0:11 There's a hole in Antarctica that every
0:12 nation on Earth has signed a pact to
0:15 keep it hidden. A secret so forbidden
0:18 that World War II won't start until one
0:20 breaks this silent oath. What lies
0:22 beneath doesn't just steal minds, it
0:25 rewrites reality.
0:28 December 2015. Investigative journalist
0:30 Linda Molton Howie's inbox blinks. An
0:33 email from Brian, a US Navy flight
0:35 engineer with an Antarctic service metal
0:37 detonates. They told us it was an air
0:41 sampling station. They lied. During an
0:43 emergency medevac crisis, to speed up
0:46 their trip, the crew flew across that
0:50 no-fly zone and apparently saw what they
0:52 were not supposed to see. But there's
0:55 more. 15 scientists vanished for two
0:58 weeks, return hollow, trembling, gear
1:00 quarantined, their faces like they'd
1:03 seen God or the devil. It was something
1:06 I had never seen before. And something
1:08 had scared those people to the point
1:13 that they were almost uh uh scared of,
1:15 you know, frightened to the point of not
1:18 moving. Their sheer terror was palpable,
1:20 an unspoken understanding that what they
1:22 witnessed defied explanation. Men in
1:26 suits replace NDAs with threats. You did
1:28 not see what you saw. You will not talk
1:29 about this. And he said, "Okay,
1:33 gentlemen. Um, what you saw, you did not
1:37 see. You were not over that area. And
1:40 you will not ever talk about this um
1:43 again." This isn't science fiction. It's
1:46 testimony. Remember Buzz Aldrin's 2016
1:49 tweet, "We are all in danger. It is evil
1:52 itself." It was dismissed as fatigue. Now
1:59 proof. The Antarctic ice sheets hold
2:01 secrets older than human civilization.
2:03 But sometimes they bleed through the
2:06 cracks of routine. Brian's description
2:08 of pre-flight rituals reads like
2:11 clockwork. Pre-dawn wakeups, log book
2:13 checks, fuel calculations. But
2:16 Antarctica doesn't respect routine.
2:19 C130 crews are the lifeline of Antarctic
2:21 operations. Their days revolve around
2:23 cargo drops, medivvacs, and resupply
2:28 runs. Mundane, predictable until they're
2:30 not. A sudden medivvac reroute forces
2:32 the crew to violate a no-fly zone near
2:34 the South Pole. A decision that will
2:36 unravel everything they thought they
2:38 knew about this frozen
2:41 continent. We got a change of mission.
2:44 Three words, change of mission. that
2:46 pivots this story from logistics to
2:49 lore. What begins as a standard medivvac
2:52 morphs into a violation of orders. Why?
2:55 Because beneath the ice lies a structure
2:58 the size of a football field. Unfold
3:00 everything that happened. Our mission
3:02 was just a a science resupply somewhere
3:04 out on the on the western side of the
3:06 continent. So, it was just a short
3:08 flight, probably an hour and a half,
3:10 hour 45 minutes to that science party
3:13 that had been put out uh prior. We got a
3:15 change of mission when we had gone up to
3:18 operations and uh they were told that uh
3:21 our crew was going to take one of our uh
3:24 our model aircraft and we were going to
3:26 fuel it up, max out the gas and fly to
3:28 South Pole and then from there we were
3:31 going to top off the fuel and then fly
3:34 to Davis for a medevac that some person
3:37 had uh become injured and needed to be
3:39 uh taken off the continent immediately.
3:42 And what happened? So, we got airborne
3:44 and everybody knew there was an air
3:45 sampling station that way because we
3:48 were briefed every time prior to our
3:51 deployment that this was the no-fly zone
3:54 because it was uh labeled as a air
3:57 sampling uh station and that we weren't
4:00 to fly over it. So, as a crew, we
4:02 decided that we would take that direct
4:05 route to Davis instead of deviating 20
4:08 mi uh around that air sampling, which is
4:11 approximately what they required us to
4:13 do if we were to have to go in that
4:14 direction. So, we were taking off and we
4:17 were climbing and about 5 to 10 miles
4:20 out, somebody decided to look out the
4:22 window instead of looking at their
4:24 instruments and and the radar of the
4:26 navigator does. and somebody said, "Hey,
4:28 there's this big dark spot out here."
4:31 And so we ended up flying not directly
4:33 over it, but somewhat offset so that we
4:35 could look out the left side of the
4:37 aircraft. And it was down at about a 45°
4:41 angle, and there was this large opening
4:44 in the ice where this air sampling
4:47 station was supposed to be. How big do
4:49 you think estimate it was? And did it
4:52 look like it was somewhat structured? I
4:54 estimated that you could have at least
4:58 flown one of our aircraft into it. Uh so
5:01 the wingspan of our aircraft is 135 138
5:04 ft uh wide. So it would have had to have
5:08 been large enough to accommodate that
5:11 wingspan, but it was probably uh
5:13 probably more of the size of a football
5:16 field. C130 engines hum with routine
5:19 until they don't. The crew's decision to
5:20 cut across the no-fly zone near the
5:23 South Pole wasn't recklessness. It was
5:25 necessity. A medivvac hanging in the
5:28 balance. But Antarctica trades and
5:31 secrets, not mercy. At 20,000 ft, the
5:34 anomaly glared back. A jagged maw on the
5:37 ice. Artificially geometric. Football
5:40 field size. Ramped.
5:43 Engineered. This wasn't an air sampling
5:47 station. Tracks led to it. Human tracks.
5:50 Snowcats. supply routes. But here's the
5:52 kicker. When debriefed, the crew wasn't
5:55 handed NDAs. They were stalked by
5:57 omission. A man in green fatigues
6:01 materialized, his warnings ablade. You
6:03 did not see the ice hole. What would you
6:05 do if you saw something that shattered
6:07 everything you'd been told? If the
6:08 official story didn't match what was
6:10 right in front of your eyes in
6:13 Antarctica, the truth gets buried.
6:15 sometimes under a mile of ice, sometimes
6:17 under a mountain of headlines. And
6:19 that's not just a problem at the bottom
6:21 of the world. When I first heard Brian's
6:23 story, I wondered, could anything like
6:26 this happen for real? So, I started
6:28 digging. That's when I found something
6:30 eerily familiar. Just recently,
6:33 scientists at the remote SA 4 base sent
6:35 out a desperate plea for help, reporting
6:37 violence and threats after months of
6:39 isolation. But here's what's wild.
6:41 Depending on where you look, the story
6:44 changes. Just look at these headlines.
6:46 One headline from a source that leans
6:48 more right focused on the threats and
6:50 security risks, almost sensational in
6:52 its tone. Another from a central leading
6:55 outlet emphasized the psychological toll
6:56 of isolation in the human side of the
6:59 story. And a third barely mentioned the
7:01 incident at all, almost as if it wasn't
7:03 newsworthy. With ground news, you can
7:05 instantly compare how dozens of sources
7:07 cover the same event, spot the
7:09 differences in language and emphasis,
7:11 and see where the political bias leans.
7:13 right, left, or center. That's why I
7:15 started using Ground News. It's a tool
7:17 that lets you see the news from every
7:19 angle, like shining a spotlight into the
7:21 dark corners where stories get lost or
7:23 distorted. With Ground News, I can
7:25 instantly compare dozens of headlines
7:27 about the Antarctic crisis, see which
7:29 details were highlighted or ignored, and
7:30 even track the political lean of the
7:33 coverage. It's like having X-ray vision
7:35 for the news, especially when the story
7:37 is as chilling and remote as Antarctica
7:40 itself. And the best part, you can track
7:42 coverage over time. Watch how a story
7:44 evolves, who's covering it, and who's
7:46 staying silent. It's the closest thing I
7:48 found to actually seeing through the
7:50 ice. If you want to try ground news for
7:52 yourself, use my link,
7:55 ground.news/advice, or scan the QR code
7:57 on screen for 40% off the Vantage plan.
7:59 Link's also in the description and pin
8:01 comment. Ground News helps me keep track
8:04 of things from all angles at all times.
8:06 There's no other service like it.
8:07 Because in a world where the truth is
8:09 always shifting, where secrets can be
8:11 hidden in plain sight or erased with a
8:13 single headline, sometimes the only way
8:15 to know what's real is to see the whole
8:17 picture. And what Brian's crew uncovered
8:20 next. It makes a hole the size of a
8:23 football field seem almost ordinary.
8:25 Because after that flight, it wasn't
8:27 just the ice that held secrets. It was
8:30 the people. Scientists who vanished.
8:32 Faces that returned hollow. in a cover
8:34 up that went far deeper than anyone
8:37 expected. We landed uh in McMmero. They
8:39 had an ambulance waiting uh for us for
8:41 the for the patient. Uh we shut down
8:44 engines. They offloaded him onto another
8:46 aircraft. Another crew had been waiting
8:48 uh to take him back to Christ Church,
8:50 New Zealand. So they offloaded him. Then
8:52 uh we put the airplane to bed. My job as
8:55 the engineer uh was to post-flight the
8:57 aircraft and make sure that it was okay
8:58 to fly or if anything was wrong with it,
9:00 I had to write up the discrepancies and
9:02 give it to our man's control people so
9:04 that they could fix the aircraft for for
9:05 the next mission for the next crew. So,
9:07 we went back up, everybody got in the
9:11 van and uh drove back up to McMmero, got
9:14 out and we had to go back into um uh
9:16 operations or the puzzle palace as we
9:18 called it. And we were told that the
9:21 crew had to wait here instead of doing
9:23 the normal debrief with our operations
9:25 guy and then going back and get
9:27 something to eat and and do whatever and
9:29 then started going into crew rest for
9:31 our next mission. So we were told to
9:33 wait in the in the conference room. So
9:35 we all went in the conference room and u
9:37 about 5 10 minutes later this gentleman
9:40 walked in that nobody knew wasn't part
9:42 of the squadron but he was dressed in
9:45 the the regular uh green fatigues that
9:46 everybody wore down there when they
9:48 weren't um on flight status kind of
9:51 looking at all of us and he says okay so
9:54 um you guys went through the uh no-fly
9:58 zone uh north of pole and violated that
10:00 air airspace restriction and our
10:01 aircraft commissioner says yeah we did
10:04 we thought it was prudent that we not
10:06 waste any time and shave some time off
10:09 our flight time to get to uh the medevac
10:11 that was at Davis. They we were told it
10:14 was important and not to uh waste any
10:17 time. So, we made the decision to to fly
10:19 over that air sampling station. Uh the
10:22 gentleman basically kind of looked
10:23 around at all of us sitting at the table
10:25 and looked at each one of us and he
10:28 said, "Okay, gentlemen, um what you saw
10:32 you did not see. you were not over that
10:35 area and you will not ever talk about
10:38 this um again. Okay. And that's all he
10:40 said. There was no repercussions like or
10:42 any threat like okay and if you do talk
10:44 about it this or this is going to
10:46 happen. Okay. And we all sat there kind
10:48 of dumbfounded. It's like
10:52 okay. All right. So we what did we see?
10:54 So none of us thought anything of it
10:56 other than this big hole in the ground.
11:00 Okay. In the ice. In the ice. Exactly.
11:02 So it was like, "So why is this guy
11:04 making a big deal about it now and
11:06 saying that uh we can't talk about it
11:08 and we didn't see it?" Debriefings in
11:10 Antarctica are routine until they become
11:13 rituals of erasure. Brian's crew returns
11:15 from the medivvac mission, adrenaline
11:17 still crackling from the ice hole
11:19 sighting, but Antarctica trades in
11:22 secrets, not closure. You did not see
11:25 the ice hole. Seven words that transform
11:28 a debriefing into a crime scene. No
11:31 paperwork. No NDAs, just a verbal
11:33 scalpel excising
11:35 reality. The absence of NDAs is its own
11:38 smoking gun. Coercion thrives in
11:41 shadows. Ask yourself, why verbal
11:43 threats over legal contracts? Because
11:46 some truths are too volatile for paper.
11:48 When the crew later hears scientists
11:50 whisper about visitors at South Pole's
11:53 bar, the puzzle snaps into focus.
11:57 Nonhuman visitors, silent agreements, a
11:58 continent playing
12:01 host. What the crew learns next will
12:03 make the ice hole feel trivial.
12:05 Scientists who vanish for 2 weeks and
12:08 return fundamentally altered. Now, can
12:13 you unfold what may be a link exactly to
12:17 that hole with the strange story of the
12:20 disappearing scientists, the National
12:22 Science Foundation scientists? Well, the
12:24 standard operating procedure and all the
12:26 science parties know, I mean, it's part
12:27 of their training, their survival
12:29 training, is that every day they have to
12:32 check in on radio and they would call in
12:33 at a certain time every day and give a
12:36 status report or a situation report. And
12:38 they were supposed to do that. That was
12:41 mandatory. If McMurdo had not heard from
12:44 them in 2 days, then they were we were
12:46 supposed to try and initiate contact.
12:48 So, we had to go back out since we were
12:50 the crew that had put them in
12:52 originally. We knew the area. We knew
12:55 where the creasse fields were so that we
12:57 wouldn't end up uh landing in a creasse
12:59 field and ended up losing the airplane.
13:02 So, we were the ones designated to go
13:04 back out. So, we flew around the camp,
13:06 did a circle a couple times, but there
13:10 was no uh movement. There was no people
13:12 moving around in the camp. Usually, when
13:15 when a C130 flies over, you can't miss
13:17 that sound. and the people come out to
13:19 see, hey, you know, our, you know, our
13:21 males here or our milk's here or
13:23 something like that, but there wasn't
13:26 anybody to be seen. So, we ended up and
13:27 made the approach into the skiway there
13:31 and landed, taxied up to the camp and uh
13:32 we didn't know how long we were going to
13:34 be there, so we shut our engines down
13:37 and uh some of us got out and uh tried
13:40 to find uh some of the science party
13:41 that was there. We couldn't find
13:43 anybody. We were told, "Okay, you guys,
13:45 you need to go back out to that that
13:47 science camp and picked up those
13:49 people." Because they finally called in
13:50 and said they wanted to be picked up.
13:53 They didn't even wait for the the cargo
13:54 to be loaded cuz normally the cargo gets
13:56 loaded first and then we bring the
13:59 passengers on. They all approximately 15
14:03 of them uh just basically moved as quick
14:05 as they could onto the aircraft and sat
14:07 down in the seats. And at that point,
14:10 Brian, you and the crew were so baffled
14:13 because not one of those scientists that
14:15 had been missing would talk to any of
14:17 you. Right. Right. Yeah. That's what I
14:18 was That's what I was going to talk
14:20 about. None of them would say a single
14:22 word to us. I mean, my load master on
14:24 the way back, I went back up to my seat
14:27 and and got strapped in and my load
14:29 master continued to try and find out,
14:30 talking to different people, trying to
14:32 find out what went on and none of them
14:33 would say anything, but they all had
14:35 that frightened look on their face. What
14:36 do you think was happening to them at
14:38 that point? I think they were in some
14:40 kind of shock, you know, maybe like a
14:43 post-traumatic stress syndrome or
14:45 something like that, PTSD. I mean, it
14:48 was something I had never seen before.
14:51 And something had scared those people to
14:54 the point that they were, you know,
14:58 almost uh uh scared of, you know,
15:00 frightened to the point of not moving.
15:01 Brian's crew arrives at the Merry Bird
15:03 Land Camp to find tents erect,
15:06 snowmobiles parked, coffee cups half
15:09 full, but no scientists, just wind
15:11 howling through empty Quanet
15:13 huts. When the crew finally retrieves
15:15 the scientists, their faces tell the
15:19 story. Wide eyes, trembling hands, lips
15:21 sealed tighter than a cryogenic vault.
15:25 These weren't men. They were husks.
15:27 The scientist gear was quarantined, not
15:31 incinerated, studied. Ask yourself, why
15:34 preserve equipment, but silence
15:36 witnesses? Because some contagions
15:39 aren't viral, they're mimedic. Years
15:41 later, rumors surfaced that the
15:42 quarantine gear was shipped to Wright
15:44 Patterson Air Force Base, home to
15:46 America's most infamous foreign material
15:49 lab. Coincidence or
15:51 confession? What the crew learns next
15:54 chills deeper than Antarctic ice. A
15:56 debriefing with men in suits who speak
15:59 in threats, not orders. Explain what
16:02 happened to the scientists and the gear.
16:05 It's separate tracks. Right. The uh Air
16:07 New Zealand army was in charge of the uh
16:09 cargo movement on the ice. So they took
16:12 it over up into McMurdo and it was put
16:15 in a separate building all by itself and
16:17 uh it was quarantined. No one was
16:19 allowed to go in there and it was to
16:21 stay there until it was uh put on
16:23 another airplane back to um Christ
16:24 Church, New Zealand. This is all the
16:27 gear that was there at Marie Birdland
16:30 with the time of the scientists going
16:32 missing, right? All of their stuff that
16:34 we brought back out for that camp was
16:36 quarantined in a in a building. Now, in
16:37 this building, there wasn't anything
16:40 else. It wasn't shared with anything. It
16:42 was an empty basically quite hut type
16:44 storage building and it was the only
16:47 thing in there. Uh it was locked. Nobody
16:49 was allowed to go in there. We were told
16:51 don't go near that stuff. And we said
16:53 why? And it's like we were just told
16:55 it's quarantine. Don't go where go near
16:58 it. Didn't you have some more people in
17:02 suits show up uh to talk with you guys
17:04 and there were you also had more
17:07 discussions with people in rumors about
17:10 this. We were debriefed again. So we
17:12 were taken in the same room in the
17:14 operations building and we were sat down
17:17 and this time two guys showed up. They
17:18 weren't they were not dressed in
17:20 fatigues. They were dressed in what I
17:24 would consider like a suit type apparel.
17:25 Uh the only thing that was different was
17:28 that they uh didn't have the regular
17:30 suit type shoes that that but they were
17:33 wearing some type of uh cold weather
17:37 boot uh on. And so um we were told the
17:39 same thing. Okay. think you guys are not
17:41 going to say anything about uh about
17:43 this incident that that you didn't find
17:46 that those scientists at Marie Birdland
17:48 when you went to pick them up and
17:51 uh that uh nothing was going to be said
17:53 about it. Okay. Again, we weren't we
17:56 weren't asked to sign anything like the
17:58 first time and so debriefings in
18:01 Antarctica follow a script until the
18:03 script writer is inhuman. Brian's crew
18:05 returns from Merry Bird Land, their
18:07 nerves still raw from retrieving the
18:10 silent, hollowedeyed scientists. But in
18:12 this theater of ice, the final act
18:14 belongs to men who don't wear uniforms.
18:17 They were power. You are not to talk
18:21 about this incident. No paperwork, no
18:24 raised voices, just a blade of
18:26 implication. We've already erased it.
18:29 The absence of NDAs is an oversight.
18:31 It's arrogance. Verbal threats leave no
18:35 trail. Ask yourself, who silences
18:38 witnesses without paperwork? Entities
18:40 above governments. Entities that own
18:43 patents on reality. Years later, Buzz
18:45 Aldrin would tweet, "We are all in
18:48 danger. It is evil itself." After a
18:49 South Pole
18:52 evacuation, coincidence or a breadcrumb
18:54 for those connecting dots across
18:57 decades, what comes next makes the suits
18:59 look quaint. a final flight over the
19:01 trans Antarctic mountains where silver
19:04 discs perform maneuvers no human pilot
19:07 could survive. And so on that we get to
19:13 95 uh to 96 and you all are doing some
19:16 of these runs and talk about what
19:17 happened over the transarctic mountain.
19:19 Uh, one of the trips that we're going
19:21 from McMurdo to Pole was just a regular
19:23 what we called a milk run. And we were
19:26 taking people and cargo up there. And so
19:28 we were normal route was to take off
19:31 from McMurdo, fly over Minibluff, which
19:33 is one of the lands landmarks that we we
19:35 knew we were on course and then fly to
19:38 the east side of the Trans Anatarctic
19:40 Mountains, which happened to be actually
19:42 almost over the entire length of the
19:44 Beardmore Glacier because the Beardmore
19:46 Glacier runs um alongside the Trans
19:49 Antarctic Mountain Range. We were coming
19:51 up past the Ant Transat Arctics. We were
19:53 just east of that mountain range and
19:56 we're we're probably around 25,000 ft or
20:00 so altitude and one of the load masters
20:02 in the back. He uh was looking out the
20:03 window and he's like looking down the
20:06 transatics, you know, and seeing what he
20:09 could see and he saw some glimpses of uh
20:11 light reflections of something and he
20:14 called me and said say uh hey an uh come
20:15 back here and look at this. So, I got
20:17 out of my seat and went back there and
20:18 looking out the window and I said, "What
20:19 are you looking at?" He says, "Look at
20:21 that down there." And he says, "See
20:23 those little flashes?" And I says, and I
20:25 started looking around. I don't see
20:26 anything. And he says, "Oh, no, no. Over
20:28 here. Go over to the left a little bit.
20:29 See on the top of the by the mountain
20:31 peaks." And I'm looking. I says, "Oh,
20:32 yeah. I see them now." And I say told
20:33 him, he says, "What do you think those
20:34 are?" And he says, he says, "I don't know."
20:35 know."
20:38 All of a sudden, there was a group of
20:42 maybe four or five of these glints and
20:44 they were right over the top of the
20:47 transarctics and you could see them
20:48 reflecting the light and I got to
20:50 looking at them a little bit closer and
20:52 a little bit closer and they started
20:54 becoming bigger which to me was an
20:56 indication that they were climbing in
20:57 altitude but they still stayed over the
20:59 train of Antarctics and I'm looking at
21:01 them and it's like you know that looks
21:04 like discs or and I kind of jokingly
21:06 said flying saucers. And he looked at me
21:08 and he kind of smiled. He goes, "Well,
21:09 that's what I thought, too." But I
21:10 wasn't going to say anything cuz I
21:12 thought you I thought maybe you think I
21:13 was a nuts or something. I says, "No,
21:16 that's what it looks like." And then the
21:19 formation of the discs, the lead one,
21:21 the one in the front would make a dash
21:23 toward this other mountain peak, and
21:25 then the other ones would all follow,
21:27 and they would all stop next to the the
21:30 lead uh disc. And then they would dart
21:32 off in another direction. one would go
21:34 and then the other ones would follow.
21:36 And then surprisingly enough, one of one
21:39 of them took off that was in the back of
21:40 the group, wasn't the leader. He took
21:43 off in one direction and two of the disc
21:45 went with him and the others went the
21:47 opposite direction over the entire time
21:50 over the transarctics. And uh it was
21:51 kind of unusual because at no time did
21:53 they ever approach our aircraft or did
21:55 they ever venture over the Beardmore
21:57 glacier. That duration for that
21:59 sighting, which is the first one, I
22:01 would say was probably about 10 minutes.
22:03 They were kind of pacing us, going with
22:05 us, but they were staying over the
22:07 Transat Arctics. And then we got to the
22:08 end of the Transat Arctic mountain
22:10 range, and we were over the uh the Polar
22:13 Plateau, and they stayed over the
22:15 Transat Arctics, and we continued on to
22:19 South Pole Station uh to to uh uh do our
22:21 mission. C130 engines thunder with
22:24 routine until the ice below whispers
22:26 secrets in a language of light.
22:28 Brian's crew banks over the trans
22:30 Antarctic mountains, a jagged spine
22:31 dividing east from west
22:34 Antarctica. Below, the Birdmore glacier
22:37 sprawls. A frozen river wider than
22:41 cities. Above, silver discs. No radar
22:43 blips, no radio warnings, just impossible
22:45 impossible
22:47 physics. Flight paths here are memorized
22:51 like hymns. Mluff to South Pole, 3 hours
22:54 10 minutes. Fuel calculations precise to
22:55 the gallon.
22:58 The discs didn't obey. They dance,
23:02 banking at 90° angles, halting midair,
23:04 mirroring the C130's path, then
23:07 rewriting it. Look at that down there.
23:08 Oh, no. No. Over here. Go over to the
23:10 left a little bit. See on the top of the
23:11 by the mountain peaks. And I'm looking.
23:13 I says, "Oh, yeah. I see him now." Not machines.
23:15 machines.
23:18 Predators. Five silver orbs pivot in
23:20 unison. A choreography no human pilot
23:23 could survive. G-forces that would liquefy
23:24 liquefy
23:26 lungs. The discs never crossed the
23:30 beardmore. A silent treaty or geoence
23:34 truth. Ask yourself, why guard empty
23:37 ice? Because some borders aren't on
23:40 maps. Years later, declassified NORAD
23:42 logs reveal thermal blooms under these
23:45 peaks. Pulses matching the disc's 1985
23:48 appearance. Coincidence or
23:51 check-ins? They weren't surveying. They were
23:52 were
23:54 hurting. What comes next defies flight
23:57 logs. The discs dance over the
24:00 transatics. A countdown. Thermal blooms
24:03 pulse beneath glaciers. Ice cores
24:04 humming with ancient
24:07 protocols. Why heard a
24:09 C130? Because some paths aren't
24:12 navigational. They're sacramental.
24:14 Contact actually started on Friday. So
24:16 we were doing this talk at the
24:19 restaurant in and um Thursday night.
24:21 Thursday night, which was just was
24:24 contact hadn't even started yet. So, Iat
24:26 came home on Sunday and uh went to work
24:29 on Monday and I'm sitting uh at my at my
24:32 desk and and you're in a aerospace
24:36 related company where you do not
24:39 normally get any outside public phone
24:42 calls and that you have to have a
24:44 clearance to work there. Right. Exactly.
24:48 and uh a phone call came in to me about
24:51 10:00 in the morning uh on my personal
24:54 cell phone and I didn't recognize the
24:57 number, but I thought maybe it was my
24:59 nephew or or somebody that was that was
25:02 calling me. So, I answered the phone and
25:03 I said, "Hello." You know, and she and
25:05 the voice on the other end, which is a
25:08 it was a male voice, um said, "Is this
25:11 Brian?" I says, "Yeah, this is Brian. Uh
25:14 who am I talking to?" He says, "Well,
25:17 there's some people that uh are kind of
25:20 upset that uh you've been talking about
25:22 certain things and they would rather not
25:24 uh rather you not discuss any of that
25:26 stuff that you were talking about." He
25:27 says, "I don't um don't understand. What
25:30 are you talking about?" Well, um we know
25:34 that you and uh your nephew and uh Linda
25:37 Mohal were uh having a dinner on
25:40 Thursday, this last Thursday at uh
25:42 during the contact at the in the desert
25:43 conference and that you were out in the
25:47 parking lot until about 12:30 talking. I
25:50 says, "Well, he you know there was not
25:53 anybody else around. How did you know
25:56 that occurred?" And the voice on the on
25:59 the other hand said, 'Well, you know,
26:03 um, what we do is what we do, and we
26:05 pretty much know everything that goes
26:08 on. I said, "Really?" Yeah. And they
26:11 said, "The people that uh that I'm
26:13 associated with really don't want you
26:15 talking anymore about the missing
26:19 scientists that you had uh encountered
26:22 um years back." I said, "Well, how do
26:24 you know about that?" And the guy said,
26:27 "Same thing." He says, "We pretty much
26:31 know everything." I said, "Okay." And he
26:34 said, "So, stop talking." So, I'm
26:35 looking at my cell phone, you know, and
26:37 and the number comes up and I'm looking
26:39 at the phone number and I'm going, "I
26:41 don't recognize this phone number." So,
26:43 I was at my computer and I quickly went
26:45 in, you know, and and Googled the search
26:49 for that phone number and it came back
26:53 as the general phone number of the NSA
26:56 in Fort Me, Maryland. I went, "Oh,
26:59 really? This is kind of scary. Somebody
27:03 is surveilling me and they know what
27:06 went on at a private conversation
27:10 uh that we we had last Thursday." So I
27:13 called my nephew and told him what
27:16 happened and then obviously he called
27:19 you and uh told you that uh what had
27:20 happened and then I finally got a hold
27:22 of you and and told you what had
27:26 happened. Right. And I asked you I said
27:30 is this a problem? Are are you worried
27:33 about a repercussion? And I'll never
27:37 forget when you said, "I'm never going
27:41 to back off from talking with you or
27:45 being able to talk about the missing
27:48 scientists, the hole in the ice, the
27:51 silver discs, what appears to be
27:53 definitely be an alien presence in
27:55 Antarctica. They never had me sign a
27:58 non-disclosure agreement." Right. That's
28:02 exactly what I said. But I also you also
28:05 asked me you you asked me why do you
28:07 think that they called you? And I says,
28:09 "Well, I kind of have a gut feeling,
28:12 Linda, that uh that they were trying to
28:15 send a message to you through
28:18 me, you know, because you really dig
28:20 into everything. I mean, you get right
28:22 down into the nitty-gritty of of the
28:26 information." And I think in some way
28:28 that they were trying to send a message
28:30 to you, you know, to leave the subject
28:33 alone. Antarctica doesn't forget it.
28:36 Archives. Brian's phone rings with a
28:38 chill of a glacier calving. A voice
28:42 slices through static. Stop talking. No
28:45 demands. No warrants. The NSA's ghost
28:48 call isn't a threat. It's receipt. A
28:50 receipt for truds. Too volatile for
28:53 servers, too alive for paper. Ask
28:56 yourself, why flex power over retired
29:00 engineer? Because some silences are
29:02 ecosystems. The discs still dance over
29:04 the transact arctics. The ice hole still
29:06 breathes. The scientist gear still
29:09 whispers in Wright Patterson's vaults.
29:12 And Brian, he's a living fossil in a war
29:14 older than ice cores. A war where
29:17 victory isn't secrecy, but eraser.
29:19 Antarctica's greatest secret isn't
29:22 buried. It's broadcast in thermal blooms
29:24 under midnight suns in hushed bars at
29:27 Pole Station. In the static between
29:30 classified and unknown. The crew's sin
29:33 wasn't seeing, it was
29:36 surviving. C130s still ferry cargo
29:38 across the Beardmore. Medivvac still
29:41 bleed through radios. But now when crews
29:44 bank over mid a bluff, they check their
29:48 six for silver, for light, for the
29:50 glacial certainty that some borders
