Award-winning investigative journalist Ross Coulthart sits down for a wide-ranging conversation about his years investigating the UFO phenomenon, government secrecy, and the personal cost of pursuing one of the most suppressed stories in modern history. What emerges is not just a catalog of strange sightings but a picture of a deeply entrenched, multi-generational cover-up involving crash retrievals, hidden budgets, intimidation of witnesses, and a mainstream media that has largely failed to do its job.
The Buga Sphere and the Problem of Physical Evidence
In 2024, Mexican journalist Jaime Maussan was given a metallic sphere recovered in Buga, Colombia, by a man who claimed to have filmed it flying through the air before picking it up in a forest.
The video has a gap in it, raising provenance questions, but the object itself is reportedly an aluminum alloy three times harder than conventional aerospace-grade material.
Symbols engraved around the top of the sphere were shown to Mario Woods (a 1977 Ellsworth Air Force Base experiencer) and Randy Anderson (taken underground at Crane Naval Surface Warfare Center and possibly shown off-world technology). Both men reportedly “freaked out” because the symbols matched ones they had seen inside craft.
When Coulthart ran photos of the symbols through AI (Grok), it returned the phrase “The circuit,” which made him suspicious of a hoax, though he emphasizes AI is often wrong and neither he nor the interviewer are endorsing or debunking the object.
Coulthart has also investigated a sphere owned by the late Jim Marrs (author and rock promoter) in Texas.
He personally witnessed the sphere move on its own on a verified level floor, traveling toward a bar and possibly circling a pole before returning partway.
Despite years of trying, Coulthart was unable to get the sphere properly tested because Jim Marrs resisted letting it be X-rayed or analyzed. Marrs has since agreed to let Brandon Fugal (owner of Skinwalker Ranch) fly it to a lab in Utah for testing, which Coulthart is cautiously optimistic about.
Coulthart’s broader point: metallic spheres with no visible means of propulsion are a real, documented phenomenon. Dozens of people have reported seeing them move under their own power. He does not claim to know what they are.
How Coulthart Got Into UFOs: The Kaikoura Incident
As a teenager in New Zealand in 1978, Coulthart witnessed the aftermath of the Kaikoura UFO incident, where a cargo aircraft crew observed elliptical metallic disc-shaped objects approaching their cockpit, glowing but clearly solid and structured.
Radar confirmation from Wellington independently tracked the objects moving in the directions the crew described, providing contemporaneous corroboration.
The New Zealand government rapidly issued an official explanation blaming squid boat lights and atmospheric refraction. Coulthart, as a teenager, accepted this because it fit the narrative of a slow-news-season media beat-up.
Years later, as a young journalist, he interviewed former Prime Minister Sir Robert Muldoon, who let slip: “Yeah, the Americans wanted that one shut down pretty quickly.”
Later archive releases confirmed enormous pressure from the Prime Minister’s office on the Chief of Air Staff to make the story go away, and the squid boat explanation was the result.
This was Coulthart’s first real lesson in how governments manufacture cover stories for UFO incidents.
From Skeptic to Believer: The Nate Kobitz Breakthrough
Coulthart began researching his book in 2018 intending to debunk UFOs, assuming they were secret American black-world technology. He used analog methods (physical letters, no phones or email) to contact people, eventually writing an estimated 160–170 letters.
One letter reached Nat Kobitz, former head of science and technology development for the US Navy, who was dying of cancer. Kobitz called him, and they spoke for months about early drone technology and other topics before Kobitz finally said, “Why don’t you ask me the question?”
Coulthart asked if he had ever been read into a program involving UAP or alien technology. Kobitz said “Yes” before Coulthart finished the question.
Kobitz told him the US had recovered multiple craft and strongly implied that Roswell, Aztec, and Kingman were all real incidents.
Kobitz also described being taken underground at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and shown a piece of a bulkhead that was impossibly light and made of two metals bonded at the atomic level—a technology he insisted did not exist in any known human manufacturing process.
This was Coulthart’s turning point from skeptic to believer.
The Lockheed Martin Executive and the CIA Block
A senior Lockheed Martin executive contacted Coulthart and implicitly confirmed that Lockheed Martin is holding alien technology.
When Coulthart asked why they don’t just disclose, the executive said, “It’s not us. It’s the agency.” He said Lockheed wanted to do it but were blocked.
This relates to the Bigelow Aerospace incident: the real story behind the “metamaterials” that appeared in the 2017 New York Times story was that Lockheed Martin was transferring control of an actual alien spacecraft to Bigelow Aerospace, and the CIA (or the Office of Global Access) intervened to stop it.
Glenn Gaffney is suspected of being involved in the block, though this has been denied from inside sources (which may itself be disinformation).
Australia’s Hidden Role in US Retrieval Operations
Coulthart’s background investigating the Five Eyes surveillance alliance (Echelon) taught him that smaller allies like Australia, New Zealand, and Canada do “plausibly deniable” dirty work for the US and UK.
He discovered that Australian special forces personnel were used in US UFO retrieval operations. They were paid in cash US dollars, made to sign NDAs, and the Australian government was never briefed.
This explains how Canadian involvement in retrieval and reverse engineering programs has stayed secret for so long—the host governments often don’t know.
Harry Turner, an Australian physicist, was invited by the government in the 1950s to investigate UFO sightings and later worked at the Maralinga nuclear test range, where he witnessed multiple UAP incidents.
In 1972, Turner wrote a classified report to Australia’s Joint Intelligence Organization recommending a dedicated UFO investigation unit and arguing that the Americans were clearly running a retrieval program and lying about it. He referenced Roswell and other retrievals.
Turner had extensive contact with American nuclear physicists and likely picked up information about the early stages of the US legacy program through that cross-pollination.
Nuclear Testing, Bluegill Triple Prime, and Harold Malmgren
Coulthart has investigated the connection between nuclear weapons testing and UFO encounters, including the Bluegill Triple Prime test (October 26, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis) as part of Operation Fishbowl in the Pacific.
Harold Malmgren, a high-level government official, claimed a UFO was retrieved during the Bluegill Triple Prime test. Douglas Dean Johnson published a detailed debunking, but Coulthart argues Johnson’s approach was flawed.
Malmgren’s personal diaries (now secured) document meetings with Richard Bissell, who founded Area 51 and later became deputy director of the CIA. Bissell is the person Malmgren claimed read him into the legacy UAP retrieval program.
Malmgren’s claimed Q clearance would not appear in standard FBI FOIA requests if it was held through CIA channels, which explains the absence of paperwork.
Bob Jacobs, a retired Air Force major who witnessed a UFO shooting a laser at an ICBM warhead during a 1964 Vandenberg test, was stationed at Johnston Atoll in 1963 and reported widespread rumors on the ground that a Soviet nuclear warhead had been shot down from orbit during the Bluegill test—which would itself be a UFO-related event.
Coulthart’s view: the absence of documentation is exactly what you would expect for a program this sensitive. “If there’s a stinky dirty secret, you don’t write it down.”
Sedona, Arizona: An Underground Base Under Secret Mountain
Coulthart investigated claims of a deep underground military facility under Secret Mountain near Sedona, Arizona, based on research by Jeremiah and Alexandra Hostetler.
Multiple locals reported being confronted by armed, uniformed men (likely tier one special operations) on public land near the mountain and told to leave or be killed.
At 1:30 AM, Coulthart and a team using military-grade night vision observed a gigantic golden orb rising from behind Secret Mountain, escorted by dozens of Black Hawk helicopters. The orb was plasmatic, pulsed, and moved in a way that defied conventional explanation.
At the nearby Bradshaw Ranch, ground penetrating radar revealed a 50-foot-wide reinforced steel concrete tunnel just under the surface, running from the ranch toward the Clarkdale Cement Plant, with evidence of massive three-phase electrical power being fed into the ground.
A camera on the ranch is pointed precisely at the spot where former owner Linda Bradshaw photographed what she described as a portal opening in the ground.
Coulthart is convinced a deep underground military facility exists there, with hydraulically operated doors in mountainsides, and that it is connected to non-human technology.
The Mainstream Media’s Failure
Coulthart is blunt: the mainstream media has failed catastrophically on the UFO story, which he calls “the greatest disinformation operation in human history.”
The New York Times rejected the David Grusch story. The Wall Street Journal has a consultant (David Spergel, who ran the NASA UAP review panel and runs the Simons Foundation) who tells editors it’s all space trash and light reflections—the same explanations used in the 1950s.
NewsNation’s ratings increased by 990% when they aired the Grusch interview, and UFO coverage is credited with saving the network. Yet the story gets virtually no coverage in prestige outlets.
Coulthart notes that younger generations (millennials and Gen Z) are deeply engaged with the topic, repackaging his stories on TikTok and Instagram, generating millions of views. The public can “smell a smelly turd,” he says.
He is particularly critical of congressional staffers who, despite good intentions, are intimidated by the defense establishment. One staffer who received Jake Barber’s testimony was harassed by Defense Department helicopters buzzing his home.
Intimidation, Murder, and the FBI Investigation
Coulthart was detained by US Customs and Border Protection after breaking the Grusch story. A mutual friend confirmed a flag had been placed on his file at a high level. He was released only after threatening to go live on national television.
He has been told that people have been murdered to protect the secret of the legacy program. Jake Barber has made this allegation explicitly.
The FBI is now actively investigating crimes related to the legacy program, and Coulthart says people involved should be “very nervous.”
He is skeptical that Congress will act meaningfully: despite Grusch providing specific locations, program names, and code words, the Senate Select Committee for Intelligence has issued zero subpoenas.
Consciousness, Psionics, and the Deeper Picture
Coulthart says a source told him in 2018: “It’s all about consciousness.” It took him roughly seven years to begin to understand what that meant.
The US government ran psionic programs (remote viewing) and took them seriously, as documented in the CIA gateway documents. The official reason for shutting them down in 1995 (offense but no defense) makes no sense, and Coulthart believes these programs continue.
He notes that the people with the highest clearances and longest government careers are often the most “conspiratorial” in their worldview—not in a fringe sense, but in the sense that their version of reality is far stranger than the public’s.
The Buried UFO and Scalar Weapons
Coulthart confirms he knows of a UFO that was too big to move and was either buried or had a structure built around it. He will not reveal the location because doing so would compromise the lives of military personnel stationed nearby who are unaware of what is beneath them.
He also addresses rumors of scalar weapons—a “Manhattan Project 2.0” involving technology that can manipulate time and space. Michael Kratsios, in an official capacity, stated: “Our technologies permit us to manipulate time and space. They leave distance annihilated.”
Both the US and Russia have hinted at possessing super weapons. Coulthart suspects both nations believe they have an advantage with non-human-derived technology, but neither actually does, and the secrecy is maintained because each side fears the other has a breakthrough.
He also notes that during early glasnost, Russia told the US it possessed a crashed craft, and a known astronaut was deployed to assist in the retrieval—suggesting past US-Russian collaboration on UAP that has since been buried under renewed geopolitical tension.
Final Thoughts
Coulthart is pessimistic about government-driven disclosure but optimistic about the public’s awakening, fueled by the internet and AI. He believes psionic sources are telling him disclosure is coming.
His core frustration: the story is being ignored not because it lacks evidence, but because the institutions responsible for investigating it—the press, Congress, the intelligence community—are either captured, intimidated, or willfully blind.
“This is like a John Grisham thriller,” he says. “But it’s true.”
