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On July 8, 1947, the Roswell Daily Record reported that a "flying saucer" was recovered at Roswell, New Mexico.
CELINA - Coldwater native and former CIA operative Douglas Laux spent a year crisscrossing the U.S. and Mexico helping famed Nevada UFO researcher George Knapp hunt down solid evidence supporting well-publicized extraterrestrial close encounters.
In Netflix's six-part docuseries "Investigation Alien," Laux, who was selected for his intelligence-gathering prowess, serves as the right-hand man of Knapp, a Peabody Award-winning investigative broadcaster who captured the nation's imagination with his stories about Area 51.
The show debuted last month and reached No. 2 on Netflix's top TV shows, according to Laux, 41, who splits his time between Los Angeles, Kansas City and Coldwater.
"For this 'Investigation Alien' show I did on Netflix, that was the whole year of 2023 because we went all over the world," said Laux. "I was every other week in a new place doing this show."
Producers sought out a Jason Bourne-like figure to add an air of intrigue and investigatory bona fides to the series, which finds Knapp and company searching for evidence to validate high-profile alien cases. That's where Laux came in.
"Truth be told, I didn't really know a lot about the alien stuff until I got in the middle of it and met a guy like George Knapp," he said. Prior to filming, Laux largely held an ambivalent attitude to the notion of aliens. Nothing he experienced during his work on the program, though, necessarily changed that view.
"I never say there's not, but I definitely don't say, 'Yeah, I've seen one' or 'Yeah, it's a fact,'" Laux said. "I don't know."
But the opportunity to trek across the continent in pursuit of the truth about little green men, or the Greys, as some refer to them, on Netflix's dime proved irresistible.
"That's why I liked this show and wanted to do it for my own benefit. Everyone's talking about UFOs. I've never seen one. How come I've never got to see one?" he added.
He was further compelled to join the investigation team knowing that Knapp is a serious journalist who has won numerous accolades, among them two national Edward R. Murrow awards.
"Netflix, they have a choice to choose who's going to be in a show, and I really like that they picked George Knapp because I trusted him and believed in him," Laux said. "You don't have to believe in aliens; just know there are people who do and some people that take it really seriously."
This image was taken from a Department of Defense 2015 video labeled Gimbal. It shows a dark unexplained object as it is tracked moving at a high rate of speed. "There's a whole fleet of them," one naval aviator says on the video.
Laux, who lays claims to being the the first CIA officer to infiltrate the Taliban and Al-Qaeda and write a book about it, was tasked with interviewing key witnesses to UFO-related incidents and assessing their accounts.
"He (Knapp) sends me basically stuff he already knows about and he's like, 'Go see if you can poke any holes in this. Do you believe them?'" Laux said of his role on the show. "'So this guy here is Rick. He saw an alien. He's going to tell you all about it. You, Doug, know how to ask people questions. Ask him questions.'"
For instance, Knapp sends Laux to a possible alien crash site in Iowa and to Oregon to talk with ranchers whose cattle were mutilated.
"It's like the skeletons or corpses of cattle. Now, some were still there, some they could only point at the land where they had found it and they described it. They had photos," Laux said. "My job was kind of just to compare notes, but not of the evidence because that's already written about and I read everything online beforehand."
He was also aware of the people and what they had told reporters.
"Why are we wasting our time on him and kind of make the decision of whether I thought the guy was telling us the truth or not. That's why they brought me in," Laux said.
Laux also talks with people who claimed to have seen a spaceship land in Tampico, Mexico.
"But as far as telling if somebody is lying, I don't think anyone was ever lying to me. They really believed what they were saying," he said. "I think some of the people, just what they believed didn't necessarily really happen."
Laux would also form opinions on evidence put forth by Knapp. The two men at times challenged one another, specifically when Laux had a much different take on a supposed alien incident.
"Like, 'Hey, man, you brought me here to challenge you and now I'm doing it so don't discount me and just kind of brush it away,'" Laux said. "George is cool enough, and he's been doing it long enough, to (be) like 'Yeah, Doug, that's why I got ahold of you, to challenge me and give me a different point of view.' Because everybody he talks to loves him, and they already believe him."
Knapp, for instance, shows Laux a video purportedly showing an alien aircraft flying over a CIA base. On first glance, it looks really good. But then Laux's instincts kick in, as CIA personnel would never allow any aircraft to hover over a covert base.
"That was his big thing, showing congresspeople … this particular video, and I said, 'George, if you want to hang your hat on that, that's OK, but just know as your CIA guy I will still look at this video and tell you I don't know,'" he said. "If I were still in the agency and I were standing on that base and saw that in the sky, I would immediately have it shot down."
Still, "Investigation Alien," doesn't force conclusions on viewers.
"There's two sides of the coin. You're a smart viewer. What do you think with your brain?" Laux said. "Do you think it's real from what we've presented or do you think it's all a hoax? Because we gave you both sides."
Laux said he's received a lot of positive feedback from fans of the shows, including hardcore UFO and alien enthusiasts.
"Something I will say is I haven't gotten negative remarks from fans, and people have watched the show, which really makes me happy because … I don't do any of this stuff for the money," he said.
Should Netflix elect to renew the show for another season, Laux said he would gladly return.
"I would definitely go again and investigate more because I'm a curious guy, and it was never our mission to solve (anything), one way or another," he said. "I think there's enough there to keep going where we could get more to get you to lean more in one direction or another."
Laux is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "Left of Boom: How a Young CIA Case Officer Penetrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda."
In 2017, Laux was featured prominently in Discovery Channel's six-episode series entitled "Finding Escobar's Millions." The show followed Laux and a fellow former CIA officer as they attempted to uncover notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar's legendary buried fortune.
Laux appeared as one of three judges on Bravo's "Spy Games," a 2020 reality TV show where 10 contestants vied to outwit one another in a series of cloak-and-dagger missions to become the top spy and collect a $100,000 prize.
In May 2023, Laux threw out the first pitch at a Reds game for Military Appreciation Day. His mother, Kathy, was the catcher and his father, Jerry, an umpire, for the first pitch.
Marty Krieg of Thanks to Yanks, a local nonpolitical organization supporting military members, veterans and their families, was also an umpire.
