NARRATOR: Jacques Vallée.
Astronomer. Computer scientist.
Best-selling author. Internet pioneer.
And world-renowned UFO researcher.
GEORGE KNAPP: I think he's the most important thinker
the topic has ever had.
NARRATOR: Jacques Vallée was one of the first to suggest
the UFO phenomenon dates back thousands of years.
GIORGIO A. TSOUKALOS: Jacques Vallée asked the question,
these ancient stories that we have,
are they identical to modern-day UFO phenomenon?
NARRATOR: And his bold theories dare to challenge
not only our notions of extraterrestrial life,
but of the universe itself.
There are very few concepts that are standard
in every part of human civilization.
UFOs are, and they are across time.
This is real, and it's important.
NARRATOR: There is a doorway in the universe.
Beyond it is the promise of truth.
It demands we question everything
we have ever been taught.
The evidence is all around us.
The future is right before our eyes.
We are not alone.
We have never been alone.
NARRATOR: In 1952, the United States government launched its first
major investigation into the UFO phenomenon,
called Project Blue Book.
More than five decades later, in 2007,
the government initiated
its second serious UFO project called "The Advanced Aviation
Threat Identification Program," or AATIP.
There is only one man who was a key contributor
to both of these efforts,
and he remains at the forefront
of UFO research, even today:
Dr. Jacques Vallée.
PAUL HYNEK: I don't know of anybody else like Jacques Vallée
in the UFO field.
He brings scientific background,
artificial intelligence, computer engineering training,
and insatiable curiosity to the phenomenon.
He has degrees in mathematics and astrophysics,
and a PhD in computer science.
And his ideas have had such a tremendous impact
on ufology as a serious subject.
It validates its study among academics.
Jacques Vallée is, in my estimation,
not only the deepest thinker,
but the best writer to ever tackle the UFO mystery.
He's the author of several seminal books,
deeply influential in the field.
He's helped to sort of expand what we think of
as the UFO world.
TSOUKALOS: He's one of the first people that asked the question
is it possible that these ancient stories that we have,
are they identical to what we see
with the modern-day UFO phenomenon?
RICHARD DOLAN: I honestly believe if you look at the whole history of just
UFO researchers, you could really say that Jacques Vallée
is the most brilliant of them all.
JACQUES VALLÉE: Still, people ask me, "Do you believe in UFOs?"
Well, you shouldn't wonder if you want to be
a believer or a non-believer.
As a scientist, I mean, there are reports of UFOs,
and I want to study those reports
to see if there is a pattern, and what that pattern
would tell me about what is happening,
and how we could design a methodology to study it.
This is pure science.
NARRATOR: As one of the first people to suggest
that UFOs are not only a modern-day phenomenon,
Jacques Vallée is considered a pioneer by both ufologists
and ancient astronaut theorists alike.
For Vallée, UFOs have been a lifelong passion.
One that was sparked by his very own close encounter.
On a bright afternoon in this small town
30 miles northwest of Paris,
15-year-old Jacques Vallée comes running out of his house
when he hears his mother calling out from the garden.
I saw an object that, to this day, you know,
I have to say was a UFO. It was a very clear disc.
It was in the direction of the church of the city.
This was not any airplane that you could imagine.
So the next day, I spoke to a friend of mine from, uh,
the college, and he had seen it, too.
His house was about half a mile up the hill from us,
and he had looked at it with binoculars,
and I asked him to draw it.
And what he drew was exactly the same thing I saw.
DOLAN: What was interesting is that Jacques Vallée has his friend
draw what he sees.
Very, you know, good investigative technique there.
So you could really see, even as a young man,
he was approaching this as rationally
and scientifically as you're able to do.
And that's a path that he has always followed.
NARRATOR: The encounter had a profound effect on young Jacques Vallée,
who went on to study mathematics and astrophysics
before being hired to work as an astronomer
at the Paris Observatory in 1961.
While there, he took advantage of the observatory's computer
to advance his UFO research,
comparing data from reports all over the world.
VALLÉE: I started using the computer to find out
about patterns among UFOs.
And that's when I really became interested
and felt that I could make a contribution.
And after that, I was recruited by the University of Texas.
They knew exactly what I had been doing with the computer,
and that, uh, they said, you know, that I could use
the computer in Austin to work, to look for UFO patterns.
So this was, uh, very exciting after that.
NARRATOR: In 1962, Vallée moved to Austin, Texas
to work with astronomers mapping the planet Mars.
But his plans soon changed when he got
an opportunity to meet Dr. J. Allen Hynek.
Dr. Hynek was the chairman of the astronomy department
at Northwestern University.
But more importantly to Jacques Vallée,
he was also the scientific advisor
for one of the first government task forces
to investigate the UFO phenomenon: "Project Blue Book."
Begun in March of 1952, the classified
U.S. Air Force project studied UFO reports and sightings
to determine whether they were a threat to national security.
My wife and I flew from Austin to Chicago and met with Hynek.
And I had brought some of my database records
of close encounter cases in Europe,
and especially in France.
And the statistics I had done from the database
on the computer from Austin.
And Dr. Hynek was very interested
because, of course, the Air Force was
accumulating records, under Project Blue Book.
NARRATOR: At the age of 24, Jacques Vallée began working
as an aide for Hynek on Project Blue Book,
and spent four years going through
the 20,000 UFO cases on file.
Dr. Hynek said as an astronomer,
you're supposed to be curious.
You are not there just to explain things
to the public.
You are there to... to look at the mysteries.
And if there is a mystery,
that's your job, to document it,
to try to do the work for it.
NICK POPE: Hynek became Vallée's mentor, and clearly Hynek
recognized something in Jacques Vallée.
He said, wow, you know, here's a smart person,
a scientist, fellow scientist interested in,
knowledgeable about, and passionate about UFOs,
but wanting to apply exactly the sort of scientific
methodology that Hynek was, of course, interested in.
So the two men became colleagues, and indeed friends.
NARRATOR: According to J. Allen Hynek's son Paul,
Vallée became his father's most trusted ally.
PAUL HYNEK: There were a parade of graduate students
and fellow professors at our house all the time.
And yet I could see this special fondness
and reverence my father had for Jacques.
Jacques became an invaluable friend
and colleague of my father, somebody who my father deeply
respected, who was unflinchingly honest about the phenomena.
And I would say courageous about pushing the boundaries
of mainstream science out just a little bit further.
AUBEK: The collaboration of two men
of such impeccable scientific qualifications
enriched the field beyond belief.
This was a defining moment in the history of ufology.
NARRATOR: Together, Jacques Vallée and J. Allen Hynek
not only helped to legitimize the study of UFOs,
but they also became convinced that the objects
being witnessed are not of man-made origin.
And one case that made a bigger impression
than all the rest involved an enormous craft,
a landing, and even alien beings.
NARRATOR: While working towards PhDs
in both industrial engineering and computer science,
Jacques Vallée encourages his mentor J. Allen Hynek
to consider investigating not only reports
of objects in the sky
but also evidence on the ground.
VALLÉE: I kept talking to him about landings,
which, he called it "close encounters,"
and the term stuck, of course.
I just called it "landings,"
where there were traces in-- on-on the ground and so on
that could be looked at physically.
And then he said, "But you go through the Air Force files,
and you're going to see very, very few landings."
And I said, "Well, let me go through the files
and I'll show you some landings."
The reason they didn't show up was they were all explained
as aberrations or hallucinations.
But you would find very credible witnesses,
and you would find traces.
And the thing that clinched it was the case
in Socorro, New Mexico.
In Socorro,
not only was there a landing, there were beings.
NARRATOR: Socorro, New Mexico,
April 24, 1964,
5:45 p.m.
While chasing a speeding car,
police sergeant Lonnie Zamora hears a thunderous roar
and sees a flame in the sky to the southwest.
Thinking a local dynamite shack might have exploded,
Zamora leaves the chase to investigate.
(insects chirping)
POPE: Lonnie Zamora sees something.
A landed craft,
essentially egg-shaped.
He sees some figures,
and he says afterwards they were either
big children or small adults,
which, again, raises the question,
were these extraterrestrials, as many believe?
Suddenly, when he got reasonably close,
they got back in and this thing took off.
NARRATOR: Zamora examined the area
with fellow police sergeant Sam Chavez.
Both officers documented
that the brush was burning in several places
and the object had left four perpendicular impressions
on the ground.
Dozens of other investigators arrived on the scene
shortly after the incident and in the days that followed.
VALLÉE: You had, actually, four levels of investigation.
You had the Socorro cops,
you had the FBI happened to be there,
you had the security detail from the airfield
and you had special investigations
with the Air Force, sending Dr. Hynek.
And that became part of Project Blue Book
as an "unidentified" by all the investigators
who had been there.
Jacques told me that it was this case
that was more or less the straw that broke the camel's back
that made my father feel comfortable
speaking about beings
as opposed to just crafts in public.
VALLÉE: It was a difficult transition
for Dr. Hynek to admit that, yes,
not only were landings important
but they were the greatest source
of actual physical data that you could take to the lab.
NARRATOR: For Jacques Vallée,
collecting data is the key to solving the UFO mystery.
As part of his effort to create a global UFO database,
Vallée, with the help from Dr. Hynek,
began building an international network of scientists
investigating the phenomenon.
They called themselves the Invisible College,
taking the name from a group
of 18th-century European scholars.
VALLÉE: This was similar to what happened
in the 18th century, uh, with the Invisible College.
And they did a lot of early astronomy,
early physics, chemistry, biology and so on.
And the only reason they were not hung or killed as witches
was because they were protected by the king.
Dr. Hynek thought we were sort of the, uh,
the new iteration of the Invisible College.
People like Costa de Beauregard in France,
like Professor Chauvin in France,
were internationally known in their fields,
uh, biology, relativity and so on.
But they were very interested in talking about UFOs with us.
Of course, this was very secret.
The Invisible College began in Dr. Hynek's home,
where, weekly or monthly, he would have scientists
from all around the world visit his house,
and there, they would discuss the UFO topic.
But they all were sworn to secrecy, because at the time,
you couldn't talk about it in seriousness,
especially in the world of academia.
NARRATOR: Although most members of the Invisible College
remained anonymous, Jacques Vallée did not,
and in 1965, he published Anatomy of a Phenomenon,
one of the earliest books written about the UFO subject
by a scientist.
DOLAN: Anatomy of a Phenomenon
was a very, very strong compilation
of these UFO reports at that time.
He's looking at the data, organizing it.
It really made his name in the UFO field.
NARRATOR: But as Vallée
was forging his reputation in the field of ufology,
the U.S. government was looking for a way
to end its UFO investigations.
In 1966, the so-called Condon Committee,
led by physicist Edward Condon,
was commissioned by the U.S. Air Force
to assess whether to continue funding studies
like Project Blue Book.
DOLAN: Their job, supposedly, was to make
a determination, scientifically, is this real,
is this not real, what should the Air Force do,
should the Air Force drop Project Blue Book?
And the answer is, "Nothing to it."
It's not worthy of further scientific investigation.
VALLÉE: When the Condon study began,
it became obvious that it was rigged
to give a negative conclusion.
I didn't want to stay in the U.S.
under those conditions.
I thought, "If that's what science is in America,
we don't belong in America."
NARRATOR: After a disappointing end to his time at Project Blue Book,
Jacques Vallée moved back to Paris with his wife and son.
But as backlash against UFO research
spread in the public sphere of science and academics,
Jacques Vallée would develop
his most profound UFO theory yet:
that aliens have always been among us.
NARRATOR: 30-year-old Jacques Vallée
is working as an engineer
for the Royal Dutch Shell oil and gas company
when civil unrest erupts throughout France.
Triggered by a series of student protests
against capitalism and consumerism,
the unrest leads to a nationwide strike.
Essentially, there were three months
during which no work was done.
So, I could go back to my own research interests,
uh, full-time.
I collected a number of books
in areas that I had wanted to look at for a-a long time.
And the question, which is really a scientific question,
is-- so, we have UFOs, you know, and UFO waves--
when did that really start?
NARRATOR: Vallée discovered that accounts of mysterious objects in the sky
weren't limited to contemporary reports.
In fact, the more he dug into the origins
of the UFO phenomenon,
the further back in time he went.
VALLÉE: There is a lot of literature
from the Muslim world about, uh, jinn
and about other creatures
created by God, but... a-along with men and animals.
So, I started l-looking at this, and what dawned on me
was that you could go back in history,
and people will interpret it in religious terms
as either evil or...
angels or religious apparitions.
POPE: Jacques Vallée noticed some connections
between modern-day UFO sightings
and ancient folkloric tales of strange lights
and even entity encounters.
And he said, look, this could be the same phenomenon,
but just people use different words
according to their language,
according to their belief systems.
VALLÉE: I looked especially in Europe.
So many of those were fairy tales that I had heard as a kid.
It turns out they come from real observations.
A few folklore experts in the 19th century
and early 20th century,
in Ireland and, uh, Wales and Scotland,
had gone around collecting actual reports
of people encountering, not just little people,
but little people with strange contraptions.
Strange houses where you would lose your sense of time.
You would come out and years would've passed.
And so you are beginning to see
that these people were confronted
with another race,
that there was communication with it.
TSOUKALOS: Jacques Vallée realized that many of the stories
that we have of in the Middle Ages
of trolls and fairy folk and things like that,
it reminded him of similar stories
that we have today in the UFO world.
So, he asked the question, is it possible
that these ancient stories that we have,
are they identical to what we see
with the modern-day UFO phenomenon?
NARRATOR: In 1969, Jacques Vallée published
the culmination of this research
in a book titled Passport to Magonia,
named for the fabled cloud realm detailed
in medieval French folklore.
TSOUKALOS: In that book, he describes that perhaps
some of those old stories and legends of fairy folk
are not necessarily made up,
but that they may be descriptions
of visiting extraterrestrials
that our ancestors then interpreted as fairy folk.
KNAPP: Passport to Magonia was a game changer.
To suggest that these things, whatever they are,
interact with humans
throughout human history,
on every continent, in every culture.
WILLIAM HENRY: At this time, the primary thought
about extraterrestrials
was UFOs only started showing up in 1947
with the Kenneth Arnold sighting.
But Vallée is starting to see that they've always been here,
that they've shown up in culture after culture,
and saying that this phenomena has always been with us.
NARRATOR: With Passport to Magonia,
Jacques Vallée became a seminal figure
to not only ufologists,
but also ancient astronaut theorists.
And his book came out within just a few months
of Swiss author Erich von Danikën's
Chariots of the Gods?,
which also posed the possibility that extraterrestrials
had visited Earth in the distant past.
When you read the words of Jacques Vallée,
you can't help but be thinking
of the work of Erich Von Däniken.
Chariots of the Gods? and Passport to Magonia
come to the same conclusion: this is an ancient phenomenon.
ERICH VON DÄNIKEN: I adore some of the writings of Jacques Vallée.
He's a brilliant man.
And of course, out there in the universe,
there might be different forms of extraterrestrial,
not only a human form.
They might be small beings,
bigger beings, giants.
We have no idea.
NARRATOR: Ancient astronaut theorists cite Magonia
as one of many instances when Jacques Vallée
found himself at the forefront of UFO research
pushing the boundaries of what many deemed possible.
But his most groundbreaking theories were still to come.
Theories that would challenge our understanding
of not just UFOs, but the entire cosmos.
NARRATOR: Jacques Vallée is recruited by the National Science Foundation
to work as a principal investigator
on a project known as ARPANET.
It was here where he helped build
the first public computer network ever developed.
And it is considered by many
to be the forerunner of the Internet.
ARPA was the Advanced Research Project Agency of the Pentagon.
There were 15 computing centers at universities.
At Stanford Research Institute, we had site number two,
the second computer on the Internet.
I ran one of the projects of many
and we implemented the first computer conferencing systems
when the ARPANET was going to turn into the Internet.
This is an incredible part of-of Vallée's story.
He goes to Silicon Valley and becomes amazingly successful
in the early days of ARPANET.
NARRATOR: While working as a senior research engineer at Stanford,
on his own time, Vallée continued to compile reports
on unidentified aerial phenomena.
And the more information he gathered,
the more he began to question the very nature of UFOs.
What I found was that the ufologists
were still talking about UFOs
like they were advanced airplanes.
Well, that ignores pretty much everything that UFOs do.
Whatever propulsion there is,
is certainly not anything
that we account for in our equations.
And you ask the witnesses, how fast did it go off?
And they say, it lifted and then it disappeared.
And the interpretation is, they turn on, you know,
the afterburners and they go boom.
You know, and you don't see them anymore.
That's not true.
HENRY: Vallée came to believe, based on the evidence
that he saw in the literary tradition,
and as well as what he's seeing in the sightings
and the documentation,
that perhaps what we're actually dealing with
is an interdimensional phenomenon,
and that extraterrestrials
are in fact coming from other dimensions.
CHRISSY NEWTON: Jacques Vallée was one of the first scientists
to ever bring in a multi-dimensional theory
in context with the UFO topic.
Jacques was ahead of his time,
and he's open-minded enough as a scientist
to be able to go there
and be very passionate about it.
TSOUKALOS: Jacques Vallée changed his opinion
from nuts-and-bolts spacecraft
to it being that we live in a multiverse.
And that multiple existences are happening all at the same time.
And some of the UFO sightings
might be these blips of these civilizations
being able to move between dimensions.
VALLÉE: The idea that we are in a universe
that has more than three or four dimensions with time,
that's passé for physics going back to, you know, 50 years ago.
I talk to scientists and to physicists,
and they tell me that essentially
space and time are human perceptions.
That's where physics stands now.
This doesn't come from the UFO people,
it comes from hard physics.
And I think part of my job,
I'm not a good enough physicist
to contribute to those ideas,
but I can bring fuel to the... to the discussion.
NARRATOR: Jacques Vallée shared his idea
of interdimensional travelers with his former colleague
and longtime friend, J. Allen Hynek.
And together, they published the theory in the 1975 book,
The Edge of Reality.
MICHIO KAKU: Mr. Vallée opened the door
to a new kind of ufology,
not just little green men with flying saucers
landing on the White House lawn,
but creatures from another dimension.
Creatures that can go through doorways
and go between universes.
NARRATOR: Vallée and Hynek's controversial ideas
captured the imagination of the public.
And not long after the book was released,
they also caught the attention
of Hollywood's most celebrated new filmmaker:
Steven Spielberg.
I'm convinced that there's something going on,
but no one really knows what it is.
Uh, Dr. Hynek certainly d-doesn't know what it is.
I have theories, he has theories.
No one really can put their finger on it.
If-if they could, the mystery would be solved.
Jacques Vallée's influence was so profound
that he came to the attention of director Steven Spielberg.
Vallée is the model for the character
of Claude Lacombe, the French scientist
that we see in Close Encounters of the Third Kind.
VALLÉE: I heard of it through Dr. Hynek
that one of the characters was based on me.
And then there was a-a reporter in-in Hollywood,
they invited Steven Spielberg to lunch with us.
And t-the three of us had a conversation about the movie
and he confirmed that they wanted a scientist
who would be from another culture, and not American,
but from another culture, and would think about it
in different ways.
And Steven Spielberg told me he had read my first books,
Anatomy of a Phenomenon, was published in '65,
which meant he was studying the subject way back.
It was wonderful because
usually in Hollywood, you know,
the aliens come down and they start shooting.
And-and that's not what he wanted to do.
He wanted to show the interaction,
the human contact.
NARRATOR: Grossing over $300 million worldwide,
Close Encounters became a blockbuster hit
and sparked greater public interest
in both the UFO mystery and Jacques Vallée.
And in the decades to come, Vallée would once again
find himself at the center of a secret UFO investigation
run by the U.S. government.
NARRATOR: As the end of the 20th century approaches,
French scientist and astronomer Jacques Vallée turns his focus
to funding emerging technologies,
spearheading advancements
in everything from wireless networks
to biotech and nanotechnology.
Vallée is also interested
in bringing ufology into a new technological age
and in 1995, he gets his opportunity
when he meets aerospace entrepreneur Robert Bigelow.
In the mid-1990s,
billionaire Robert Bigelow enters the UFO scene
and he is funding a civilian scientific effort--
the National Institute for Discovery Science--
that's looking into the phenomena
and other related phenomena.
And he brings together
some of the very best in the field.
And of course, naturally, this brings him to Jacques Vallée.
VALLÉE: The research that Mr. Bigelow funded was
absolutely remarkable.
You know, in science you have
lots of good scientists with good ideas.
But you need somebody who has a vision
of where the enterprise is going to go.
Mr. Bigelow is just a remarkable business leader.
KNAPP: Bigelow created his own UFO organization
devoted to figuring out the UFO mystery and he had
this amazing group of people,
and Jacques Vallée was one of them.
Those relationships became seminal to the development
of the UFO topic in the decade since.
NARRATOR: Working with Bigelow,
Vallée created the most comprehensive
UFO database in modern history.
Called the Capella program, it uses artificial intelligence
to investigate patterns behind the UFO phenomenon.
TSOUKALOS: Dr. Vallée has amassed a database
consisting of over 260,000 documents
all UAP-related.
Now, it took him 60 years almost to amass this.
Perhaps we can use
the new tools of AI, for example, to crunch
those 260,000 documents once again.
And maybe AI will recognize some pattern.
VALLÉE: If you tell me about something you've seen in the sky,
there are some possibilities that will come to me.
Maybe it's an airplane, maybe it's a cloud.
Maybe it's-it's a reflection of the Moon.
And there are another 200 possibilities
my brain isn't capable of thinking of.
AI can help.
I'm a physicist,
and step one of being a physicist is
to collect the data.
That's the first thing you do.
And that's what Vallée has done here.
HENRY: Vallée is the very first to apply computer science
to the study of UFO sightings.
And in every way is,
is finding a-a way to apply modern technology
to the UFO phenomenon.
NARRATOR: In December 2017,
nearly a decade after Vallée created the Capella database,
a bombshell New York Times article revealed
that Robert Bigelow was part of a secret military project
known as the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program,
or AATIP.
The program was conducted from 2007 to 2012,
receiving $22 million in Congressional funding.
DOLAN: This turned the whole UFO world upside down.
And people were kind of blown away
because the U.S. government had always said, "Uh, we don't,
we have no interest in UFOs. This is not a thing."
What we have learned, subsequently, is
the AATIP program clearly was using the Capella database,
putting more money into it and working to build it.
So Vallée ended up having a tremendous impact
on this secret UFO program that now we all know about.
NARRATOR: To many ufologists across the world,
the unmasking of AATIP
and its use of Vallée's Capella database
marked the beginning of a new era.
It was the first time
that the U.S. government openly acknowledged
the UFO issue since the end of Project Blue Book
more than 50 years earlier
for which Jacques Vallée was also a key contributor.
HENRY: And this is an incredible part of Vallée's story,
that beginning in the 1950s, he's starting to create
databases of UFO sightings.
2017 comes this blockbuster report.
He's almost like
a passing-through character, but yet here he is.
And what's he doing? Building a database.
Database, database, database.
It's all about the accumulation of these stories
and the insights that are contained within.
VALLÉE: Most contemporary data we have,
unfortunately, it's still classified.
But we can already see a lot from what we've done
with smaller databases that were public.
I trust that the people are doing a good job
of working with it.
So we should have some better answers in, in time.
NARRATOR: As ufology enters a new chapter in the 21st century,
Jacques Vallée remains as relevant as ever.
And he is now lending his expertise
to a groundbreaking effort
to identify objects in space that might be harboring...
extraterrestrial technology.
NARRATOR: Harvard astronomer and astrophysicist Avi Loeb launches
a new scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence
called the Galileo Project.
KAKU: Avi Loeb of Harvard is a reputable scientist
who made lots of waves by talking about investigating
extraterrestrial civilizations' technology.
Professor Loeb says,
"Why not monitor meteors and things in outer space?"
Perhaps one of them is remnants of an advanced civilization.
That's the Galileo Project.
NARRATOR: Among the many experts who are contributing
to the Galileo Project is Jacques Vallée.
VALLÉE: We know what equipment we can deploy
about objects that are in the atmosphere.
We want to know if they are coming in
and out of the atmosphere, and where do they go?
Astronomers have been asking those questions for a long time.
With the Galileo Project, I'm very thankful
that I was able to work with people who were
just giving their-their time and their life to this.
It's just pure, pure science.
NARRATOR: After nearly 70 years
of investigating and documenting UFOs...
...from assisting J. Allen Hynek on Project Blue Book
to publishing groundbreaking books
and creating the world's largest UFO database...
...Vallée is hopeful that his work has brought
humanity closer to solving an age-old mystery,
one that dates to the dawn of recorded history.
Jacques Vallée's contributions
to the UFO field are immeasurably valuable.
He has been one of the people to change the paradigm,
and it has taken him decades to do this.
He's one of the first people that looked at the data
and said, "There's something going on here
and it certainly merits more investigation."
CHILDRESS: What makes Vallée
a unique figure in the whole ufology scene is that
he's a person whom everyone,
the skeptics and the believers, all take very seriously.
KNAPP: Jacques Vallée made an impact on the world
in so many different ways.
He's a talented science fiction writer.
He's a talented novelist.
He's a talented computer scientist.
He was one of the earliest folks
to apply computer technology to UFO world
to figure out how to organize data.
Any conversation you have with Jacques Vallée,
any interview you do with him,
he talks about the need for more data.
There's never enough data.
My father made a lot of people feel more comfortable accepting
the idea that UFOs could be real.
I think Jacques has taken people even further
in getting them to question
the very origin of the phenomena.
POPE: Jacques Vallée is a hugely intelligent man.
He's a-a true out-of-the-box thinker.
When he started,
a lot of the things that he was saying were very fringe.
They've now become mainstream.
When the history of this subject is written,
Jacques Vallée's name will be writ large,
and rightly so.
NARRATOR: For more than six decades,
Jacques Vallée has made invaluable contributions
to help solve the UFO mystery,
and continues to even today.
Will his lifetime of incredible research
and scientific exploration
soon lead to real answers about what has been happening
in our skies for thousands of years?
Only time will tell.
But one thing is certain:
whenever we arrive at the truth,
it will be largely due to the work of Jacques Vallée.
I still haven't solved it.
(laughs)
Uh, but I felt that
in my life, I would not be able
to make a contribution at the right level
to influence finding the answer.
I've made a contribution
alongside with a number of very, very bright people,
um,
and all you can hope in science is to make one contribution.
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