Original CNN broadcast: July 18, 2008
For years, Larry King Live brought some of the world’s most controversial and unexplained subjects into the homes of millions of viewers. Among those subjects was the UFO phenomenon.
On July 18, 2008, CNN aired a particularly memorable program titled “Debate Over Existence of UFOs.” The broadcast brought together former U.S. Air Force personnel, UFO investigators, researchers, a filmmaker, a scientist and a SETI astronomer for a sometimes intense discussion about UFO sightings, alleged encounters at military facilities, government secrecy and the possibility of extraterrestrial spacecraft.
The program centered heavily on claims involving U.S. nuclear missile facilities, including the famous 1967 incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana and an alleged 1964 incident involving missile photography at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.
Watch the Complete Four-Part Broadcast
Larry King Live: UFO Debate — Complete 4-Part Archive
The Malmstrom Air Force Base Incident
One of the central subjects of the program was an alleged incident at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana in 1967.
Former U.S. Air Force Captain Bob Salas told Larry King that he was serving as a missile launch officer when security personnel reported seeing strange lights in the sky. Salas said that one security controller reported seeing a large, glowing red object hovering near the facility.
According to Salas, within seconds of receiving the report, the missiles under his responsibility began shutting down. He recalled losing all ten missiles and described them as being placed into a non-launchable condition.
Former Air Force officer Bob Jamison, who was also stationed at Malmstrom, described being called in to help restore the missile systems. He said he saw ten red indicators on the facility’s status board showing that the missiles were offline.
The incident became one of the major points of disagreement during the broadcast.
Bill Nye Challenges the UFO Interpretation
Later in the program, Bill Nye, “The Science Guy,” joined the discussion as the principal skeptic.
Nye argued that the evidence needed to be examined on an individual incident-by-incident basis. He suggested that conventional explanations, including electrical problems at the missile facility, needed to be considered before concluding that a UFO had caused the missile shutdowns.
Salas disagreed, arguing that the missile systems had multiple layers of backup power and that a simple power failure did not adequately explain what happened.
The exchange quickly became heated.
Larry King repeatedly attempted to keep the participants from talking over one another as Salas and Nye debated whether the reported UFO sighting and the missile shutdowns represented a meaningful connection or merely a coincidence.
The disagreement essentially came down to a fundamental question:
If something unusual is observed at the same time that a highly unusual technical event occurs, does that constitute evidence that the two events are connected?
The UFO investigators said it deserved serious investigation.
Nye maintained that an unexplained observation was not, by itself, proof of extraterrestrial technology.
The Vandenberg Air Force Base Film
Another extraordinary story discussed during the program came from Dr. Bob Jacobs, a former U.S. Air Force photographic instrumentation officer.
Jacobs described his work photographing missile launches at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California during the 1960s. He said that high-speed photographic equipment was being used to record missile launches and that an unusual object appeared in footage associated with a 1964 launch.
According to Jacobs, the object appeared to maneuver around a dummy warhead and direct beams of light toward it. Jacobs said that the film was subsequently shown to him by Major Florenze J. Mansmann and that he was instructed not to discuss what he had seen.
Jacobs maintained that he personally saw the film.
Nye challenged the interpretation of the footage and, importantly, made a distinction between seeing something unidentified and establishing that the object was an extraterrestrial spacecraft.
That distinction led to one of the most memorable confrontations of the broadcast.
Jacobs argued that he had witnessed something he could not identify and questioned what technology could have produced the reported effects in 1964. Nye responded that identifying something as unexplained does not automatically establish an extraterrestrial origin.
Robert Hastings also discussed the alleged Vandenberg incident and said he had correspondence involving Jacobs and Mansmann. Hastings told King that Mansmann’s professional assessment had been that the object was an extraterrestrial craft.
A Larger UFO Debate
The program eventually expanded beyond the military incidents.
Larry King brought together Stanton Friedman, physicist and UFO researcher; James Fox, documentary filmmaker and UFO researcher; Bill Nye; and Dr. Seth Shostak, senior astronomer at the SETI Institute.
The discussion broadened to include UFO evidence, government secrecy, alleged technological capabilities, the possibility of extraterrestrial visitation and famous cases such as the Phoenix Lights.
Friedman argued that some UFOs represented intelligently controlled extraterrestrial spacecraft and described what he believed to be a government cover-up.
Fox presented the possibility that some UFO reports could represent technology originating either from an extraterrestrial source or from an unknown terrestrial government program.
Nye remained skeptical, arguing that unexplained observations should not automatically be interpreted as alien spacecraft.
Shostak likewise emphasized the importance of evaluating evidence scientifically and questioned whether the available evidence had established extraterrestrial visitation.
The Phoenix Lights
The debate also turned to the famous Phoenix Lights incident.
James Fox described accounts from witnesses who reported seeing an enormous, slow-moving, boomerang-shaped object over Arizona. He said that he had personally interviewed numerous witnesses, including former Arizona Governor Fife Symington.
Nye offered conventional explanations involving military activity and flares, while Friedman and Fox disputed those explanations and argued that the evidence deserved further examination.
Once again, the disagreement returned to the same fundamental issue:
Does an unexplained event represent evidence of something extraordinary, or is it simply an event for which a conventional explanation has not yet been established?
An Archive Worth Revisiting
What makes this particular Larry King Live broadcast interesting today is not simply the subject matter. It is the fact that the program captured a serious public debate between people who approached the UFO phenomenon from dramatically different perspectives.
Former military personnel described experiences they believed were connected to UFO activity.
Researchers argued that the incidents represented a pattern worthy of investigation.
Bill Nye challenged the conclusions being drawn from the available evidence.
Stanton Friedman and James Fox argued that the phenomenon deserved considerably more attention.
Seth Shostak approached the subject from the perspective of astronomy and scientific skepticism.
And Larry King sat in the middle of it all, asking questions and attempting to keep the increasingly heated discussion moving forward.
More than a decade later, the broadcast remains an interesting snapshot of how the UFO question was being discussed on mainstream television.
Unexplained Media has compiled the surviving four-part recording into a playlist on the UnexplainedMedia YouTube channel, allowing the complete broadcast to be viewed in sequence.
The four surviving YouTube videos have been compiled into a Larry King Live Archive playlist on the UnexplainedMedia YouTube channel.
Watch the playlist directly:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLbMLjxl_qvJk
The playlist contains all four parts of the broadcast in sequence.
The Question Remains
The 2008 Larry King Live UFO debate did not settle the question of whether UFOs represent extraterrestrial spacecraft.
It did, however, put some remarkable claims directly in front of a national television audience and allowed people on opposing sides of the debate to challenge one another publicly.
Were the incidents discussed on the program caused by conventional technology, misunderstood events, classified military projects, something genuinely unknown — or something from somewhere else?
The broadcast leaves viewers to consider the evidence and decide for themselves.
Unexplained Media presents this broadcast as an archived piece of UFO-related media. The inclusion of the program does not constitute an endorsement of every claim made by its participants. The purpose of this archive is to preserve and present the discussion so that viewers can watch the original material and draw their own conclusions.