A.D. After Disclosure

A Theory About John B. Alexander

What is the deal with John B. Alexander?

He's been catapulted to the forefront of the UFO community with the publication of his book, UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities. In this book and his four-hour appearance on Coast-to-Coast AM with George Knapp and his Wednesday speech before the International UFO Congress (IUFOC) in Phoenix, Alexander makes what can be described as a "nuanced" argument about UFOs.

His argument as best as I can summarize it is that UFOs are real in that he agrees they are probably not something from our conventional technology and experience. Yet, he argues, there really is no cover-up in that the U.S. government is not hiding any big secret, doesn't investigate them, has no "control group."

I'm having a hard time with that one. If they weren't real, then I could understand maintaining a hands-off approach. But if they are real, then it would seem completely and totally irresponsible to not take an interest in them, particularly since they have a prima facie impact on national security.

So what's going on?

First off, listening to Alexander, he seems knowledgeable and sincere. But as a network correspondent and then investigative journalist prior to my screenwriting career, I have been told lies straight to my face by people who seem knowledgeable and sincere.

I think, for the time being, John Alexander goes in my "gray basket" (to borrow the term from Stanton Friedman) that includes Colonel Philip Corso, Dan Burisch and Bob Lazar.

Skeptical as I am of Alexander for the moment, I've been equally skeptical of others who twist and turn everything to fit their own biases and interpretations -- something that is rampant in ufology over time. I want to keep faith with the journalistic principles I learned back in college and on-the-job over the years -- but we all know journalists don't believe in UFOs so I've had to grow beyond some of that conditioning, too. These days I'm a screenwriter and dramatist and part of that job is to think about the the sub-text of things, the story-behind-the-story. This is where that kind of thinking now leads me:

John Alexander has had a relatively distinguished career in the military. He knows people and he knows people who know people. He did, as he describes in this book and his interviews, go on a hunt of official government circles looking for the "control group." He's talked to (or at least says he has) many people with big jobs and big names.

He tries to say that there has already been Disclosure because Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter admitted seeing UFOs. In this worldview, Project Blue Book was not a conspiratorial diversion, albeit understaffed and underfunded, but just a public relations ploy, period. According to Alexander, it's all been on the up-and-up since then as well, it's just that nobody in government really wants to get their hands dirty on this subject. I'm sorry, but that one, arguing that we have had Disclosure, I'm just not buying. As Rich Dolan and I define it in our book, Disclosure is the process begun with the official acknowledgement of humankind's contact with intelligent beings from some place that isn't here. No such thing has happened. Besides, if they're real, and you work in national security, you investigate, period.

As I see it, there are three options.

{reviews} Bruce Maccabee on John Alexander - Disclose What?

Whether or not you are “into” UFOs, this book could rock your world!

Dr. Alexander’s blockbuster book -- UFOs: Myths, Conspiracies, and Realities -- is based on his many years of searching the top levels of government and military to find “the” group in charge of UFO information.  The negative result of his search shakes the foundations of the widely held belief that there has been a government conspiracy to cover up important UFO information related to UFO crashes and interactions with aliens.  This book could also rock your world if you are a nonbeliever because Dr. Alexander has cited some strong evidence that “UFOs are real.”  He also provides reality checks on some commonly held beliefs related to UFOs,  reverse engineering of alien technology, human-alien interactions, what has been done by the governments of other countries, animal mutilations, agriglyphs (“crop circles”) and military abductions. Anyone seriously interested in studying the UFO phenomenon should read this book.

I recall the first time we met.  It was way back in August, 1986, at the Naval Surface Weapons Center, a large Navy research facility at White Oak, Maryland (closed in 1996) where I worked on Navy physics research.  He had called me at work several days earlier and said he wanted to talk about UFOs.  He briefly described himself and what he wanted to talk about but, other than that, I knew nothing about him except that he was an Army Colonel who had a Top Secret Clearance with “tickets.”  I thought it strange, but only a little strange, that an army colonel would want to talk about UFOs because I had discovered during my previous years with the Navy that, in virtually every military organization or defense laboratory I had visited, there was one or more people interested in the subject.  

I was not surprised that he wanted to talk to me in particular because I was working for the Navy and my UFO research into important sightings (unrelated to my Navy research work)  was well known in the UFO community (e.g. McMinnville, Oregon, 1950 photos, Gemini 11 astronaut photos, New Zealand sightings of December, 1978).  Also, it had long been known that there had been, over the years, sightings by Navy personnel, including the March, 1952 sighting by the pilot and co-pilot of Navy Secretary Dan Kimball’s aircraft while they were flying over the Pacific.  Kimball ordered a Navy study to begin after he got the “run around” from the Air Force.  (Exactly how long this study lasted is not known.).  Because of all of this Dr. Alexander probably wondered if I knew of a secret Navy group keeping track UFO phenomenology.

Bruce Maccabee holds a PhD in Physics from the American University. He has been active in UFO research since late 1960s when he joined the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and was active in research and investigation for NICAP until its demise in 1980. He became a member of MUFON in 1975 and was subequently appointed to the position of state Director for Maryland, a position he still holds. In 1979, he was instrumental in establishing the Fund for UFO Research and presently serves on the National Board of the Fund. 

I met him at the security office and, since this was an unclassified discussion, I escorted him directly to the dining hall and we got our food and sat down to eat and chat.  He began by saying that he had spent several years trying to discover what government organization, either civilian or military, was in charge of, or controlled, UFO-related information and research.  As I expected, he wanted to know if I had any evidence that the Navy studied UFOs.

At this point I probably looked at him with a blank stare because I knew that many people previously had tried to find out what the government was doing and had come up empty handed.  The Air Force had been the publicly known lead agency for government UFO research for many years (Project Blue Book) but had abandoned all such research (they said!) in 1969.  Since then numerous government or military organizations had been suspected of secretly controlling access to UFO-related information and continuing UFO research, including the Central Intelligence Agency, the Defense Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency, Air Force Intelligence, etc., but no one had been able to specifically identify which organization, government or civilian, had the responsibility for continuing secret UFO research (and the associated cover up of UFO data and any hardware, as from the supposed Roswell crash). 

Lessons From Egypt: The Inevitability of Sudden Change

The world has turned upside down. What seemed unthinkable a mere month ago has now become a major political force throughout the world. 

Hosni Mubarak, the autocratic head of Egypt, a man who had ruled his country for thirty years under a “State of Emergency,” who had suspended the Egyptian constitution, who had suspended the most basic human rights, who ran an irredeemably corrupt regime, who enriched himself and his family to the tune of more than $70 billion from the backs of the Egyptian people, has fled the country. 

It took just two weeks of massive public demonstrations to get rid of him. 

The events in Egypt – and before them, Tunisia – are electrifying for many reasons. In the first place, there hasn’t been a real popular uprising in the Arab world against their perennially autocratic rulers in most people’s living memory. There have been Islamicist movements, yes, and there have been many government-sponsored public demonstrations regarding the plight of the Palestinian people. Yet, for year after year, generation upon generation, Arab people continued to suffer at the hands of their own governments. 

A populist venting of the people hasn’t occurred since Gamal Abdel Nasser’s pan-Arabism of the 1950s and 1960s. And even those protests pale in force and depth of feeling to those of today. 

For what we are seeing now is something Nasser never encouraged: a true democratic spirit, a true voice of the people. Not an anti-foreign, anti-imperialist populism, but a genuine populism that has identified the corruption and evil of one’s own government, and which seeks to remove the tumor. 

Across the Arab world, people are euphoric. Everything is up for grabs. Right now, demonstrations are occurring in Algeria, Yemen, and Jordan. Look for them to expand in Palestine and Syria. 

UFOs Over Kansas

Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel will both be speaking this week, March 18-20, 2011 at the OZUFO Summit being held in Lawrence, Kansas at the city's famous Liberty Hall.

Organizers Daniel Lauing and John Leathem have booked a very credible line-up of speakers and presentations that, besides Rich and Bryce, includes Stanton Friedman, Donald Schmitt, Stephen Bassett, Frank Feschino Jr., Peter Robbins, Butch Witkowski, Charles Halt, Robert Salas, Kim Carlsberg, Sam Maranto and Jesse Marcel Jr. Below is one of the ads running in the Topeka Capitol-Journal. 

If you live in the part of the country that makes this accessible to you, we think the organizers are offering good value and cutting-edge presentations. It's the first time, for example, that both Rich and Bryce are appearing together to talk about the world After Disclosure. Just click on the image above to go to the website for the conference.

In the three days and two nights, three key themes will be explored:

• an update on the Roswell investigation from researchers Stanton Friedman and Donald Schmitt, whose books and life rights have been optioned as part of a new film in development, Majic Men, being written and produced by Stellar Productions.

• the growing body of evidence linking UFO interference and observation to nuclear missile sites around the world, with testimony from Charles Halt (Bentwaters) and Robert Salas (Malmstrom AFB), two men who were at the September news conference held at the National Press Club.

• the emerging debate about Disclosure, exopolitics and life after contact, with presentations from Richard Dolan, Stephen Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group, and Bryce Zabel.

There are others topics being explored, of course, plenty to get anybody -- experienced or not in this topic -- to truly think about how our world is about to change.

{voices} Stanton Friedman | Global Competitiveness Forum

Stanton Friedman spoke at the Global Competitiveness Forum held between January 23-25,2011, in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. The following is his informal, first-person account. 

Although I have given over 700 lectures in all 50 states, nine Canadian Provinces and 16 other countries, (Saudi Arabia was number 17), this was one that ranks very high. I have had much larger audiences (about 2000 several times versus under 1000 in Riyadh, though from about 30 countries), but hardly any so well arranged and with such an incredible group of attendees. There were a huge number of top executives from companies such as IBM, Volkswagen, Google, etc. -- kind of a top line of movers and shakers. There were a number of well known politicians including Tony Blair, former prime minister of the UK, Jean Chretien, former prime minister of Canada, and Bill Clinton, former president of the United States. Clinton gave an outstanding presentation including some recent scientific developments such as the earthlike planet discovered recently around a not too distant star.

The most common questions I had received are why would  SAGIA, the Saudi Arabian General Investment Agency,  have a panel session entitled “Contact: Learning from Outer Space," and why would the Kingdom, which is so loaded with oil, worry about  Global Competitiveness anyway? Almost nobody including me had heard of the GCF before, though this was the fifth one held in Riyadh. Incidentally, the initial panel title was a more blatant, “Innovation and UFOs.”

Stanton Friedman is a nuclear physicist who started writing about UFOs in the 1960s and has stubbornly refused to quit, making him the veteran researcher actively working in the field of Unidentified Flying Objects today. Inducted into the Roswell Hall of Fame in 2010, Stan is the original civilian investigator of the Roswell incident. His dogged investigation has, for many, legitimized a collection of Top Secret documents that had been leaked about the shadowy Majestic-12 group formed by Harry Truman. He has written five books in the ufology topic.

Once I had established that there really was a legitimate SAGIA, I responded enthusiastically to my invitation. It didn’t hurt that non-panelists or speakers were being charged at least $4000 to attend, and that the long flights would be business class, and the hotel was a 4 star.

In my time, I stressed that my mantra had for many years been that technological progress comes from doing things differently and that the future was not an extrapolation of the past. Surely examining the technology of visiting alien spacecraft ought to provide some new ideas about propulsion, aerodynamics,perhaps mental telepathy, etc.