"A.D. - After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact" by Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel. What happens after they finally tell us the truth about UFOs?
Ask people what they think about UFOs, and you’re sure to get opinions ranging through all extremes and nuances. Some are so embarrassed by the topic that they simply refuse to consider any evidence whatsoever, like the Pope refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope. Others claim not only to be certain that aliens are here, but to have exact, insider knowledge of what it’s all about. Between these extremes are endless variations.
It’s the same with how we approach the subject. Some people read UFO books for fun, like a mystery novel or scary story. Others are more interested in scientific evidence, such as analysis of photographs, videos, or material samples. Still others prefer more hypothetical roads, like theories about the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe, or how an advanced propulsion system might work. There are a host of specialized studies, too, ranging from abductions, to crop circles, to animal mutilations, and more. Or, you may focus on the believers and witnesses themselves by studying UFOs as an element of popular culture, or from a psycho-social perspective.
Another approach is historical. There are, after all, government UFO documents that anyone can read. What do they say? Can these documents tell us whether the government or military have ever been interested in this phenomenon? If so, why?
Granted, this approach might not be of the same value as subjecting a piece of flying saucer to laboratory tests. But it would certainly be important if the government had documents showing that UFOs are truly something extraordinary, and even possibly alien. Especially after telling the public the opposite for years. Since belief in UFOs is a near-professional suicide in most respected circles, what would it mean if we discovered that, within the classified world, people have taken it seriously for years?
It just so happens that they have. They do.
For many years, it was hard to obtain declassified government documents about UFOs. During the 1950s and 1960s, a few documents wended their way to the rest of the world, but this was rare. Then, in 1974, the U.S. government amended the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The result was a veritable golden age of document releases that lasted roughly until a 1982 Executive Order from President Reagan. While UFO documents continue to be released, a repeat of the Great Flood of the seventies appears unlikely.
Larry Lowe is a veteran UFO investigator, respected journalist, TV host and radio guest who is dedicated to truthful UFO disclosure. His work is featured at Examiner.com and is re-printed here with permission.
A 60 year old routine FBI memo that has been available to the public for over three decades -- which some say is at the end of a chain of custody of the truth that began with a lecture by a con-man who would later be convicted of fraud -- is suddenly the latest news in UFO "disclosure."
A week after the FBI website released a revamped document access system a wave of Facebook postings has propogated an inaccurate concept: That the FBI has released proof of an alien spacecraft crash near Roswell, New Mexico in 1947 -- and that this constitutes disclosure of UFO reality.
On April 1, 2011, the Federal Bureau of Investigation released a news story at the www.fbi.gov website announcing "a revamping of our electronic reading room—renamed 'The Vault' — which contains more than two thousand documents that have been scanned from paper into digital copies so you can read them in the comfort of your own home or office."
The Vault, hosted at vault.fbi.com, included a category for 'unexplained phenomenon' a single page with a handful of entries, one of which has triggered in the last two days a tsunami of misinformation and excitement among UFO reality advocates who don't have a firm grasp of UFO event history.
Whether or not the initial story release and the December 6, 2010 planting of the Guy Hottel memo was a subtle form of April Fool's joke on the part of the IT department at the FBI, the result was textbook example of why good information is so hard to come by in the field of UFO studies--it is too easy for bad information to circulate uncontrolled.
The menu for the Unexplained Phenomenon (oddly presented in the singular) page reads as follows:
Forty years ago, in his game changing book Future Shock, Alvin Toffler said that we were entering a super-industrial society where people didn't just have a single career but they had "serial careers." I certainly have.
I started out as a journalist and morphed into a dramatic screenwriter. This means that sometimes I've been paid to get the facts and sometimes I've been paid to make things up. When you throw UFOs into the mix, it can get a little complicated, particularly if you cross between the worlds.
This site, as you know, is dedicated to the non-fiction book I've co-written with Richard M. Dolan -- A.D. After Disclosure. In its 321 pages, we try very hard to adhere to historical research and journalistic standards. There is nothing I would ever want to do that would undermine its truth and credibility.
At the same time the book has hit the market, however, by a sheer coincidence of the calendar, there is viral campaign being waged on behalf of the DVD release of the fictional NBC sci-fi TV series I co-created with Brent V. Friedman -- Dark Skies -- that raises its own issues about the line between fact and fiction.
Worlds Collide
I'm a trained journalist with a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism from the University of Oregon. I came to Los Angeles as a CNN correspondent, worked as an investigative reporter for PBS, and a magazine producer for ABC. I'm also a dramatist who has worked on a dozen hour-long TV series and created five of them, and had some films produced. A thread from my journalistic days to my entertainment days has been space science and UFOs -- from interviewing Carl Sagan live for KCET during the Voyager fly-by of Saturn to working with Steven Spielberg during the development of his abduction minseries Taken.
Often these two distinct backgrounds of journalism and drama support and deepen the other, one hand washing the other. For example, journalism experience increases your ability to research, channel authentic dialogue, hit deadlines and write succinctly. Dramatic writing improves journalistic efforts by its emphasis on understanding emotion and character.
Dark Skies: Mirrors Within Mirrors
In the 90s, I was the co-creator/executive producer for 20 hours of Dark Skies episodes and, considering the series arc dealt with JFK being assassinated because he was going to disclose the truth about UFOs, it was pretty edgy drama. The series incorporated other real characters from Howard Hughes to John Lennon, and UFO storylines from Roswell to Socorro to Betty and Barney Hill. The idea was to co-mingle real people and historical events into a fictional arc that was based to some degree on non-fiction UFO reality.
For the network pitches, Brent Friedman and I produced a mock "briefing book" as well as a letter from a man named John Loengard, who claimed to be a Majestic agent in the 1960s and who asked us to present the truth as a fictional TV series in order to protect the lives of the innocent. It was a good pitch. We got two networks to offer to buy the series on the first day.
Flash forward to 2010. Shout Factory is promoting the January 18, 2011 release of their outstanding DVD set that I've helped them prepare as a consultant. In our discussions, we obviously talked about the source material. Truth being presented as fiction. Fiction entertwined with truth. Real people mixed with the fictional (supposedly) characters of the series. The Loengard Letter. The actual nature of the world of disinformation. The background on Majestic-12, an organization we treat as real in the series, but which UFOlogists are bitterly divided about. That kind of briefing.
It is hardly surprising that this creative mix would yield a promotional effort that went beyond your basic buy a few ads and send out a press release tradition. It did.
First, there was this intercepted memo. It was discussed on the website TV Shows on DVD. Based on what the redacted memo says, it was no accident that it took 13 years to bring the series out on DVD, and the powers-that-be (as opposed to the fans) were none too happy that it was finally happening.
Then, last month, this apparently wiretapped phone conversation appeared on YouTube. I won't attempt to describe it. You should listen for yourself.
My fellow series creator, Brent Friedman, and I think that the above audio accurately reflects the same issues that we built the series on -- paranoia, invasion of privacy, secret organizations, behind-the-scenes manipulation of events, disinformation, claims of inside access, etc. We've never claimed that it's all true. It's just a TV series that mixes fact-and-fiction. That's the Dark Skies way of characterizing the long-standing UFO cover-up: levels within levels, mirrors within mirrors, fictitious facts and factual fictions.
But what we do think it provides for people like yourself who are reading this is a series that respects the overall truth that something real and extraordinary is happening in the world of contact, that it has been suppressed and that, as the series has always said, history is a lie.
Which brings me to...
A.D. After Disclosure: Our Version of Future Shock
The extenuating circumstance here is my new favorite passion, A.D. After Disclosure which my co-author Richard Dolan and I intended to be a book that came from the same DNA as Future Shock. Namely, we wanted it to take a hard look at where we were, where we've been, and then project -- carefully -- to where we are probably going.
We obviously think it is a clear piece of non-fiction about the stone-cold reality surrounding UFO/ET activity. We mean it to be taken very seriously. There are no games being played here. If you want to know what we really think, this book trailer, issued in support of the project, is direct and to-the-point.
My bottom line is that I hope lots of people, whether or not they saw the viral documents and video for Dark Skies, will still buy or rent the DVD set and enjoy the episodes in their pristine glory as well as the bonus features. I hope some of those same fans, because they see my work there, will also sample A.D. After Disclosure, and vice-versa. They are simply two very different projects that have allowed me to express my views on this complicated and difficult topic.
Still, at the end of the day, Dark Skies was a TV series, designed to entertain and hold an audience. A.D. After Disclosure is a serious book, an effort to bring truth and clarity to the upcoming debate about Disclosure. That's about as clear as I can state the facts.
Why is making this distinction so important?
I've just closed a development deal to write the screenplay for Majic Men, a project about the research that led to the truth about what happened at Roswell. It is based on two books, Witness to Roswell and Top Secret/Majic, as well as the life stories of Donald Schmitt and Stanton Friedman.
If my producing partner Don Most and I are successful at getting it made, Majic Men is going to be a film that is based on a true story. It may take some dramatic license here and there, compress some characters, and condense some time frames, but it is true, not made-up. I want everyone who reads the screenplay I'm writing and who will hopefully see it later when it is filmed to understand that I know the difference.
If you want to know a bit more about the book itself, here is the link to read the Introduction to A.D. After Disclosure. It is easily available through Amazon.com. Or you can order it through your local bookstore.
As always, we thank you for considering a purchase of the book through the button below at Keyhole Publishing. It will be shipped directly from the publisher signed by co-author Richard Dolan, and you will receive a free MP3 of "Need-to-Know: The UFO Disclosure Song," currently available on iTunes.
For some time now, a war has been intensifying. Not in Iraq, nor Afghanistan, nor the many other fields of death that darken our world, although all of them are affected by this particular war.
I am talking about an epic struggle -- a war fully and truly -- between the two fundamental forces of our modern age.
For we live in a world of extremes. As amazing as it seems to some, it has been only about twenty years in which the Internet has transformed our world and brought us to a level of interconnectivity that was once undreamed of. Twenty years, one human generation.
Only in the last ten years has the Web become what it is today. Only in the last decade have software and websites risen to the challenge of the possibilities offered by the Web, altering the way we obtain information, and even the way that we interact with each other. For starters, just think of the changes wrought by Youtube and Facebook, each of which is only about five years old.
For a little while, in the early days of the Internet, we used to talk of the "Information Highway." Then that became the "Information Superhighway." But even that phrase is so old, so outdated, because we are now in an era of such instant interconnectedness that our language has yet to catch up. Today, anything in the world can be right there in front of us, instantly and completely.
Or so it might seem. For at the same time, government secrets have multiplied. It may well be that more than half of all U.S. government records are classified. This is the estimate put forth in the fine book by Trevor Paglen, Blank Spots on the Map, and which finds support in many other independent studies on government secrecy worldwide.
If more than half of U.S. government documents are classified, you might say that more than half of U.S. political history is classified. And clearly, this is also true for many other nations in the world. Government secrecy has become deeply entrenched, despite all protestations to the contrary by the world’s political leaders.
It isn’t that some things shouldn't be kept secret. Few people would deny that there are legitimate reasons for military and government groups to keep some secrets. The question is, where to draw the line? In the U.S., the secrecy apparatus has been growing steadily since the 1940s. Nearly seventy years of deep secrecy, enormous black budgets, and near-total immunity from the law has only encouraged the classified world to grow. And grow. And grow.
So what happens when the powerful global trend of openness, as expressed via the Internet, collides with an equally powerful secrecy apparatus?
This is the war I am speaking of. It is the one between Freedom of Information versus Secrecy. We are seeing it now. Whether we know it or not, we are also participants. And this war includes the saga of WikiLeaks.
There is something even more interesting about this great clash, the Battle Royale of the 21st Century. It is beginning to involve the most verboten topic of all:
UFOs.
My personal feeling is that the end of UFO secrecy will unleash the greatest changes in human history. This, too, it turns out, may be part of the WikiLeaks story. Indeed, it is one that Bryce Zabel and I predicted might happen in our new book, A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact. But more on that in a moment.
This site --A.D. After Disclosure -- has been steadily growing in traffic and, from time-to-time, explosively so. With so many new readers, we decided to let our "early adopters" recommend some of their favorite material based on the number of page views our posts have received. This comes down to a Baker's Dozen for us -- 13 posts, some of heavier weight than others but all of them, by virtue of our readers so far, worth recommending to those who are joining the conversation in progress.
Please feel free to leave your comments here after a post, or to join our Facebook page and take part in the discussion there. Remember, Disclosure is the biggest change imaginable but that all change begins when people learn new things and decide to act on their new-found knowledge.
What If UFO Secrecy Ended Tomorrow?This is far and away are most widely read post -- it's the entire word-for-word "Introduction" to the upcoming A.D. After Disclosure book. It lays out the mission of the book in detail but, beyond that, it even breaks down what readers can expect in each of the ten individual chapters. If you're thinking about buying a copy, this is a good way to see what you're getting ahead of time.
If This Isn't a National Security Issue, Then What Is? Written by Richard Dolan to coincide with the news conference held in Washington, D.C. at the National Press Club on September 27, 2010. If you want the basic case for UFO interference with the world's nuclear missile sites, this is the primer you need to read.
Shame on Evan Davis and the BBC British news "presenter" Evan Davis managed recently to write a column that was so over-the-top in its arrogance and bias toward UFO research, that it merited special attention and analysis. In fact, we put more thought into our deconstruction of his flimsy reporting than he obviously did to his work in the first place.
60 Years On -- The McMinnville PhotosThe two photos taken by the Trents in 1950 have stood the test of time and hard-nosed scrutiny. We summarize the story behind the story of the photos but also use it to show a faux-Time magazine cover that the case would have merited if the national media gave UFO reporting anything approximating the coverage it deserves.
The 1947 Twining Memo Anniversary It was 63 years ago that a high ranking United States Air Force General, Nathan Twining, said -- in writing -- that UFOs were the real deal and that people who were seeing them were not crazy or liars but were reporting a real phenomenon. You can read about it, and the even read the memo itself here.
"The Event" Probably Isn't THE EventThere's been a lot of talk about NBC's new series, "The Event," and whether or not it has an extraterrestrial explanation. While the jury is still out on that, it does seem that even if there is a connection, it will not be dealing with Disclosure in the real, practical way that it will eventually happen, something that gets pointed out in this piece about what true Disclosure really means.
Art Imitating Life: JFK and Disclosure Colonel Phillip Corso is famous (or infamous) in UFOlogy for his book, The Day After Roswell, where he claimed to have helped implement key reverse engineering with the Roswell wreckage. Open Minds unearthed an interview from before Corso's death where he also said that President Kennedy and his brother Bobby Kennedy also knew, something that formed the backbone of the 1990s NBC drama series, Dark Skies.
Mad Men with Aliens Coming to DVDDark Skies, like Mad Men, was set mostly in the early 1960s, with all the same great costumes, cars and sets. Now, after 13 years of non-stop attempts to get the 20 hours of episodes released so they could be seen outside the hit-and-miss NBC program-and-pre-empt strategy, it has finally happened. This post contains the details on the January 18, 2011 release, timed to coincide with the 50th anniversary of President John Kennedy, the time period that begins the series pilot.
Small Steps and Giant Leaps Where were you on July 20, 1969? Everyone who was alive then has their own set of "Moonwalk Memories" that brings the time to vivid life. Here is one about fathers and sons, being fired for the first time, and the importance of history. We urge you to read it, and leave your own story in the comments section.
Our Majestic 12 (Documents) Here are a dozen documents that takes UFOs very seriously, several of which you may be unaware of, many of which were brought to light and clarified through the Freedom of Information Act. From the Twining Memo to the Teheran Encounter to the Rendlesham Forest incident, if you read this post, you will know more about the subject that 99% of the people you are likely to meet in your daily life. Impress them with your command of the facts.
Testing Reactions to Disclosure This is the story of Lt. Col. Ellison Onizuka, one of the astronauts who died in the 1986 Challenger crash, and how he claimed to have been exposed to a "test" of UFO Disclosure while being stationed at McClellan Air Force Base in the 1970s.
What Value Do UFO Photos Have?We talk about them all the time, there are thousands of them out there, and yet -- in our reader poll -- photos were considered the absolute least likely "trigger event" to force Disclosure.
Edgar Mitchell Says "Prepare for the Inevitable" Apollo 14 lunar pilot Edgar Mitchell has generously recommended this book and when you see the kind of interest his comments generated, you can see what kind of high esteem he is held by people in the know.
We want to encourage you to learn more about this important subject of Disclosure so that you can discuss it calmly and intelligently, not just with people who believe as you do, but also (and especially) those who have yet to form an opinion. We want to grow this conversation, and there is a role you can play, if you want to help. Search engines index sites favorably when they see that other sites and blogs are linking to them. So if you see something you think is worth spreading around, please reblog, repost and let other people know. Thank you.
Thank you for visiting the A.D. After Disclosure site. The book is available and shipping now. Orders are being taken through the PayPal button below. It is not necessary to be a PayPal member to order this way, however. And, if you ask your local bookseller, they will order it for you.
If you want to understand just what the truth is up against when it comes to getting any kind of responsible UFO reporting from the mainstream media, the September 27th news conference at the National Press Club certainly makes the case.
If you missed it, a half dozen former U.S. Air Force officers spoke out publicly in the nation's capital about the existence of UFO sightings near U.S. nuclear weapons facilities -- events witnessed by multiple soldiers in which nuclear missiles actually malfunctioned in the aftermath. The incidents go back decades and continue on to present day, and they involve countries in addition to the United States, with multiple incidents happening on international soil. Plus, declassified U.S. documents were produced that reveal startling details.
All these military witnesses (plus another 100+ who didn't testify) worked in sensitive areas at nuclear weapon installations. These are people trusted to guard, maintain and, if necessary, use and fire the nation's nuclear arsenal at an enemy. And they are willing to testify, solemnly, that vehicles they could not identify violated security in the airspace above their missiles and in several cases disabled them. You can read all about these events, and Rich Dolan wrote a very comprehensive essay that can bring you up to speed in ten minutes.
If you ask me, this kind of public discussion is a pretty big deal and deserves to be covered so that the American people can evaluate the evidence and, if they are not satisfied with the answers they get, demand new ones from their representatives. The news conference was lightly attended and virtually shunned by the media heavyweights. Here's how Wired put it in a magazine section, unpromisingly called, "Tinfoil Tuesdays":
But the officers didn’t face a particularly skeptical crowd. There were as many well-wishers at the Press Club as there were journalists in a conference attended by about 30 people, congratulating them on their bravery. One gentleman took the mic to confess that he had been “a contactee” in Santa Monica in 1986 and 1997. “I can affirm this phenomenon is real,” he said. Another journalist asked the panel whether it was “time to admit that there are other spiritual beings in the universe.”
Not only were the media's big-boys missing-in-action, but ABC, NBC and CBS did not think even a streamed video clip was worthy of being included in any of their evening news broadcasts. I didn't see the news conference covered in the Los Angeles Times or the New York Times. CNN was a very mixed bag. They did, apparently, go "live" from the conference but they also allowed a pair of arrogant, condescending and, worse, ill-informed on-air talent (an anchorwoman and a weatherman) to ridicule these military men for coming forward. You have to see this to believe it.
UFOs and Nuclear Technology: A Serious Issue Written by Richard M. Dolan
2010 is turning out to be a very good year for the cause of UFO research and awareness. Despite the traditional blinders exhibited by ossified mainstream media sources such as the New York Times, there have been some encouraging developments.
Certainly, the publication of Leslie Kean’s very fine work has been a key breakthrough. Carefully written and solid as stone, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record, is a new tool with which to broach the topic one must never discuss in polite society. Leslie Kean found a way.
Now comes another important ufological event: the press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. Organized by UFO researcher and author (UFOs and Nukes) Robert Hastings and UFO witness USAF Captain Robert Salas, it takes place on Monday, September 27, 2010. As Hastings put it on his website, the conference’s purpose was “to address the vital issue of UFO incursions at U.S. nuclear weapons sites over the past six decades.” (My co-author Bryce Zabel analyzes the media coverage of the event elsewhere on this site.)
If you think this is hyperbole, think again. One of the most noteworthy aspects of the UFO phenomenon is its relationship to nuclear weapons and technology. From the beginning of the modern phenomenon, unknown and unusual aerial objects have been seen in the vicinity of the nuclear weapons and storage sites around the world.
Even during the late 1940s, when “flying saucers” burst upon the public consciousness, people began to wonder if “they” appeared because mankind had just entered the Atomic Age.
Certainly, the crash of something near Roswell Army Air Field during the summer of 1947 is suggestive of a connection. People often forget that, in 1947, there was exactly one military base in the world with operational nuclear weapons.
That place was in Roswell, New Mexico.
What many also forget, or never even knew, is that immediately after the Roswell event, UFOs -- really strange and bizarre UFOs -- were invading sensitive airspace and generally making a nuisance of themselves throughout the U.S. Much of their activity was centered around the leading nuclear centers in the nation.
Today -- September 23 -- is a special day in UFOlogy. September 23, 1947 is the day a top U.S. General said, in writing, that UFOs were real.
Right at the beginning of the “modern” UFO era -- three months after Kenneth Arnold and two months after Roswell -- General Nathan Twining, Head of the U.S. Air Materiel Command (AMC), wrote a classified letter to Air Force General George Schulgen regarding the “flying discs.” He said the objects were “real and not visionary or fictitious.”
Twining conceded the possibility that they may possibly be natural phenomena such as meteors, he continued, but added "the reported operating characteristics such as extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and action which must be considered evasive when sighted ... lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, automatically, or remotely.”
Twining listed several common descriptions of UFOs. They generally were silent, had a metallic or light reflecting surface, no trail, were circular or elliptical in shape, and often flat on the bottom. Many descriptions indicated a dome on top. Several reports indicated they flew in formation. Quite specific information, indeed.
UFO skeptics have pointed to Twining’s statement that no wreckage of a flying disc had been recovered. It’s true that he was probably in a good position to know. But what we don’t know is whether Twining would have been able to tell Schulgen about a UFO crash, if indeed such a thing happened. Simply put, if Schulgen lacked a “need to know,” Twining could not have told him.
On the other hand, Twining did state that UFOs were not secret American craft. This came as a surprise to Schulgen, who expected to learn that there was nothing to the affair, that everything was under control. Was Twining was hiding the fact that UFO’s were classified technology? It’s a fair question.
Wendelle Stevens, Lawrence Fawcett: They Helped Make the Case
It is always sad to bid farewell to people we know or respect. In the field of UFO research, there are only a handful of the generation in their 70s and higher who remain with us. Sadly, two left us recently.
Wendelle Stevens was 87 years old when he passed away on September 7. Much of his life was spent in the air. He served in the Pacific Theatre during World War Two as a member of the U.S. Army Air Corps. He later served as a U.S. Air Attaché to South America. After he retired from the Air Force in 1963, he worked for Hamilton Aircraft until 1972. For many years, Wendelle Stevens was an active public speaker regarding the matter of UFOs. He is probably best known for his long-time support of the controversial Billy Meier case in Switzerland, his immense collection of UFO photographs, and for having had one of the largest private collections of UFO literature in the world -- which he bequeathed to the organization Open Minds in Tempe, Arizona where, coincidentally, Bryce spent the day yesterday with John Rao and his team and marveled at the power and breadth of that collection. Rich had several occasions to chat with Wendelle, and there were very few, if any, who were as conversant with the history of the subject of UFOs and extraterrestrials as was he.
Relatively speaking, Lawrence Fawcett kept a lower profile in the UFO research community than did Stevens. However, his contribution to the field was of lasting importance. In 1984, Fawcett co-authored, along with Barry Greenwood, one of the classics of UFO research. This was Clear Intent (later retitled The UFO Cover-Up). Following the recent flurry of released UFO documents from the U.S. government via the Freedom of Information Act, Clear Intent was the first book to gather many of these documents together into a single, highly compelling collection. In the pre-Internet days, especially, this was of great importance. The book highlighted some of the most dramatic well-documented airspace violations, including the astounding events of 1975 that occurred over Loring, Wurtsmith, and Malstrom air force bases. The reproduction of so many confirmed documents seemed to make it undeniable, even to the staunchest skeptic, that something serious and unexplained was going on. Indeed, the publication of this book was one of the most anticipated in the history of the subject, and received well-deserved praise from all major researchers in the field.
While we mourn the loss of these two men, along with their many friends and their families, we also note with pride their contributions toward bringing about true, authentic Disclosure of the UFO mystery within our lifetimes. The tragedy is that it did not happen during theirs.
Ask people what they think about UFOs, and you’re sure to get opinions ranging through all extremes and nuances. Some are so embarrassed by the topic that they simply refuse to consider any evidence whatsoever, like the Pope refusing to look through Galileo’s telescope. Others claim not only to be certain that aliens are here, but to have exact, insider knowledge of what it’s all about. Between these extremes are endless variations.
It’s the same with how we approach the subject. Some people read UFO books for fun, like a mystery novel or scary story. Others are more interested in scientific evidence, such as analysis of photographs, videos, or material samples. Still others prefer more hypothetical roads, like theories about the likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe, or how an advanced propulsion system might work. There are a host of specialized studies, too, ranging from abductions, to crop circles, to animal mutilations, and more. Or, you may focus on the believers and witnesses themselves by studying UFOs as an element of popular culture, or from a psycho-social perspective.
Another approach is historical. There are, after all, government UFO documents that anyone can read. What do they say? Can these documents tell us whether the government or military have ever been interested in this phenomenon? If so, why?
Granted, this approach might not be of the same value as subjecting a piece of flying saucer to laboratory tests. But it would certainly be important if the government had documents showing that UFOs are truly something extraordinary, and even possibly alien. Especially after telling the public the opposite for years. Since belief in UFOs is a near-professional suicide in most respected circles, what would it mean if we discovered that, within the classified world, people have taken it seriously for years?
It just so happens that they have. They do.
For many years, it was hard to obtain declassified government documents about UFOs. During the 1950s and 1960s, a few documents wended their way to the rest of the world, but this was rare. Then, in 1974, the U.S. government amended the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). The result was a veritable golden age of document releases that lasted roughly until a 1982 Executive Order from President Reagan. While UFO documents continue to be released, a repeat of the Great Flood of the seventies appears unlikely.
