It was 1968, if I remember correctly, and somewhere along the Cambodian border. We were getting the lay of the land on an LRRP, tracking supply routes into South Vietnam along Cambodia and mapping them out for future raids, and for the B-52 bombing campaign the following year that smashed the whole place to hell.

The object sort of appeared overhead all of a sudden, a bright red-orange glow, and looked like it was sort of melting– I don't know, only some of us looked up in time, and we only got a brief glimpse through the tree cover. It was over our heads and gone in a flash, I couldn't tell you how high it was or how fast it was moving– but maybe four, five seconds later, there was a loud crash and dull thump that you could feel through the ground. That let us know that it had fallen somewhere nearby.

We figured it was a US plane, though for the life of me, I couldn't tell you what the original shape of it was when it was plummeting overhead- it was just too fast; all I remember was the orange glow and thinking of molten metal. I even ducked expecting some to fall on me.

We were close enough to the northern border that we knew better than to use our long-range radios openly. The Soviets had sent their own special forces advisors armed with pretty good electronic snooping gear, and if they were nearby, they could pinpoint your location pretty accurately. We were now on a rescue mission as far as everyone was concerned and figured we'd hold off on the radios until we got to the crash site and asked for extraction.

Turns out the damn thing was further than we thought, a good three to four miles through awful terrain. When we got there though, it was immediately obvious that this wasn't a US plane– or at least nothing like any of us ever knew about. Our Captain– obviously, we're going to withhold names– had been in the black world for a while and knew there was some stuff flying over Vietnam made in the US that the public still doesn't know about. But nothing like this.

It reminded me of a giant metal egg that had cracked open when it crashed. The entire scene was incredibly warm, and at first, I thought this was just some crashed space capsule– maybe Soviet since we were in their neck of the woods. But it was a dull gray and looked like it had been made from a single piece of metal; there were no seams or bolts or screws.

I've seen the way 3D printers work nowadays, and it looked like they'd been made the same way. I never got a good look on the inside, so I couldn't tell you much about it. The brush around it was on fire, and it was hard to see inside through the broken side of the craft. I couldn't tell you if there were any occupants. I didn’t see any myself.

We called in the crash and reported ourselves on-scene but were surprised to learn that there were already some birds en route. We got told to secure the site, so we did just that while hoping the whole damn jungle wouldn't go up in flames. The first aircraft overhead was a pair of F4s, which quickly settled into an orbit. That's what kind of tipped us off that this was something real serious– I know this sounds silly now, but at the time, we honestly didn't know what this damn thing was; the fire around it made it too hard to actually see anything. Most of us still thought it was just either NASA or something Soviet.

Anyway, I think the Air Force guys were overhead to ward off any curious Vietnamese Migs. The first choppers to arrive were Hueys, full of infantry– but the infantry wasn't let anywhere near the craft. They were deployed in a wide swathe around it, I don't know what they told those boys, but it took a good two days to get that damn thing out of the jungle, and obviously, there was a need to secure the site, given how close it was to the border.

We got choppered back pretty immediately, though. Other SOF guys came in, and they worked a little closer into the actual craft, along with some Air Force and Navy egg heads. I found out later they were all already read into the Program– that's what everyone called it, the Program– and there were several rapid reaction units stationed throughout in-theater. See, we'd learned from the Korean War that these things are attracted to conflict, and I guess it makes sense– it's probably one of the most interesting things we do.

A lot of people think this whole mess started in World War II, and maybe it did– but the Program got put together during the Korean War. That's when it was official.

Anyway, I think the intel guys that read us in kind of jumped the gun a little. See, most of us were still of the opinion that this was just some space probe or something; they could've told us that and let us go, and we'd lived the rest of our lives without a second thought. But I guess they thought we'd seen more than we did, so we got briefed in, kind of by force. As in, we had no choice– it was that or a dishonorable discharge, and I saw it happen once or twice; they fabricated entire Article 15s or worse if they thought you would be trouble. Everything to kill your credibility, their favorite was drug charges– we all knew drugs were everywhere over there, so who was going to listen to some washout kicked out for heroin?

Back then, the world was a lot smaller than it is today. The last thing you wanted was for your community and family to believe you'd gotten kicked out or washed out with a bad conduct discharge.

So they read us in, only a little. People think you just get all the info all at once– that's not how secret programs stay secret. We were told only what we needed to know. I didn't even realize these damn things were from space until I actually saw a body– then it was sort of like, ok yeah, you figured that out, here's a bit more info. For all I know, I never did learn the whole truth. But I know a lot of it, and I'm kind of tired of sitting on it all these years. Plus, what are they gonna do to an old man?

That's the thing: if they did anything to me or that Grusch guy now– well, it would just sort of validate his story, right? Better to leave us alone and let the world think we're crazy.

Speaking of Grusch, I like him. He's confident, and he's strict on following procedure– that's what makes him so frustrating. Everyone wants him to come out and say everything, but he's doing it right, only saying what he can outside of a classified briefing. I think he's a patriot; if he just wanted fame, he'd come out and say everything. Again, if they put him in jail for it, well, that's kind of admitting that he really did share classified info, isn't it?

Is he telling the truth, though? I don't know. A lot of what I've heard him say sounds right, but I've been out of it for twenty years now, and things change. And who knows what the whole truth was anyway. So, do I think he's lying or telling the truth? I think he's telling more truth than not, especially the part about aerospace contractors being involved. That I know is true.

But also, don't ever underestimate how far these groups will go to create disinformation. And it's not just about deceiving the American public– let me tell you, I spent about thirty years with the program, and the group is full of true, blue-blooded patriots. You sort of had to be handling the most dangerous technology in the world; imagine if we had another Manhattan project and somebody ran off with a piece of tech to the Soviets.

Nobody liked lying to the public, but the thing people forget is we're not the only ones aware, or at least suspecting, that something is going on. The Soviets– well, the Russians now– the Chinese, hell, the Israelis too, everyone's looking for any scrap of information they can get. Disinformation is real, but it's not directed at the American public. Well, mostly not.

The fact is, I can tell you right now: the government does not want you thinking about UFOs. It makes recovery hard, and it makes keeping it all secret even harder. I don't think anyone was ever scared of mass panic or anything like that; maybe now they are– I don't know, but not back then. It's all about keeping material out of the hands of adversaries.

Anyways, so after I got read in, you'd think there was some sort of special club you joined or something. Not really, not for at least a year after that first crash at least. We got put back on regular duty, only our unit got broken up, and that's bad; you don't do that to a team, but it happened. Also, I know for a fact we got put into the worst messes they could cook up. I know five of the original twelve died in combat, three more were badly wounded. I think they were trying to kill us off.

But about a year after that first crash, that's when I got 'brought in' officially. As in, now my primary job was doing this stuff. Well, when it happened. It didn't happen often, but these things did fall out of the sky. Or people would see something land or witness beings, happening more often than people know. And we'd swoop in as fast as we could in case there was anything to snatch up. I think we pulled three total craft out of the theater, and not just Vietnam. Damn, near started a war with China in one recovery; thank god their early warning systems were primitive back then, and it was close to the border, I don't think we could do that today.

Europe was another hotspot, but most people don't know that. I’m not sure if anything ever crashed in the ocean. If it did, we definitely couldn't pull it out, I don't think. But Europe was always sort of ready for war at any moment, you had bombers with live nukes on constant patrol, electronic intelligence aircraft, military exercises all the time– all this on both sides of the border, a lot of activity. So they were probably curious. I think they did a better job keeping things quiet in Europe than in the US, but I think our media was a bit freer at the time, so you'd get UFO reports in major newspapers within a day of an event. Also, the Europeans kind of turned their nose up at the whole UFO thing; a lot more Americans were believers than Europeans, which made it easier to keep it secret.

The crafts themselves were extraordinary; that's the only way to describe them. I wasn't there for every single recovery, obviously, but they kept collections of them in different places and I got to see two of the collections. Everyone always looks at Wright-Patterson and the Foreign Technologies Division; how stupid do you think we were? That'd be the dumbest place to take this stuff because it'd be the first place Soviet spies would come looking. They wanted to know what we knew about them already. I can tell you what, though, we faked some stuff going into Wright-Patterson, enough to stir up rumors because that's where we wanted the Soviets looking. It was fun, like a big game, and you had to play it just right, so a few enlisted guys spotted something strange and then just let the rumor mill do its work.

The real stuff didn't go to Wright-Patterson. There were a few government sites; sorry, I don't want to tell you where because a lot of important work is still being done there. But there were these 'coop' sites run by the government and big defense contractors. People like Raytheon Boeing– everyone knows their names, but also people like Texas Instruments. It was a whole umbrella, but the little guys only got a tiny piece of the puzzle. Some guys from TI would get a piece of something and then be asked to figure out how it works, never being told where it came from. And on its own, I'm sure these eggheads had their suspicions, but its hard to tell if something's actually alien.

Alright, so that Grusch guy is right about defense contractors being involved. You can't get their records; they're private companies. But you better believe they don't pull the strings– Boeings’ CEO isn't going to tell the United States Military he will take the saucer they gave him out for a joyride. But there are legal considerations, you know if this stuff becomes public and they reverse engineer it, who owns the tech? Who gets to profit? Boeing, or the US taxpayers who 'donated' the stuff to keep it out of sight? I think a lot of people are thinking about that right now. The spacecraft themselves, and I'm only guessing they're spacecraft, by the way. At least I know that they can go to space because we tracked them coming in and out all the time. But I don't think a lot of people are convinced that's where they're really coming from– instead, I think that's where 'they' want us to think they are coming from.

Anyways, so there are different shapes. The UFO people on the internet have done a pretty good job compiling data on their own. I saw a chart someone made one time of the most commonly reported objects, and it's pretty accurate. So you got your flying eggs, your tic-tacs now I guess you call them– we just called them pills– your old fashioned saucers, bells, triangles, whole mess of shapes. But the ones that crash are almost always the eggs and bells. And they're smaller, too. I think they're drones that are remotely operated, and when they crash, you have to get really lucky because they have a habit of just disintegrating; maybe it's a self-destructive mechanism– I don't know.

The saucers were the crown jewel. I heard of several crashes, but I was only ever on a recovery of two saucers. I don't know what they're made of, but those things are tough.

Once we recovered in South America– I won't say where because last I heard, stuff was still ongoing there, and it wouldn't be very popular with the citizens if they found out their government was secretly collaborating with the US. Anyways, the saucer we recovered had hit the side of a rocky outcropping on its way down, smashed the rock to pieces, then took out a quarter mile of trees. If it had happened on the outskirts of civilization, the whole UFO mystery would have been public knowledge by now; that's how much destruction this thing caused.

But the craft itself was relatively unharmed. Later, once I was more senior and moved into the administrative side of things, I learned that the craft were either formed out of a single piece of material or put together at the atomic level. Incredibly strong stuff, however they do it, and like I said, not a single seam is visible. Even the entrance is invisible until it actually opens; that's how tight the tolerances are.

By the way, that one took us a while to open. It took us a long time to figure out how to actually open these things without resorting to destructive means. And that's the good news, we could cut, melt, or blast our way in if we had to, so these things can be destroyed– it means we have a fighting chance if they ever turn bad on us. Though I don't think it'd matter, they'd probably just drop some rocks on our heads and wait for the ice age to end. We're like schoolyard kids armed with pebbles against these things. But we can cut them open, and we can shoot them down occasionally.

It took a while to pull that thing out of the jungle and get it on a ship back to the States. By the time we opened it… Well, have you ever opened a fridge full of food after the power's been out for a few days? The disks are manned, and I don't know if these things died on impact or after, but there was nothing alive when we cracked it open.

I guess everyone wants to know about these things– and I call them 'things' on purpose, not out of disrespect or anything like that. I just don't think any of us were ever convinced they were actually living creatures, well, not in the sense that like you and I are. For one, they don't have much of a digestive system, just enough to process the food they get from the ship itself, kind of like an IV. There was no actual stomach to hold large amounts of food like normal animals, so that kind of made us suspicious that these weren't really what was behind this whole thing.

I don't know how many live ones were ever found, but I know that we found two alive in one crash– well, it was less of a crash and more of a hard landing. What I mean is the thing was intact with barely any damage and had clearly avoided smashing into the surrounding countryside.

But witnesses say there had been a big flash of light and loud sound over the mountains. This was in the UK, and people had reported seeing something fiery go across the sky all across the UK– but it turns out it was an honest-to-god coincidence, a big meteor had hit an nearby area at the same time that this thing came down.

Obviously, the British were in on it along with us and a few other major NATO partners, so we concentrated on getting to these things before the Soviets. It was a default agreement that all recovered materials went back to the US, which made the Europeans a bit sore, but that's the price you pay to have a superpower watching your back I guess.

Anyway, we were pretty sure on at least a few occasions they snagged a few bits for themselves.

Back to these things. The second disc– which was actually my first ever; sorry, I should've kept them in chronological order for you- had a crew of five; only two were alive. The strange thing is we had no idea what killed the other three. There was only some bruising on their bodies from what we assume was the hard landing, but nothing serious.

By the way, the typical gray alien description people give is pretty close to the money. Not quite, but very close. They're a little taller than people think, and the eyes aren't quite as big as people draw. But they are big, which tells us they grew up in a low-light environment; all their ships were dimly lit on the inside. I don't know why people who claim to be abducted talk about brightly lit rooms; we never saw any of that. It was dim enough inside these ships to see, but it wasn't comfortable.

Maybe these people who say they were abducted are just remembering things wrong– one thing we figured out quickly is they can mess with your head, mess with the way you perceive things.

Anyways, the two live ones– they weren't injured or anything, just kind of stared at us once the ship opened. The program has strict protocols because we're always expecting to make contact with non-human intelligence, and there are very strict protocols on what to do and what not to do. People think we go after these craft guns blazing in full military gear– I mean, yeah, when I did security for the Program, we were heavily armed, never knew what you were up against or if a foreign team would show up... that happened once or twice.

But the security people are on the outside, well away from the craft. Think about it: These things are smart enough to cross the galaxy or come from wherever they come from. Do you really want to show up and send soldiers first? No, we first take readings to ensure there's nothing toxic or hazardous, then we send in medical personnel– the lead doc we'd call the 'ambassador', he had special training for contact protocols in case we ran into something living and talking. The ambassador always spoke at least English, Russian, Chinese, and Spanish– the most prevalent human languages.

And I think also things like American sign language, though just to be aware of how to 'speak' with body gestures, not that we expected them to know ASL.

So we kept the guys with the guns well back, out of sight if we could. It was a risk– maybe these things would shoot up the medical team, or maybe there's a space monster in there. But it was a better risk than starting an interstellar war or scaring the hell out of them with armed grunts.

That night, the two live ones apparently just kind of stood there as the team entered the craft– it had opened on its own, maybe they opened the door, I don't know if it was open when we got there. They stood there and didn't answer the ambassador at all. Basically, they barely reacted to anything, just basic stimuli like turning their heads away from bright lights. They didn't even object when the medical team started looking them over for injuries, or so I was told. I saw them when they were led out of the craft, and I do mean they were led out– like children.

The medical guys grabbed them by the hand and just led them out like a kid. They just sort of stood where you left them– I was on the overwatch squad, we'd spread out around the entrance in a U formation and kept in the treeline, again to provide security if they did anything but not be visible and intimidating. It was a rule that you never leveled your rifle at these things, even if they were corpses or looked like corpses– just because they appear dead doesn't mean they are; we don't know much about their physiology, you know?

So the last thing you want is for them to feel threatened. I never once leveled my rifle at them or their bodies in all my years on the security side; you always kept the weapon at low ready, muzzle pointed to the ground.

People got the wrong idea, and they think we're out there snatching these things up and whisking them away for dissection. Let me tell you, we did everything possible to be helpful. We tried to provide medical treatment, but these things always died. Always. They'd live at most for another few days, never say a word or react to anything, and then just slump over. Eventually, we figured out that they take in water based on what we found on the ship, and apparently, the food, or whatever you call it, was pretty basic protein and other stuff I don't know. But nothing fancy. So when we figured it out, we started hooking the live ones up to IVs when we could. They have a circulatory system like us; we figured that out from the corpses.

But no matter how hard we tried to keep them alive, they always just keeled over eventually.

Back to that night, though. Those things just stood around wherever we guided them. You led one to stand over here, and it'd stand there. You move it somewhere else, and it stands there. Their limbs are a little long, and their knees aren't in the right places, but they would sit on chairs if one was available. Otherwise, they'd just stand until they fell over, exhausted.

That and the way their organs worked led us to believe that these things are... well they're basically just drones like biological computers. Whatever is making these things just creates a biological crew when it needs one, and they do their job and nothing else. At least, that was our theory because their bodies didn't seem built to last, and the eggheads found it suspicious that they were able to breathe our atmosphere so easily. What are the odds space aliens would also breathe our exact atmosphere?

Plus, we never found anything I'd call personal items on the interiors. Ever. There were no drawers full of spare clothing, nothing that looked like it was for entertainment, not even a sleeping area. I don't know if they had a bathroom. Again, a lot of information was compartmentalized, but when I moved to the administrative side of things, you can't stop people from talking. And in truth, the Program wanted us to talk– at least those of us who were seniors– because it provided an outlet. You sit on something like this, and you have no one to talk to about it or ponder what this whole thing is, and it eats you up. They found that out the hard way in the early days, so they relaxed about how compartmentalized everything was once you'd achieved senior status. Plus, I think they wanted us to share ideas. It's a giant mystery, and people need to share ideas to figure it out.

So these things, aliens, I guess, are probably just biological computers, basically. That's what we thought, but who knows– maybe they're so alien we just don't understand anything about them. But everything seemed to point to that conclusion. And that was suspicious, too, because we recovered craft with no crew– so why did the saucers and one or two other types need a crew?

We had a theory. Again, I've been out of it for over twenty years, so maybe they know stuff now we didn't back then. But we had a theory in my time that this was all being fabricated for us. We actually tasked NASA to look for where something like a big 3d printer could be in the solar system. Some facility or computer just making these crafts and these things and sending them to Earth. And sometimes they crashed, or just landed and didn't take off. Like whatever was doing this wanted us to recover the craft. I don't know if they ever found anything, though there was some excitement for a while. It's hard to hide heat in space, and obviously, making these crafts on such a large scale will give off a lot of heat. Or maybe not; maybe they use physics we don't even understand. I never felt that these things were a threat. The security teams were really more to keep other people out than for whatever was in the craft. But I know they sometimes defend themselves.

The Iranians tried to shoot one down, and it didn't go well for them. We tried, too, but it didn't go well for us either. I think we got a little better at it, and I know we did down one or two in the 90s, but only because there was a legitimate concern over what they were doing. They hurt people sometimes, and I don't know if it was on purpose or not– I think it was just a side effect of their presence. But there was a lot of good intelligence that you really don't want to be near one when its power systems are fully online.

I said earlier that they can mess with your head, and I don't think that's on purpose, either. We were confident that the source of the trouble wasn't the living beings we recovered, because you'd get the same effect when the craft were empty if you got close.

Not all the time, but sometimes. People would describe things happening in different ways, never big, major differences, but enough to be worrying. We had to develop special techniques for handling exposure to these crafts; we called them 'anchors'– a consensus on what is reality. For instance, if you and I were on a security team and approached a craft we'd say, “Ok, the craft is resting up against a big oak tree, and there's a gray boulder on the other side.” You'd think of that picture, and it would help with the confusion whenever this effect happened, kind of ward it off.

I don't know what it was, though. Maybe a side effect of the technology, maybe some attempt at communication, didn't seem a defensive measure to me. But yeah, I'm not surprised when there's a sighting, and people see different things. As a matter of fact, I know that there have been some high-profile events where people have suffered from this phenomenon. The Hopkinsville Goblins, for instance, those people were shooting at ghosts, but there really was a craft in the vicinity. That's way back when we were first figuring things out, though.

As far as what they want, I couldn't tell you. If anyone figured it out, they didn't share it with me. I don't think they're a threat, we only recently got the tech to even to harm these things, and even then, it seems more like they're letting us do it. We strongly suspected this whole phenomenon was a form of gifting. Why else would craft crash or just land, and then nothing comes to try to recover it? If we had a space mission go bad on Mars, we'd send help if we could. I guess Mars is too far away, but ok, the Moon. We could rescue people on the Moon if we needed to, and we would. But nobody ever comes for these things, and why are they sometimes landing completely operational, and not taking off again?

Most of us thought it was a way of gifting technology without massive disruption to our own evolution. I don't know how much they figured out, and I wonder if they ever managed to even fly one of these things. I do know that from speaking to the eggheads; the technology is so far advanced they couldn't tell the difference between the toilet and the drive system. It'd be like giving a nuclear aircraft carrier to the ancient Romans. Maybe they've figured it out by now, I don't know, I don't think so, or we would see some tremendous technology by now. We had another conclusion, though; this one was more disturbing. Maybe they just left these crafts lying around because they were easy to build, and they just didn't care because they had a plan to deal with us well before we figured out their technology. Imagine if we accidentally lost an F-14 Tomcat to the ancient Romans, fully intact, while doing reconnaissance. What would we care if they studied it? By the time they figured out how to even just turn the damn thing on, we'd already have dealt with them.

So maybe we're getting gifted, or perhaps we're going to be dealt with before we're a problem. I don't know. Only time will tell...