This aired in 1996 here on KLAS-TV.

March 1991, radar at the Leningrad airport detects first one, then two, then three unidentified objects hovering over a nuclear plant.

From a dead stop, the UFO zipped away at 2,000 miles per hour.

The Urals, 1976, a photographer clicks this shot and later provides a more detailed drawing.

May 1992, a military team in the Kola Peninsula tapes this spinning object.

In Tbilisi, a crew shooting a music video spots this overhead.

Today, average Russians are free to discuss UFOs, but it wasn't always so.

And here is the second part of this story done back in 1996 after George returned from his second visit to Russia.

He was interviewed by a Las Vegas journalist, George Knapp, in a series of very detailed interviews.

We put him on the air, blacked out his face, and he told this incredible story.

Exactly what's going on up there?

Well, there's several, uh, actually nine, uh, flying saucers, flying discs, uh, that are out there of extraterrestrial origin.

He said it's a secret that needed to be told to the world, that his life was in danger, and that he was coming forward and, um, and wanted to tell it.

I could feel my jaw dropping.

Is this real? We left there thinking, "Wow, if this is real, this is a really big story." So we decided, well, let's take the time and get this right.

What do you think else is gonna happen the fact that America's gonna be turned away from the f- the, uh, being, like, uh, like how do you say? Like, no one's gonna be asking us what our opinion is anymore.

Well, maybe that'll help on this issue.

I don't know.

I don't, I don't know where it leads.

If they no longer have to follow our example, maybe somebody does open it up.

But again, I don't see that it's in the interests, best interests of any government in the world to go ahead and say and spill the beans, especially if they have crash retrieval materials.

If they ever hope to be back in our good graces, that would go out the window.

Yes.

When you are looking at the state of play right now, do you believe we've made progress and what's your biggest question going forward?

Well, we have made progress.

Since that New York Times story, 2017, Congress has shown it's interested in the topic after being hands-off for more than 50 years.

Major media at least dabbled in it for a while, now have pulled back.

The academic community ha- has come forward.

Some people have stepped forward bravely and said, "We wanna look into this." So yeah, there's progress being made.

But, you know, the keepers of the secrets, the folks who are manipulated this topic for almost 80 years now are better at their job, I would daresay, than you and I and Jeremy are at ours.

George, when you, when you look at this issue, uh, as a function of transparency, you say the people who are the keepers of the secrets, uh, these days they use the word "deep state." In these years of researching this, what is your best reckoning of who we're up against and what they're about?

So was this an attack or, like, a science experiment on humans?

Well, it's always been, uh, characterized as an attack with no motive, but this was a sampling operation.

This was a, an investigation where they were collecting samples of blood and tissue from all these people.

And, you know, uh, so many of them ended up in hospitals, hundreds of them, most of the, in the same hospital.

All those records vanished.

The Brazilian Air Force files.

At the time, the Brazilian government was a military junta.

when I heard injury-