Tall tales are fun, and Steiger is very entertaining. His matter of fact delivery and no-apologies asked for grandfatherliness make him believable, even if only for the time that you listen to him.
Unfortunately, everyone makes too much of hard facts. They are just as slippery as everything else in this realm. I got my degree in Medieval history, and I've already seen a generation scholars toss everything I've learned, and in my youth assumed to be truth, on its collective ear. Facts are nothing more than little benchmarks by which future thinkers look at from every which way, and question everything all over, reassess, etc.
This is why UFOlogy and other fringe interests are all built on smoke and shadows. The weight of all the second hand stories and suppositions builds to critical mass over time, becoming concrete ideas that take on their own lives. Spread among that are nuggets of truth, which, as I mentioned, are at best slippery signposts.
Imagine my disappointment, lo those many decades ago, when I discovered all this, and the wobbly nature of history, in Histography 101. Sad, really.
That having been said, I like Steiger, and I like to hear him ramble on.