UFO Cover-Up Claims & Pentagon Fallout, with Ben Schreckinger

Summary

Journalist Ben Schreckinger, who first made his name covering Donald Trump's rise for Politico, explains how he put Jay Stratton's claim that former AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick was compromised by a secret UFO legacy program directly to Kirkpatrick. Kirkpatrick called it nonsense and hit back, accusing Stratton and his 'band of pseudoscientists' of violating national security law. The conversation also covers Trump's stance on disclosure, the Jim Ryder lead in Stratton's book, John Herrington's shifting account of the Brent Friedman story, and the surprising overlap between UFOs and psychic research.

Key takeaways

• 1Jay Stratton's new book alleges former AARO head Sean Kirkpatrick was compromised by a UFO legacy program and claims members of Congress had information proving it.
• 2Kirkpatrick called the claim BS and countered that Congress only has information he and others supplied showing Stratton's group violated national security law. He added that they cannot be prosecuted because they helped write the whistleblower protections.
• 3Stratton writes that the late Lockheed executive Jim Ryder briefed him on a legacy program, and that Senator Harry Reid told him Reid had been accidentally briefed on one. Eric Davis has also alluded to Ryder as a possible source.
• 4Former Energy Secretary John Herrington told Schreckinger that his son-in-law, not Brent Friedman, drove his car across the country. He later told Jesse Michaels of American Alchemy that Friedman did drive it, while still dismissing the alien story.
• 5Schreckinger cites the 1950s Wilbert Smith memo from a Canadian official, which links recovered craft to 'mental phenomena,' along with CIA/DIA psychic spy programs and Princeton psychokinesis research, as early evidence that UFOs and psi were treated as connected subjects.
• 6Schreckinger launched the outlet Paradigm (paradigm.news). He is investigating the alleged UAP luring operation described by Rep. Eric Burlison and historical Soviet UAP luring efforts.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

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Excerpt from That UFO Podcast, Oct 16, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.