MYSTERY WIRE — The world’s foremost UFO experts will be in Las Vegas this weekend for the MUFON International Symposium. MUFON is also known as the Mutual UFO Network. The group documents and investigates UFO sightings.

This year the symposium is being held at the JW Marriott Las Vegas Resort & Spa beginning on Thursday, August 26 through Sunday, August 29th.

The MUFON organization was created in 1969, which is when the Air Force’s Project Blue Book was shut down. Organizers say the subject has never been hotter given recent developments, including leaked videos  and reports issued by the Pentagon.

Organizers have almost 20 speakers lined up to talk over the three day conference. Mystery Wire’s own George Knapp is scheduled to give a presentation Saturday morning. Former British Defense Ministry employee Nick Pope will be giving the keynote address Friday night.

This year’s event features many other military and government witnesses, scientists, and researchers from around the world sharing what they know about UAPs and Extraterrestrial life.

The group is also offering group trips to the gates of Area 51, experiencer sessions, field investigator training, Part 107 drone training and certification, and a vendor area. The vendor area is open to the public.

According to MUFON’s COO Ken St. John, there are already hundreds of people pre-registered, but there are still tickets available. If you don’t pre-register you can also buy tickets at the door.

You can read much more about this year’s in-person MUFON Symposium here.

If you cannot attend in person, MUFON is also offering a live streaming package on it’s website. According to the site, the live stream package will include the following:

  • Live stream of all of the main hall lectures.
  • Special online only Q&A’s, hosted by Ron James with select speakers.  You will be able to ask questions and post comments directly, live with our presenters.
  • Audience rooms – Hang out with other people watching the live stream, start your own conversations, comment and share.
  • Watch the presentations live or watch them later, it’s up to you!
  • All Live Stream orders include a ONE YEAR subscription to MUFON Television .  You’ll enjoy access to our past conferences, exclusive content and our original shows, all advertising –free!

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Below is the transcript of the interview with MUFON COO Ken St. John.

Duncan Phenix, mysterywire.com Producer
Ken St. John, COO of MUFON, got a big event coming up, the International Symposium here in Las Vegas in a little less than two weeks. Give us the broad overview of why you’re doing this now, why back to Las Vegas and what you expect?

Ken St. John, COO MUFON
Yeah, sure. Well, first, we love Las Vegas. So we’ve been here several times before, and the audience’s here are great. And the talent that we bring in to support the symposium always loves to go to Las Vegas. So, you know, that’s a very good thing. Well, this is actually our 52nd annual symposium. We started way back in 1969, when the Air Force decided that project bluebook wasn’t really worth their while anymore, we kind of took over. And that was our very first symposium. And we’ve had one every year for 52 years, with the exception of last year, which was kind of a burden on all of us. And we couldn’t quite get together. But we’re back and stronger than ever for this year. We’ve decided to really take a hard look at this subject of Unmanned Aerial Phenomena, UAPs, of course, with the Department of intelligence release of the announcement back in June 25. You know, it caused a great deal of stir, luckily, we were ahead of the game. And we are bringing on speakers that are deeply involved in the UAP subject. We have mostly military or retired servicemen and women. And we also have a couple of unique perspectives from the media as well. We’ve asked Katie Cook, who, as you may know is a television personality. And I think what the listeners don’t really understand is that Katie has had experiences of her own. And as a result, she has a kind of lifelong interest in UFOlogy. So we thought she would be absolutely perfect to emcee. And for our keynote address, which is going to be Friday night, we usually have a big welcoming dinner, Nick Pope, who I understand you just talked to is going to come out and he’s going to deliver a keynote address. So we’re really looking forward to Nick’s discussion. And of course, George (Knapp) will be there with his excellent take on the UAP Task Force and other related groups. So just generally speaking, we have folks who I would call them experts by experience on the UAP phenomenon. And you know, one of the very interesting things we have I think everyone knows about Rendlesham, I guess unless you’ve lived under a rock. We know about Rendlesham and some of the folks that were there, Chuck Halt. Colonel Charles Halt is going to be there as well as Airman First Class John Barrows, they’re going to be there to do a little deep dive but with a uniquely different approach, we’ve asked Pat Forsona to come out. Pat was actually the attorney that represented John, in his fight against the government. I’m not an expert on the case. But basically, it was an alleged cover up of his involvement in the incident. So we’re gonna have a kind of a unique insight on how that came about, and what some of the results were. We’ve also got Sarah Carter, who is an investigative reporter. She’s gonna come in and help us understand, you know, just what is media’s role here, in taking the UAP phenomenon from what we might call a fringe topic into the mainstream. So we’ll have kind of a backstage look at, you know, the operation, the media and how they go about bringing that out into the public sector. A couple other fellows that will have: Colonel John Alexander. Very lucky to have him, a local Las Vegas native, as you know. But I don’t think a lot of the viewers and listeners don’t know that he ran an organization called Advanced Theoretical Physics. And this was actually the predecessor to AATIP. So John is going to discuss its operations and some of the findings which should be very interesting. We have also scheduled for the symposium you have a couple of special events. When we come to Las Vegas we always have two or three Area 51 tours, guided tours. And those are indeed in place this year again. We have three of them, one of which is a night tour. Those are always exciting. And we’ve asked our speaker lineup to participate in a couple of private speaker luncheon panels. We’ve asked Nick to moderate those, and we’re going to be discussing disclosure on both of them. But we’ll have different speakers for each one that’ll happen on Saturday and Sunday. Also, unique this year, you know, there’s so much interest in drones, whether they be military drones or civilian drones, commercial, and so on. We have an organization that does airline training for pilots. And they also have a very unique program that teaches people how to prepare for the FAA part 107 training for a drone license, so we’re actually going to run a full day drone training session. And at the end of that session, they’ll be able to be taking the Part 107 quiz, which the FAA administers, that’s something different for us. But it gives us kind of a different perspective on the unmanned aerial systems, if you will. A couple other things, we have our experiencer resource team coming out to do a couple meetings. That team is wholly responsible for deep investigations into witnesses who have either had an experience with either a being, close encounter, that type of a thing, or they’ve actually been abducted. We know with a certain amount of stigma, of course, the government has talked about that, but there’s still stigma out there. So we have some folks who literally have been emotionally affected by their experiences. And we have a team, a very large team, I think there’s almost 50 members or more, some of which are licensed professionals, psychologists, psychiatrists and so on. This team is going to conduct a couple special meetings, specifically for those who have experiences or have been abducted. So if anyone out there is feeling like they need to speak with someone, this would be an ideal situation for them. So they might want to check that out. And lastly, I should mention that we do have a exhibitor vendor area, which we’ll be running all weekend, and a lot of the folks come in who have various products and goods to either sell or demonstrate.

Duncan Phenix, mysterywire.com Producer
Tell us a little bit about the venue where you’re going to be and you know, Is it open to the public? Can I still get involved or is there still availability to get in on this? Can I just show up for a day, an afternoon or do the whole weekend? How does that work?

Ken St. John, COO MUFON
Well, as a matter of fact, the venue this, we’ve said it was Las Vegas, it’s actually going to be at the JW Marriott Resort and Spa. That’s out on Rampart Boulevard. It’s certainly not too late. Come on out. If you want to come out for the day, that’s great. If you want to come out for the entire weekend that’s great, too. You can take advantage of all of the speakers, you can go to some of the special events. And of course, the public is welcome. You don’t have to be associated with MUFON or any other group in UFOlogy,  the public is welcome. And by the way, if you’re in the military, active military will see that you get a nice discount as well.

Duncan Phenix, mysterywire.com Producer
Tell me a little bit more about the area 51 trips because like you said, I know they’re very popular, especially during this time where we’ve got mask restrictions and a little bit of heightened concern about things. How is that all going to take place? Is it a ‘pile on to a bus’? Are you guys gonna be stopping in Rachel for lunch? Walk me through that.

Ken St. John, COO MUFON
We do have three tours as I said, one will be at night. These are luxury bus tours. So you don’t have to worry about the heat and humidity and so on. The bus tours are going to take you past things like the Janet terminal. You’re going to see the infamous black mailbox. And by the way, there’s a special lunch that’s planned out at the Little A’Le’Inn in Rachel which is an experience in and of itself? I think that alone is worth the trip. But, you know, when you do go to the back gate there, there are things that you can see. I know for instance, if you’re really observant, you can see some of the Russian radar installations that we used when we were developing the characteristics for the SR 71, the radar signatures and so on. So there’s lots to see there. And occasionally, we’ve actually had some of the guard force actually come over and talk to us. And for a change, it wasn’t about anyone who, you know, overstepped their boundary. It was just they, I guess they just felt nice that day. So all of that could happen. You never know.