. Jekielek:
And never mind questions about the major religions of the world and so forth, right?
Dr. Phil:
Some of them accommodate it already. Some of them allow for this to be a reality. But there’s a portion of the population that is not going to accommodate well to this. There are those that would be paranoid. There are those that maybe are emotionally unstable. Even if that’s 5 or 10 per cent of the population, that could be 15 to 30 million people. Are we prepared to help those folks and support them?
We have a structure in this country of mental and emotional support systems, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and the American Medical Association. Our resources are pretty fully engaged right now.
For example, the young people in America have the highest levels of anxiety, depression, and loneliness since records have been kept. So we don’t have a lot of untapped resources right now. Fifty percent of counties in the United States don’t even have a psychiatric nurse, let alone a psychologist or psychiatrist. So if this does come into awareness, there is going to be a percentage of the population that has an abreaction to this. They’re going to respond to it in a way that they’re going to need some help and some support.
We need to be aware of that and plan for it. We need to be thinking about how we can deploy resources educationally and therapeutically to help people accommodate that. And I think there is room for a presumption of non-aggression because let’s assume that again, for argument’s sake, this is purely hypothetical. As I told you, I’m very skeptical, but let’s assume that they are here and have been here for a good while, maybe before we were here.
To date, we have no evidence of animosity. We have no examples of them pulling out a ray gun and melting people down. We have no evidence of them aggressing against the human race. So you can make a case for a presumption of non-aggression.If they wanted to and could, then you can make a case that they would have. So you can at least find some comfort in the fact that they have not. If they are here and could, they could have and would have. So you can find some comfort in that.
There are some things to say here. People have the most anxiety when they feel helpless and have no agency. And I think that’s not necessarily the case. So there are some things I think can be done. And I think the White House knows that I’m sensitive to that and that we need to be thinking about it and that I want to take care of the people.
Mr. Jekielek:
And so the implication is, I mean, I have some thoughts about that too. Also, these beings could have a longer-term view of things too. That would be another explanation, but let’s leave that off to the side. It sounds to me like, you know, the implication of what you’re saying is that the White House wants Americans to be, or perhaps beyond Americans, more ready for the possibility of this sort of reality.
And so, why don’t we just look at what is the best evidence? What is the best evidence that we have right now? Because there are examples. I mean, I know your team has put together examples of, you know, there are multiple verified sources on a particular thing that was cited. You give me what you think is the best evidence we’ve got.
Dr. Phil:
I can give you the best evidence that’s been released, not necessarily the best evidence we’ve got. There have been six tranches, and my team has gone through all of that and categorized the things that have the best evidence. I’m not saying that it’s great evidence or whatever, but it is the best evidence.
David Grusch is a whistleblower who really put himself out there and has testified before Congress. He testified about what he was seeing in the documentation in his job in the government because he was processing documents and began to see things in these documents that showed that the government knew an awful lot that they weren’t telling the American public. He thought, you know, this just isn’t right. He was willing to put himself on the line at the risk of his career, and it came at great cost to him.
It took great courage on his part, and he paid a very high price for it. He came forward with these documents to Congress and said, look, the American people are being lied to, and you in Congress are not being told the truth. I work with David a lot and have tremendous respect for him. So we’ve kind of worked together in going through these things and are continuing to work together.
One of the strongest cases is what people have known about as the Tic Tac case. This is the USS Nimitz case from 2004, and it was off the California coast. Several Navy fighter pilots watched a white Tic Tac shape. We’re talking about Tic Tac, the breath mint. This is a strong example, because several Navy fighter pilots watched this Tic Tac-shaped object, the ship’s radar tracked it, and a jet’s heat camera filmed it. It’s a clip known as FLIR1.
You have three different instruments plus multiple trained pilots all seeing and tracking the same thing. You have trained fighter pilots, and they’re trained to see targets in the air. They have experience at it. What they’re seeing with their trained eye and what highly sophisticated instrumentation is picking up are the same. So there’s triple agreement.
You’ve got the pilot seeing it; you’ve got two separate types of instrumentation seeing the same thing. That’s probably the single strongest case on record. That’s not part of the 2026 releases, but has been out there. Number two and three are gimbal and GoFast video.
Again, Navy, two heat camera clips backed by radar and pilots’ live reactions, where you’re hearing the audio of them saying, are you seeing this? And they’re describing something that is navigating and maneuvering in ways that we don’t have anything that does that. And both the gimbal and GoFast video are unresolved. They can’t explain it.
There’s no explanation for it. There’s something they’re seeing that is being tracked. There’s nothing on Earth that does that. So, what is it? There’s nothing on Earth that does it, and it is moving with intention. So, that’s an issue.
Now, some experts argue that the gimbal’s spinning is a glare smear on the lens, and that GoFast’s super speed was kind of a trick of the viewing angle that wasn’t moving as fast as it appeared to. So that’s why I say, until I see something, you know, these are electronic.
We all know in the age of AI, you can create things or whatever. But this first one was in 2004, the other one was in 2015. So that was 11 years ago and 22 years ago. AI wasn’t creating these sorts of things back then.
Then in 2019, there was a short heat camera clip. And what makes that one stand out is the report that was attached to it that we’ve now read directly rather than going to the news coverage. And there were five military-affiliated observers that confirmed what was seen, and reported observing this object. And the man who filed it had 28 years in the Air Force and Navy and said it flew unlike anything that he had ever seen in his career.
They said it was a flat, rectangular object, and I think he described it as being the size of a football field. We just don’t have anything like that; we don’t have anything flat and rectangular. That of that size that’s moving quickly, that’s airborne, and it’s been disclosed now that it was tracked for about 15 seconds before anybody turned on a recorder. And 20 seconds afterwards, and it outran his camera.
Mr. Jekielek:
And so it just disappeared into infinity, basically.
Dr. Phil:
Yes, it went away. Then we’ve got videos of orbs that hover and then split into multiple orbs and move in patterns and formations that are moving with intention. And we just don’t have anything that does that. We’re looking for explanations since we don’t have anything that does that. We don’t know of any atmospheric conditions that move with intention. I’ve been a pilot since I was a teenager, a long time. And I’ve seen things that I didn’t know what they were.
But, and here’s the thing of what these pilots are reporting. They’re not saying I saw a UFO. They’re saying, I’m not saying I saw an alien spacecraft. I’m telling you what happened. Investigators, go investigate it. They’re not saying they saw an alien spacecraft, they’re saying, here’s what I visually saw. Here’s what my instrumentation tracked. Somebody that investigates these things, go figure out what it is. I don’t know. Here’s what I saw.
Mr. Jekielek:
As I mentioned at the beginning, the information warfare around this, from my viewpoint—I see the signs everywhere—has been really thick. And this has been one of the reasons this issue is so difficult to cover. Are you ever concerned that, you know, you or maybe even the White House, I don’t know, right, that we’re somehow being used in a giant psyop around this issue? Because that’s one of the things I hear people saying is, well, there’s really important problems in our society, and this is kind of a distraction from those problems. What do you think when someone says that?
Dr. Phil:
I think there is a psyop. I think the psyop has been going on since the late 30s and early 40s to distract and deflect the American people away from information that’s out there to be had. I don’t think that this disclosure process is to deflect attention away from gas prices or whatever. If so, it isn’t working very well. It doesn’t appear to be working very well.
People can still read the pump. They can think for themselves. So, no, I don’t think this is an attempt to distract from more urgent issues. I think if it’s true, this would be the biggest news story in the history of mankind. If it’s not true, then we need to pooh-pooh it and discard it and move on. It’s long been a question: are we alone?
In one sense, it’s kind of arrogant to think we are, you know, I’m a Christian, I believe in God, and if God created this universe, it’s hard to wrap your mind around how vast this universe is, and how tiny Earth is in the whole span of the universe. And it’s a little arrogant to think he got down to the tip of Florida and said, I’m good. I’ve finished this, or got to the Antarctic and said, I’m good. I mean, it’s hard to imagine that.
On the other hand, I have seen absolutely no evidence that I can point to that says there is non-human intelligence. It doesn’t make sense that we’re the only ones, but I’ve seen no evidence to the contrary. I’ve met and talked to people that I believe are reliable historians, credible sources. And I am moving forward and believe within the next immediate future, I’m either going to be in the presence of a recovered craft and cadaver pilots, or I’m not.
Mr. Jekielek:
But you’ll know, you’ll have some.
Dr. Phil:
I’m going to figure out how to verify it. I’m not a metallurgist, and I’m pretty good at anatomy and physiology, but I’m going to have to have experts that confirm and verify. But I’m going to get to the bottom of it because if it’s true, then are they here? And I think people need to understand that this moves in stages.
First off, are they here? And if they’re here, can we make contact? And if we make contact, is there a relationship to be had? And if there’s a relationship to be had, are there goals and objectives that can be achieved? It’s not just that. I mean, we may be so insignificant to them, we’re like a fungus. I don’t know. You don’t know. You can’t jump to all of those conclusions.
But the first thing to know is, are they here, and have they been here? Are they gone? Are they still here? It’s a thought-provoking question, and people really want to know. I want to find out because if it’s true, I think we need to prepare to support those Americans that would need some support to accommodate it. I feel compelled to contribute to that and make sure people get the help they need.
Mr. Jekielek:
Same here. Well, Dr. Phil McGraw, it’s such a pleasure to have had you on.
Dr. Phil:
Thank you so much, Jan. And may I compliment your new studios here? These are absolutely stunning. And also, your staff here. What a professional and accommodating group of people. So, congratulations on your new digs here.
Mr. Jekielek:
Thank you so much.
Dr. Phil:
I appreciate you having me.
This interview has been partially edited for clarity and brevity.
