Area52 - Whitley Strieber on Disclosure and the Real Alien Agenda

Source: YouTube excerpt; full Area52 episode
Channel: Area52 Clips
Host: Chris Ramsay
Guest: Whitley Strieber
Excerpt published: 2026-09-13
Full episode published: 2026-07-24
Duration: 21:03
Date sourced: 2026-09-14
Audio SHA-256: 7b1efbe5e727a64c6377bf6c9c83e3daeef731b9108629485dd8cc6ba749938e
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TL;DW

In this excerpt from Chris Ramsay's July 2026 Area52 interview, Whitley Strieber says disclosure will expose difficult aspects of close encounters and calls for governments to release deeper records. At 4:55, he says General Arthur Exon told him in 1988 that Roswell debris and bodies reached Wright Field and that a scientific group continued meeting without written records; at 6:34, he recalls nighttime truckloads entering EG&G Rotron in Woodstock and infers that government records were being moved beyond FOIA. At 11:01, Strieber says the visitors punish people for revealing information they want secret, then claims their central concern is the human soul. At 15:34, he describes being warned that suicide would lead them to confine his soul forever and says they demonstrated this by placing him in a nonphysical white container; he interprets earthly life as a school that can become a prison for souls unable to graduate.

Transcript

What do you make of this movement that seems to be hitting the mainstream? Uh you know, that seems to be really moving the needle in terms of at least, at the very least, people's interest and curiosity versus what happened to you back in 1985 and where we are now.

How does that affect you? How do you see the world right now? I have been running like hell for a long time, and the world is catching up with me.

They're all gonna be running like hell too, believe me. Um because you know, this this some parts of this are uh really extraordinary and exciting, but other parts of it are gonna be hard to deal with, really hard to deal with.

And we will discover that slowly over time, I think. Although there's always the possibility that it could just come bursting into our lives without warning. And that's the part that worries me the most, because when I look at the the whole spectrum of the close encounter experience, most of the cases, people just sort of it came into their lives unexpectedly.

A few cases they've sort of been consciously aware of this since they were kids, but mostly it starts very abruptly when I call it the moment of activation, when they see a UFO and the next thing they know

they're in it, or they they have missing time, and they become totally obsessed with this. And uh, you know, the Richard Dreyfus character in uh uh Close Encounters. Yeah, Close Encounters.

He Spielberg got that. He got that total obsession that happens when you come up against an anomaly like this. You can't get you can't let it go. People don't let it go, they can't.

And eventually it's gonna turn out the entire world's not gonna be letting be able to let it go and with right now, there's something like seven hundred million views of uh the new government's uh disclosure website, and most

of the stuff on it is pretty old hat so far. Yeah, yeah, I'd agree. Right. Uh but look at the number of views, the immense level of interest. It's extraordinary.

Yeah, if that doesn't at least you know inspire or motivate some of the government to move even faster, other world governments, you know, now we're seeing Japan come into the conversation as well recently.

And possibly, yeah. Yeah. I feel like that's the healthiest course of action because so many of the criticism with the United States government is that why do they only land in the U.S.?

Why is it only in the U.S.? Which we know it isn't. Right. But it would also be nice to have these other countries start opening up their sort of classified files uh to this topic as well.

Well, there are certain countries that have more than others. Uh in South America, Brazil undoubtedly has a great deal more than most countries. And that's important to open up because that's a really challenging experience down there.

Uh, France, I know, does, and at least I'm sure pretty sure it does, that they've been collecting this information for years, and it sort of edges up to the surface every once in a while.

Uh and Italy probably does as well. I don't know about the UK. I know the they must have s they've had some extraordinary cases there, and th undoubtedly they have some some amazing files, but I but they're very qu very quiet about that.

Yeah, they declassified a whole bunch in 20, was it 2017, I believe. Yeah, but it wasn't much. There wasn't much to what they declassified. No, it was sightings, right. That type of thing. But again, like a lot of the stuff that we're seeing now, we're seeing a lack of acknowledgement on what this stuff is.

They're kind of just putting it out there and being like, we're not responsible for whatever you think it is. Right. And that seems like a cowardice type of approach to it.

When you're like, hey, just get behind this thing. You know, you're saying UAP. You know, why not let's talk about the other stuff too? Let's talk about the elephants in the room.

Let's talk about the Roswells, the the Kecksburg, yeah, you know. And the and and also what what has been what kind of conclusions? Because the there must have been and must still be a great deal of work being done on this.

I know that there m uh General Arthur Exon, who was involved in this, he was later he was commandant of uh Wright-Patt. And in 47, according to what he told me, he was directly involved in the uh what happened when the debris in the bodies were brought to Wright Field, it was as it was called then, yeah, under General Twining.

He was in the air air material command, or it worked in this, and uh they could have easily pulled in uh officers from other parts of the of the command at the time, because I'm sure that air material

wasn't all that big, and all of a sudden they had this major thing. So in any case, uh

he told me in 1988 when I talked to him that they had a lot of pencils-up meetings, and that meant that he would go down, he was still even in retirement, going down to Wright-Patt from where

his where he was to fill in the scientific group that was still working on this with what they had discussed in these meetings. Wow. Now, that means that there's a lot that we'll never know because it was hidden by not being recorded.

But the other problem is this uh a lot of the records that were recorded, I think, have been offloaded into the private sector, and I can be fairly specific about that.

Back in the early 90s, when I was living in upstate, and well, it's downstate to New York New York to most New Yorkers, but about 90 miles north of Manhattan, um, the town of Woodstock, people began to complain

that there were trucks going to the EG&G Rotron facility in Woodstock, uh waking, keeping them awake all night. And apparently there were documents being moved in large quantities to that facility from goodness knows where, but wherever they were coming from, I would guess, were government facilities.

EG&G Rotron is a private facility, and every document that went in there moved out of the Freedom of Information umbrella and was no longer accessible. And I think that that in order if we are ever going to find the any really substantive material about this, we got to get it from the private sector.

Yeah, it's a tricky, a tricky line to walk. Well, it Congress can do it. I mean, th there can be legislation d to do this. There can be, but the what that what that also entails is a violation of, you know, people's personal um intellectual property.

And so, you know, you can't you can't have one without the other if you say that the government is allowed to go into private corporations and take what they deem to be exotic material.

You know, where is that line? Who decides where that line ends? And now suddenly, you know, uh some inventor is out there inventing something completely on his own, but they deem it to be exotic and take it away from him.

I'm not saying that I'm totally against or for anything, but it does open an interesting can of worms. However, I will say this. I know inventors whose inventions have been taken that way.

So that does happen. Definitely happens. What's one case that you can remember? Uh well, uh yeah, okay. I it's a little dicey because it's uh uh there's a case of um a communications system that I someone I knew cr invented, and his invention was classified.

It wasn't taken from him in the sense of they didn't say, Well, we're taking your invention and we're making it ourselves, and you're not getting any money. He's still getting money from it, but but it's classified, and he can't he he can't do anything, talk about it anymore.

It's an exotic communications system. What does it do? Do you know? Yes, I do.

I'm guessing you don't want to share that? I well, uh let's put it this way it's a really exotic. And it uh it involves instantaneous communications. Whoa. And it's it's not uh uh quantum uh uh uh quantum communications, it's something else.

And it's something that I don't think anybody is really very aware of. And he's a a wonderful, sweet guy, and you wouldn't think he would ever be able to invent anything, but he's really brilliant on the uh under the surface.

Well, that's really interesting. Yeah. Well, maybe there'll come a day while he'll be on the show. Uh and others like him. I know a lot of people who are, you know, kind of half in the shadows and half out and would like to be all the way out of the shadows for sure.

Do you have a lot of people come to you? I I'm sure you do, but do you have a lot of people come to you from a sort of military industrial complex background or a private sort of government contracting or intelligence community background that comes to you with

information that we have that you just can't, you know, verify, but that's pretty pretty intense. Sometimes I wouldn't say that happens to me every day. And I not really don't really encourage it because the last thing I want to do is get involved in situations where I know classified material.

Not because it's illegal for me to know that. I mean if I if it falls into my hands, it's perfectly legal for me to do, you know, it's it's not there's no nothing I no there's no law against it if it falls into your hands.

You have to steal it. That and I don't do that. I don't come close to that. But I don't like to know those things, especially if I'm not sure where they stand, which is often the case.

I you know I'm not sure where a given thing stands. I don't know for sure whether or not it's classified. Or there are things that the visitors NHI want to keep secret too.

And I've found out the hard way that you know they're they can get just as pissed off as the government if you you spill their secrets. Yeah you mentioned that to me on the car ride here that there was an incident that you um you deemed was because of something that you let slip that you shouldn't have that that they didn't want you to

share. They being the visitors. That's correct. Only there's a difference with the government you know when you're stepping over the line because you presumably have sent signed a nondisclosure agreement or you have a security clearance or something.

With them, they assume you know you're supposed to keep it a secret and then if you don't they get pissed off really pissed off and that happened to me.

And so you know they're not going to ask you to sign any any kind of a security agreements but if they if you say something or do something that they don't that they that reveals something that they've don't

want revealed, then they think, well he's stupid. He was inattentive and and you know the sky's the limit as far as scaring the hell out of you goes at that point.

Do they stop at that yeah they did in my case or I wouldn't be here anymore. Do you don't think that uh do you think that the NHI has the potential to like kill you over this or oh I think it's worse than that.

Worse than that. Oh yeah I think killing is only an incident in in what could happen. I think that they have uh fully expressed whether it's technology or not, I don't know, in at least in the way we think of it, of con that enables them to control the the conditions of the soul and

it is real. The soul is real. And one of the great problems we have and one of our greatest weaknesses is most of our best minds dismiss that as absolute nonsense when it is in fact as far as NHI is concerned the central issue.

It's what they're they care the most about it's why they're here and it is not a supernatural thing. It is a part of nature that we don't yet understand and can't yet detect but it's just as real as radio was in 1850 which we didn't understand there and couldn't detect but it was still there.

The soul is the same. It's not I'm not saying the soul has anything to do with radio but it's an energy that we cannot detect yet. And part of the reason is I think it's conscious energy and it's gonna be detectable when it wants to be.

Do you think it's some type of fuel? It well expand on that a little bit. Do you think that because there is clearly a value for them i if you look at all of the visitations and you try and piece together whatever we can with our meager little minds here you get to the

bottom very fast and you go, it's not resources like we know them. It's not gold and and and platinum or oil uh it isn't territory it's not water there's plenty of that out there there's just freely floating around in space even you wouldn't even have to fight us for it.

Like so when you get down to it it it doesn't leave you with many options and one of those options that a lot of people get to in that you know if you look at the case of Bob

Lazar he had those haunting words where they call us containers and then containers of what? Yeah well that's what it's all about is what the containers contain.

Why do they want to contain them or why do they even care that they're being contained or why are they containing them? Well let me I think the best way to do to talk about this is there's first to say this I have been told that if I were to violate certain do certain things they don't like, and I'll be

specific one time and I wasn't even thinking about this I suddenly found myself in contact with them in in in a very tangible way and the message was you must not commit suicide.

If you do that, we will capture your soul and confine it forever forever it was the scariest thing I ever heard in my life and then they proceeded to demonstrate this by removing me from my body and I

ended up in this little white container that I could not get out of in the in the non physical. The only way out was to go back into my body.

And the thing that was weird was I wasn't even thinking about committing suicide. It's not something that's on my agenda ever. You know maybe it has been when I was a teenager and got jilted by a girl but I mean let's face it fortunately I'm I I didn't take it that seriously and uh there have been times, you know,

when I was losing all my money in my home and everything I felt like you know maybe Anne would be better off with the insurance money but I never thought of it deeply.

And so but that that was an example of what they can do. You know I mean presumably they could do that. They could confine a soul forever. And I think to myself shouldn't more people understand this?

Because if you live some something in your life makes them want to do that after you've died and they don't warn you beforehand my God what are we really doing here?

You know, how do we how do you live it it what it did to me was I may look at my moral life in a whole new way because I thought this isn't theoretical it's tangible and what do

I have to do? And I I really can't answer that question because I think living a good moral life will help you not end up in that situation, but I can't prove that it could be that it that's not what it's about.

Do you think the possibility of this planet being like some type of cosmic prison is at all real? That is something I never can quite put out of my mind is it a cosmic prison or is it a cosmic school or is it both?

And it you know I've been told both I had an absolutely that's I've gotten more I wrote a book years ago called Transformation and the new version of it which is just out uh Transformation 2026 talks about an

event that happened in those days that I now understand very deeply. At the time I could describe it but I couldn't I didn't know what it was about. And it involved

a journey to a university on another world. Now was it a physical journey? No it couldn't have been because you know I'm but it it was either a jour journey up here or some kind of out of body journey or something but it was very vivid and very detailed.

I got a really detailed you know I might as well have gone physically because of the vivid the detail with which I remember it but in this university I was told that that that I could enter it and

that it was a place that was a school it was a university a school and and it was very tumbled down and I said to the little guy that was saying to me Yeah you can go in because

there was a door an arched doorway not far from where we were uh he I said it looks like a total wreck and he said well it's it's been a million years old and the scholars are no good

at maintenance and uh so I went toward it and suddenly two bigger beings I didn't know of grays this happened in the 70s I didn't know what they were but these two big beings with big black eyes prevented

me from going in and I was extremely disappointed. But I actually had entered the university the university is this life. So it's this is a school on one hand but I think it might turn into a prison in the sense that if you die and you've screwed your up your journey and you don't aren't able to ascend, you

aren't able to graduate, you got to do it again and again and again and again. And maybe eventually someone maybe you eventually you could fail completely and then you never leave I don't know.

But that's failing completely doesn't interest me. I'm really interested in succeeding? Yeah I want to live a moral life and that's the only thing I can say I I don't know may as I said earlier maybe that's not relevant but it's all I have

to do