Edward J. Ruppelt

But in terms of the The discovery run of these characters, you have, of course, Hynek, who is the scientist who comes in and starts to have more of an open mind.

And you also, as you point out, Quinn is really Ruppelt, Edward Ruppelt by another name.

And then you also have Harding, who is played by Daniel McDonald, who actually, I just met him last year and we're working on a film together.

So he's a great guy, but they've all got the same little thing.

And yet, so they say, if we just look into it, we'll figure this thing out.

And the more they look into it, so it's the classic thing.

I just think we should give some props to the real Edward Ruppelt or Ruppelt.

I never knew how to pronounce his name.

No, this actually, it looks like it happened in March before the flap happened.

of uh over dc uh so according to this back in may he uh sent a letter to lincoln labs and actually if you go to this link that's in the description you can see down there there's a pdf and there is a uap tape letter that eric burleson sent to mit lincoln labs and he said that the recording that was identified and labeled as flying saucer talk It actually has Air Force Officer Edward J. Ruppelt as a briefer at this talk over at MIT about UFOs.

So he requested at that time for MIT Lincoln to basically, hey, determine what's the current status of this briefing, this reel-to-reel tape, and coordinate with the National Archives and Records Administration regarding preservation and archival review.

So what he's saying is, hey, I wrote to these fucking guys so I could get this for the people.

And it's like, wow.

And I became hooked because I, you know, I got the, the first book that I was able to pick up a, a couple days after I got my D [laughs] was the report on unidentified flying objects by the former head of Project Blue Book, Captain Edward Ruppelt, right?

Yeah.

But I'm reading it, and the first sentence of the book was talking about the fact that we were shooting at them.

Should we start there? Yep, love to.

Well, in 1947, the term UFO was coined by Captain Edward J. Ruppelt from the United States Air Force Association.

And this was a time post-World War II, and it was coming into the Cold War, where spies, espionage and experimental aircraft were flying above us.

And this meant that more and more attention looked upwards towards the skies.

He claimed he had encountered an unidentified flying object that discharged a fireball, which left him singed and barely able to see.

Captain Edward J. Ruppelt, chief UFO investigator for the US Air Force, would later label the event the best hoax in UFO history.

But the Desvergers incident remains one of the most intriguing cases from Project Blue Book, the Air Force's now declassified investigations into UFOs, because it wasn't just a sighting incident, but one involving a purported attack.

To this day, it's still unsolved.

This prevented visual confirmation of the objects.

Also, Edward Ruppelt, the Air Force's chief UFO investigator at the time, was barred from interviewing witnesses due to a sudden lack of available vehicles and was even denied reimbursement for taxi fares.

And most damningly, Ruppelt revealed that a CIA employee had predicted the Washington events days in advance.

All of this for Davidson was clear evidence of a CIA field evaluation of psychological warfare tactics, a view echoed by UFO researcher Donald Kehoe in his book, Flying Saucers, Top Secret.