April 16, 2002: Mars & UFOs in Chile - Richard C. Hoagland & Whitley Strieber
The discussion turns to why Latin America and Australia appear to be experiencing more open contact while the United States military posture discourages such encounters. Strieber shares details of a dinner with Monsignor Balducci at the Vatican, where the cleric expressed that contact would primarily be a spiritual matter and indicated the Pope's awareness of the phenomenon. The conversation also addresses accelerating climate change, including the Larsen B ice shelf collapse and a 40 percent slowdown in Atlantic ocean currents.
Richard C. Hoagland then presents new Mars Odyssey photographs of the Cydonia region. He argues the images confirm the face-like structure seen in original Viking data, pointing to geometric relationships between the face, a massive five-sided pyramid, and a tetrahedral ruin. Hoagland also highlights NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe's speech advocating nuclear propulsion for deep space exploration.
Key Moments
Strieber: silver beings landed in Chile and Australia same week: Whitley Strieber tells Art that within the same days in late March 2002, witnesses in Chile (a UFO Congress in the mountains) and Alice Springs, Australia reported triangular craft landing and tall silvery-suited beings walking out - a synchronized flap unreported in U.S. media.
24 people physically disappear at Chilean UFO conference: Strieber claims that during a UFO Congress led by Sixto Paz in Chile in early April, 24 people physically disappeared in front of a large crowd - described by an eyewitness as 'like seeing a person disintegrate in front of your eyes.' Reported in Chilean and Peruvian press, translated on unknowncountry.com.
Dinner at the Vatican: Monsignor Balducci on UFOs and the Pope: Strieber recounts dining at the Vatican with Monsignor Corrado Balducci and Michael Hesemann, where Balducci said the Church saw UFO contact as primarily a spiritual matter and read between the lines that Pope John Paul II was aware. The priest then served ancient wines from his cellar before driving them home.
Art looks at the new Cydonia image: 'I see a face': After weeks of refusing to peek, Art opens the new Mars Odyssey strip on screen alongside Hoagland and reverses his earlier 'cat box' verdict on the awful 1998 image: in his opinion, this one is back to being a face.
Hoagland: NASA radiation story is JPL sabotage of manned Mars: Hoagland reacts to a Knight Ridder piece claiming Odyssey radiation data rules out a manned Mars trip. He calls it a fabrication: the actual dose is roughly two chest X-rays, and the story is timed to kill Mars momentum just as the new Cydonia images surface - pitting JPL 'owls' against the 'roosters' leaking real data.