A.D. After Disclosure

Dark Skies | Accept No Imitations

Friends and supporters have been contacting us, many with congratulations on how our “Dark Skies” has been made into a new film, starring Keri Russell, to be released by Dimension Films next February. While it sounds like a dream, we tell them, it’s actually a nightmare.

To set the record straight, we’re Bryce Zabel and Brent Friedman, the two writer/producers who created the NBC series called “Dark Skies.” It was produced by Columbia TV (now Sony) and aired in 1996 and 1997. We wrote the pilot, multiple episodes and produced all twenty hours that were aired in primetime on Saturday nights.

Our original “Dark Skies” introduced viewers to an alien invasion that featured a continuing focus on the mysterious and terrifying abduction phenomenon. So our well-intentioned friends can be forgiven if they hear about the Dimension Films version that focuses on an alien abduction and assume we had something to do with it. While that is decidedly not the case, our definitive version may have inspired it.

Our “Dark Skies” had been in the news even before Dimension decided to use our title for their film. Our series was given a world-wide release on DVD in 2011 from both Shout Factory (US) and Medium Rare Entertainment (UK). In dozens of reviews, the work received critical praise as a classic that has stood the test of time in the sci-fi and UFO media. It also spawned new interest in the reboot of our series, something that we were talking to Sony TV about when the news from Dimension Films broke.

Our "Dark Skies" has established itself in the minds of a significant number of science fiction fans as a gripping piece of conspiracy drama set in the world of UFOs and abductions. It anchored NBC's Saturday night "Thrillogy" concept in the 1996 season premiere and starred Eric Close ("Nashville") and the late film character actor J.T. Walsh (“Sling Blade”). Its main title design won the Emmy award and its pilot screenplay received a Writers Guild nomination. The Syfy Channel aired the entire series multiple times. Since 2010 there's been a Facebook page where thousands of fans from many different countries push Sony for a TV revival. 

And yet here we are. A film in the same genre as our work is being promoted right now using the same exact title as our work. Most Hollywood businesses legitimately consider creative and artistic interests and rights in these cases. This one seems to have slipped through the cracks of acceptability.

Supporters of the creative rights of writers should ask Dimension Films to let their film stand on its own merits and call it by a different title. "Dark Skies" is taken. 

Join the Dark Skies Resistance @ Facebook
https://www.facebook.com/darkskiesufo

See the Dark Skies Playlist @ YouTube
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL5A1058EDE798E4B1

Read more about Dark Skies @ AfterDisclosure.com
http://www.afterdisclosure.com/dark-skies/

Get the original, classic and definitive Dark Skies series @ Amazon.com
http://www.amazon.com/Dark-Skies-Declassified-Complete-Series/dp/B00465I156

WGA (Writers Guild of America) Credit, 1996
“Dark Skies” | Created by Bryce Zabel & Brent V. Friedman

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0115151/

How Can All This Be Reconciled?

At least some UFOs are actual physical craft of advanced technology from some place that isn't here. This much we know.

Still, most of us want the acknowledgement of UFO/ET reality by someone in a position of public trust. That statement will prove to your friends and your family that you're not crazy. A little vindication would certainly make my own life easier, that's for sure.

But that's not the main reason we want Disclosure. We want it because we want all the facts on the table, not just the ones we're allowed to see outside the umbrella of national security. Such an act of coming clean will move the world out of the old denial phase and into the new acceptance phase, and transform everything. We realize that if the status quo is maintained, the way things are currently set up, many of us are apt to go to our graves knowing that this phenomenon is real but not knowing what UFOs truly represent and why they are actually here. The universe, apparently, holds many, many secrets and at least some of them are being kept from us, illegally and immorally.

While the source is debated, either astronomer Sir Arthur Eddington or biologist J.B.S. Haldane or theoretical physicist Werner Heisenberg said words to this effect:  “Not only is the universe stranger than we imagine, it is stranger than we can imagine.”

Given the difficulty in determining the exact source of a famous quotation, it is probably a fool’s errand to attempt to explain what is really going on with humanity in terms of our place in the universe and contact with non-human life -- particularly if what little is known is being withheld from you. Still, that's the situation we're in now. We're being forced to guess at the secrets of the universe. For many of us, this pursuit goes from being endlessly fascinating to simply frustrating over the course of years of interest.

We want to know what the people who are "in the know" actually know on this topic. At the very least, we want to know what we know and what we don't know so we can at least try to imagine how strange the universe is for ourselves. This knowledge of where we stand is a basic human right that we are being denied.

THE JFK-UFO CONNECTION: From Extreme Fiction to Legitimate Question

Was President Kennedy's interest in the facts about UFOs a major or even a contributing factor in his own murder?

There are actual documents coming to light in the past week that say it's a possibility. Watching this happen is almost an out-of-body experience for me.

Relating Kennedy's assassination to his desire to tell the world the truth about extraterrestrial visitation was, in fact, the central organizing premise of my UFO-themed TV series Dark Skies (co-created with Brent Friedman) that ran on NBC from 1996-1997. On one level, it's true that Brent and I conceived the idea of JFK's death being connected to UFO disclosure as a way of putting the two most compelling modern conspiracies -- the JFK public execution and the UFO cover-up -- into an atom collider, thus creating the Ultimate Conspiracy. But it was more than that. We both accepted the validity of the Roswell event as the crash of a piece of technology that came from some place that wasn't here on Earth. And, if you accept that premise, then the world as we knew it in the 1950s and 1960s (through today, of course) is simply not the same as it appears. For us, that included the Kennedy assassination. As the series log-line stated: "History is a lie."

Now, almost a decade and a half later, the breaking news seems to be that maybe we were a lot closer to the truth than we thought. The best summary of it to date comes from Lee Spiegel of AOL News in a new column. I'd urge you to read Lee's thoughtful examination over some of the other versions getting traction on the Internet, specifically the coverage from the Daily News.

I remember vividly thinking in 1995 that it was possibly one of the most subversive acts ever propagated on an American television network -- devoting 20 hours of programming, produced at a cost of over $40-million, to the theory that President Kennedy died over UFO disclosure. Even as the executives who sponsored us at Columbia TV then at NBC gave us the greenlight to series, none of them really believed the concept. For them, it was just "pushing the envelope" to get an audience.

Now, some researchers are taking this premise seriously. Certainly no one is embracing the every detail of what we did in Dark Skies. It was obviously fiction, designed to attract an audience. But people are talking about the Big Picture idea and saying that it might just have some merit to it.

Carl Sagan: They’re Everywhere But Here

Like a lot of ufologists, I have a problem with S.E.T.I., or the Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence. It's always seemed to me that if UFOs are real, then you don't need to listen for alien signals from space, you should start looking here on Earth. So the news that the Allen Telescope Array near Mount Shasta is being shut down over the budget crisis leaves me with mixed feelings. I'm in favor of science, but I'm not in favor of sham.

But it has me thinking about one of America's earliest and strongest advocates of S.E.T.I., Carl Sagan.

Sagan took America by storm during the 1970s and 1980s and became, practically speaking, America’s public Scientist-in-Chief. He first entered millions of living rooms as the affable scientist who appeared regularly on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. The Cornell University professor had a passion for astronomy and a gift of making complex ideas easy to understand.

Sagan’s celebrity increased with the release of the PBS Cosmos series in 1980, when he became famous for his phrase “billions and billions” (which he denied ever saying exactlly in those words) to describe galaxies, stars, and planets. He pioneered the science of exobiology and promoted SETI through the use of radio telescopes to listen for signals from space.

As an investigative reporter for PBS, specializing in space science, I met Carl Sagan several times in 1981. Cosmos was still airing on the network, and the unmanned Voyager spacecraft was approaching the planet Saturn.

Sagan gave a live, on-air interview as the pictures came in and were assembled by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. He was effusive about what a great moment it was for humanity. He talked passionately about how this first step beyond Earth would someday lead to manned adventures further and further into space. He was positive that the universe, because of the sheer numbers of habitable planets and what he saw as the “bias” toward life, would be teeming with intelligent beings.

50 Years Since the Betty & Barney Hill Abduction

The 1961 Betty & Barney Hill UFO abduction is being developed as a feature film by Stellar Productions.

The feature film, Shades of Gray, will tell their story based on new information from the book Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience by Stanton T. Friedman and Kathleen Marden.

All ufologists know, of course, that Betty and Barney are not just the Flintstones' next door neighbors, but the names that belong to the Hills, the married couple who became the ignition point of the modern alien abduction era.

50 years ago, on September 19, 1961, Betty and Barney Hill were driving home from Canada and about 100 miles northwest of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when they saw a UFO at close range and then suffered one of the first recorded "missing time" episodes. Later, under hypnosis, they gave strikingly similar and detailed accounts of their kidnapping.

It is a compelling and seminal narrative of the UFO abduction phenomenon. Over the years, it has spawned books, articles, a film and even, in my own instance, an appearance in the Dark Skies series.

I'm pleased to announce, in time for the 50th anniversary, that my production company, Stellar Productions, has optioned the film rights to Captured! The Betty and Barney Hill UFO Experience (New Page Books) by Stanton T. Friedman, MSc. and Kathleen Marden. Friedman, of course, is the leading scientific ufologist of our time and a former nuclear physicist, the man who broke the Roswell case. Marden is Betty Hill's niece and the trustee of her estate. I'm thrilled to be in business with them in bringing this profound and unsettling case to what we all hope will be its largest audience yet.

Their book, published in 2007, reveals a wealth of new information about the Hills’ lives, the UFO encounter and abduction, and the scientific evaluation of the evidence. It has given new life to the Hills’ extraordinary story, and has caused me to get involved.

I will be working on this with friend and producer Don Most, my collaborator on Majic Men, the film script that was just completed about the competition between Stan Friedman and Don Schmitt to prove the Roswell story beyond reasonable doubt during the late 80s and early-to-mid 90s. We'll have an update on that project soon.

This won't be the first time that Betty and Barney's story has been filmed or a book written about them, but it will be the most definitive book/film combo that has come to the screen. A 1966 book, The Interrupted Journey, written by John Fuller, topped the New York Times best-seller list and went on to be the basis of a primetime NBC movie of the week, The UFO Incident, in October 1975.

Read The Huffington Post Coverage >>>

Captured! -- the book I have under option that will form the basis of the film Shades of Gray -- includes previously unpublished information about the lives of the Hills before and after Barney's death in 1969, their status as celebrities, Betty's experiences as a UFO investigator, and other activities before her death in 2004. Kathleen Marden writes in depth about new details from her discussions with her aunt Betty about the event and her riveting hypnosis sessions about their time onboard the spacecraft. Stanton Friedman, the original investigator of the Roswell incident, reviews and refutes the arguments of those who have attacked the Hill case, as well as the star map that Betty Hill saw inside the craft and later recreated. 

That map, by the way, provides a whole new window on where humanity fits in the larger scheme of things by showing two sun-like stars that are 30 times closer to each other than our sun is to the next star over and a cool billion years older than our own sun and less than 40 light years away from us.

The Non-Response Response from The White House

I would love to have been a fly on the wall when personnel of the Office of Science and Technology Policy of the Executive Office of the President at the New Executive Office Building in Washington , D.C., discussed how to respond to a petition about disclosing data on UFOs. I suspect that nobody brought up the enormous amount of information available indicating that not only are aliens visiting, but the US and other government have been withholding information for many decades. The response certainly indicates intentional lying and misrepresentation or total ignorance.

The petition, prepared and submitted by Steve Bassett’s Paradigm Research Group, went like this:

“We, the undersigned strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon."

I, for one, was not one of more than 5000 persons signing the petition. My reason was straight forward. Having worked under security for 14 years and having researched the flying saucer phenomenon (certainly most UFOs are NOT alien flying saucers) for 53 years , I believe there is a very strong national security side to the question. I cannot see releasing technical data that could be of use to other countries also researching the phenomena and wanting to duplicate the extraordinary flying capabilities of the flying saucers… for military purposes

The response was issued by research assistant Phil Larson. He stated “The US government has no evidence that:

• [1] any life exists outside our planet or
• [2] that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition
• [3] there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.” No indication is provided as to just what sources, if any, were evaluated. Furthermore, a real red herring was provided “There are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth”.. He then discusses SETI, The Kepler Spacecraft, the Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, soon to be launched to Mars. None of these have anything to do with the extraterrestrial presence here, the petition’s topic!! Why mention them?

Larson generously concedes that "the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life”. Odds cannot be determined when there is no data. He also foolishly states that ”the odds of making contact with any of them.. especially any intelligent ones- are extremely small given the distances involved”. To which distances is he referring, billions of light years to very distant galaxies?? Or 39.3 light years to Zeta Reticuli? Where is any data to support these totally baseless claims? Does he have travel schedules for civilizations outside Earth? Surely the astronomical community knows nothing about interstellar travel. More about evidence below, but let us first look at [3].

False Assertions from The White House about ET

Sixty-four years after flying disks became a worldwide phenomenon, a formal position on this phenomenon has been issued in print by the executive branch of the United States government for the first time.   On Friday, November 4 the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) responded to two petitions submitted to the We the People section of the White House website.  One of these, the Disclosure Petition, was submitted by Paradigm Research Group.   The White House response gave the administration's assessment of the assertion by a growing number of researchers and activists that flying disks and other related phenomena confirm an extraterrestrial, non-human intelligence engaging the human race. 

See:  https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions#!/response/searching-et-no-evidence-yet and www.disclosurepetition.info.

OSTP researcher Phil Larson wrote, "The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth."  Unfortunately for the OSTP and the Obama administration, that assertion is false.  Furthermore, given that approximately 50% of the American people are now convinced of an extraterrestrial presence and more than 80% believe the government is not telling the truth about the phenomenon, it is an embarrassment.

There are only four possible explanations for this statement from the OSTP:

Exopolitics: Report from Leeds 2011

Any naiveté, ignorance, or ambition in this article is entirely the fault and responsibility of the Cover-Up. The void that has been left by 60+ years of denial, ridicule, disinformation and containment, is being coloured in from the groundswell up, and I outright deny any and all culpability for the artistic licence I may take in my thought-processes.

‘Who appointed you God?’ asked John Loengard of the head of Majestic 12. ‘Ike. [Eisenhower]’ came the reply, in the Dark Skies pilot. All too likely. Perhaps. At least, it seems only too logical, despite no one telling Col. John B. Alexander about it.

Right now, the UFO community at large is having somewhat of a crisis of confidence, and at the Exopolitics Leeds Conference which I attended at the beginning of August, I think I bore witness to that. The organisers, including Anthony Beckett, received standing ovations at the end of the weekend for their efforts, and they well deserved them, certainly, three years into this convention, if but for nothing else than getting so many divergent authors and activists together under one roof. And this is where contention, division, and even outright hostility enters in. Fear and Loathing on the Disclosure campaign trail. Though don’t get me wrong, there was much that was good, but - to butcher Dante - I must also tell of the bad.

At Leeds this August, I was speaking to Natasha Acimovic, who along with David Griffin head up Exopolitics UK, and I would say are fairly close to the cutting edge of ufology. A sort of modern day Jim and Coral Lorenzen. We talked about how exopolitics gives the opportunity for diversity of opinion, of research, of figures on the scene, now and in the future. Cataloguing lights in the sky, while important, was the old days, now we are engaged across the spectrum, from the political to the personal. Certainly, the field of ufology has always been shifting. I mean, if WW2 veteran Donald Keyhoe, who founded NICAP were around today he’d probably slit his wrists or have a heart-attack. But we live in a very different world than the 1960’s. Wildly different, and getting more radical, more novel with every passing day.

Jack Witek, is a sometimes actor, full time dilettante in ufology, and generally reasonable chap. He Needs to Know, and feels you do to. He lives by the sea in Plymouth, England, with his insufferable alien-hybrid cat, Adramelech, or Adra for short. You can catch him in one of the city’s many fine drinking establishments sipping German beer with his head buried in the latest UFO book, trying to look inconspicuous yet mysterious. 

The ancient Chinese, in their wisdom, cursed us in triplicate

1. May you live in interesting times. 
2. May you come to the attention of those in authority (sometimes rendered May the government be aware of you).
3. May you find what you are looking for.

Exopolitcs is logical result on the first, which leads inexorably to the second, which brings with it the danger of the third. Despite the media (in deference to Nick Pope, yes, that is a generalisation) brushing it aside, putting it down, hushing it up, hurrying it along and laughing it into the Middle Ages and its parade of bumpkin superstitions and prejudices, there is a core of sightings, of encounters, of government projects, of a 60 year paper trail, leading us ever further to the startling conclusion that we are not at the top of the food chain.

As for the second, I think Richard Dolan, and others, have amply demonstrated, this lead to a select few at the top the human pyramid to take it upon themselves to be custodians of this reality. This has led to a collective blind spot that cannot engage with this paradigm, and so here we are trying to rehabilitate the situation. God help us.

Now, thirdly. While I understand it isn’t necessarily sexy and might not make you friends to agree with Mr Pope on certain issues, I think he makes a very valid point, as he did to Sun newspaper reporters covering the conference this year, about marrying ourselves to certain political causes, like 9/11, however worthy those causes may or not be. We have to pick our battles, and we run the risk of over-reach, and of the hubris of thinking we have the answers to this mystery when in fact we do not. Not to a satisfactory degree, anyway. We have leads, we have data, we have models, we have evidence. We can prove - not as much as some of us would like.

However, on a side note, after reading Witness to Roswell by Schmitt and Carey, the former of which Bryce Zabel is writing a film script about called Majic Men, well, if the evidence and witnesses amassed in that volume were to be presented in a fair court of law, I think they’d have a hard time denying that something very important happened that night in 1947.

But that was the past! This is the present! Focus on the real life and death issues today! Ok, I’ll do my best. To reference Sherlock Holmes, nonetheless, there is the Scarlet Thread that runs through all of this, the reality of the UAPs/UFOs in and of themselves, and the behind-closed-doors reality of political and military interest, conspiracy or not.

Breaking News From Roswell? Or Journalistic Malpractice?

The long rumored crash of a craft of unknown origin outside of Roswell, New Mexico in July of 1947 has just been solved. The US government was wrong. The US Army Air Corps was wrong. The US Air Force was wrong. And more amazing, over 500 witnesses directly or indirectly involved were wrong! The latest "theory of the month" has been proposed by author, Annie Jacobsen in her just released book about Area 51 and a single addendum about Roswell which for some reason is getting all forms of media attention. I will limit my response to address strictly the Roswell Incident of 1947.

Simply put, this represents another classic example of lazy journalism at its worst and investigative malpractice at its finest. I recall when the Air Force was planning on the Pentagon release of their "fifth" official explanation for the Roswell case. It was reported to us that the new "theory" was what actually crashed was a Russian flying wing with a... get this... crew of monkeys in silver jump suits. The story would continue that the fiery crash would burn off all their hair and leave all the witnesses bewildered as to what they truly were. We immediately sent off a FAX to Washington just asking one question: "Which monkey was flying?" End of story. And the same applies here.

The mere suggestion that the Soviets captured a Horton Brothers "flying wing" at the fall of Berlin in 1945 (mind you, none were operational at that time and they were mainly constructed of wood), manned it with 13 year-old mutants created by German scientist Joseph Mengele as to appear "alien", flew all the way from Russia, intended to crash in New Mexico, the heart of the most militarily sensitive territory in the world, to "scare us." To say totally absurd would be an under statement.

Donald Schmitt is the co-author of the best-selling book,Witness to Roswell, and is the leading specialist who continues to investigate the Roswell Incident. He is the former co-director of the J. Allen Hynek Center for UFO Studies, where he served as Director of Special Investigations for ten years. Prior to that, he was a special investigator for the late Dr. J. Allen Hynek. The Showtime movie Roswell was based on first book, UFO Crash at Roswell. His latest book and life rights have been optioned, along with those of Stanton Friedman, as the basis for the feature film project, Majic Men.

The German brothers, Walter and Reimar Horton experimented with flying wings in much the same way that Jack Northrop did in California during the 1930s. Historically, all of the NAZI prototypes were destroyed by American forces at the fall of Berlin - so they would not fall into the hands of the Soviets. The only Horton H.IX to survive is now kept at the Smithsonian in Washington.

Writer Jacobsen claims that the Soviets created mutants to resemble the Martians described by H.G. Welles in War of the Worlds. Jacobsen should know that Welles modeled them from earthly octopus. That, and the fact that the Russians never did capture Mengele paints an illustration of pure fiction.

It never seems to matter what the new alternative explanation is. These theorists never address the unusual, exotic characteristics of the wreckage. The weightless, nearly indestructible material. The material that possessed perfect memory. The fiber optics. Except for the later, no one on earth has such material even today. And there must have been divine intervention to save us if either the Germans or Russians had it back in the forties.

The author states that Area 51 was named due to her one lone anonymous source's claim that the crashed craft and children were moved there from Wright Patterson in 1951. In reality, Nevada is divided into sections and the facility just happens to be in Section 51.

We have presented and named in our bestselling book Witness to Roswell, and previous books since 1991, hundreds of eyewitnesses who were actually there. Witnesses who right up to their deathbeds swore that what had crashed, what they held in their hands, and the bodies they loaded into ambulance trucks, were not from this world. These are all ignored by the US national media because it can't be therefore it isn't. Anything but UFOs is alright with these so-called guardians and keepers of the truth. Except, when it applies to Roswell -- the truth be damned no matter how ridiculous the alternative "theory." We chose to present the facts as presented to us by the truth bearers - the participants.

In recent weeks, we have all heard dozens of versions of what took place during the raid which killed Osama bin Laden. Have any of us noticed that none of these accounts come from the actual participants? For the same reason over the past twenty years, we have focused on the people who were there... not the so-called "truth" that some journalist or government official wants us to believe. Eyewitnesses send people to prison and serve as the staple for our judicial system for a reason. I can solve every crime ever committed by just siting at my computer and throwing out "theories." It's up to us as objective, free thinking, rational individuals to examine the evidence and decide which carries the greatest weight. Over 500 witnesses can't all be wrong and would certainly win hands-down in any courtroom throughout America.

And so I have just one question for Ms. Jacobsen regarding her new "magic bullet" solution to Roswell. After we obviously have wasted all of our time and effort all these years:  Which of the 13 year-olds was flying?

I just thought I would ask.

The Joke's Still on Them...

Well, so much for Obama as the "Disclosure President." Don't hold your breath.

Last night at the White House Correspondent's Dinner, the President of the United States was having a lot of fun at Donald Trump's well-deserved expense. Yet when he cast the "birther" controversy as a nutty conspiracy theory, he also placed it in the company of whether we faked the moon landing, where are Biggie and Tupac, and what really happened at Roswell. Each played as big laugh lines.

These people ought to know better, of course, but they don't. 

You can watch for yourself in this video, it's about ten minutes in:

So, there you have it. Another example that our nation's politicians do not understand the essential reality of the UFO/ET situation and neither do the reporters who hold those elite positions. To them, it's truly just a laughing matter.

“Now, I know that he’s taken some flak lately but no one is prouder to put this birth certificate matter to rest than The Donald. And that’s because he can finally get back to focusing on the issues that matter, like, did we fake the moon landing? What really happened in Roswell? And where are Biggie and Tupac?"
~ President Barack Obama, White House Correspondent's Dinner, April 2011 

 This would be funny in itself except that, as we know, it's not a laughing matter. Sigh...