"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?
For every Dan Ackroyd-style celebrity who has done his homework on this issue and is prepared to speak clearly about UFOs, there are a probably a dozen George Clooneys -- celebrities who haven't read a book and think it's just another chance to score with a cheap joke at the expense of the seriousness of the real issue. In late 2011, in Esquire Magazine, Clooney said:
I keep thinking: Now that every single human being on Earth has a camera phone, where are all those UFO pictures? Remember you used to see those pictures. Some guy just happened to have a Polaroid when the UFOs appeared? Either it was all bullshit, or my theory is that the Martians have decided, "Don't go down there, man. All those f***ers have cameras now."
Oddly, that's all Clooney really had to say, but it got endless publicity. Maybe the Hollywood celeb machine should just start asking all the stars about it.
The tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks generated an avalanche of analysis and debate. While the world’s leaders and media pundits have now had their say, the UFO community must also take stock of the way many of its leading voices increasingly talk about what happened on September 11, 2001.
We are deeply concerned.
At a time when there is reason to believe that the world is more ready than ever before to hear the evidence and arguments about the UFO phenomenon, the 9/11 issue threatens to undermine legitimate progress.
The examples of linkages being made by the UFO community with the 9/11 “truth” movement are no longer isolated. It is now a pattern of thinking that shows signs of being the dominant mind-set inside ufology. While we both have colleagues who hold these beliefs passionately, we think it is ill-advised and unhelpful to merge these two issues in an on-going public way.
It is a classic case of a flawed tactic being employed to pursue a worthy strategy.
The purpose of a growing social movement is to win over the undecided, until they reach a critical mass of belief and change can happen. This worked for both the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 1960s and gay rights most recently.
This means that ufology must appeal to people who have not previously given the subject much thought and must be sufficiently persuasive to make them consider the issue with an open mind. It will not help to saddle the acceptance of an already challenging paradigm shift with the even less mainstream and massively more controversial belief in 9/11 conspiracy. If you are trying to promote serious media and public interest in one subject that is perceived by some as being a fringe issue (regardless of what the fact trail leads to), the very worst thing you can do is tie this to other issues that are also perceived as fringe. This is not an attempt to debate the 9/11 issue here. It is a statement about perception and politics only.
In August, we both attended the Leeds Exopolitics Conference, as speakers. 9/11 was raised on numerous occasions, both in Q&A sessions and in a number of the actual presentations. Ideas being presented included one speaker's strongly held and well-presented theory that the authorities would stage a false flag alien invasion at the 2012 Olympics, as a prelude to a New World Order takeover. While many speakers and audience members clearly believe that the world is run by a powerful group of secret-keepers, what effect is being achieved by extending this into a public discourse based that casts them as wanton mass murderers?
Imagine reaching out to a genuine agnostic on the subject of UFOs by showing them a link to an official report submitted by a commercial airline pilot, which was correlated by radar, and seeing their mind open to this new paradigm shift. Then imagine what would happen if you tried to persuade them that the towers of the World Trade Center had been brought down in a controlled demolition and that what people saw and filmed hitting the buildings weren’t aircraft at all, but were anti-gravity remote control weapons, surrounded by holograms of aircraft, with all the passengers from the real aircraft languishing in FEMA camps. That result seems obvious, but even a lesser argument that it was an "inside job" will probably still feel like a bridge too far to that genuine agnostic or skeptic we're trying to convert to an open mind.
The idea that 9/11 was undertaken by the United States government (or rogue elements therein), or was “allowed to happen”, while the authorities looked the other way, may be widespread in certain quarters, but it enjoys little or no mainstream support. The idea that the US government would murder nearly 3000 of its own citizens is regarded by most people as crazy at best, but more often as deeply offensive, not just to those serving or having served in the military, but particularly to the families of the victims. Again, we are not talking about what actually happened as it is likely there is more to the story that will emerge over the years. We are talking about how people feel about the issue today.
The argument we heard made passionately at Leeds by more than a few speakers was that proving the 9/11 conspiracy would be “easier” than proving the UFO conspiracy and that once that was accomplished, the extraterrestrial issue would be a natural next victory.
To this line of reasoning, we can only say, “dream on."
We have to pick which battle to fight. This is the wrong battle if the UFO community wants to be taken seriously. It is not our fight.
We respect people’s right to believe what they like about 9/11. It is, perhaps, a healthy indication of a democratic society when people can publicly accuse their own government of mass-murder, with no adverse consequences. However, the UFO community has made great strides recently in terms of making the subject more broadly acceptable. Witness, for example, the scholarly work of historian Richard Dolan; the impact of investigative journalists such as Leslie Kean and filmmakers like James Fox; and the mainstream — and increasingly positive — media coverage generated by the declassification and release of the UK government’s UFO files.
Given that the primary strategic goal of ufology is to reveal facts about UFOs, the most successful tactic is for those researchers who are interested in 9/11 conspiracy theories to pursue their interest separately. The UFO community has little to gain with the larger public and much to lose by linking these two issues.
There is an incredible irony embedded here. If there is a secret cabal of decision makers who are actively working to maintain a global UFO cover-up, one of the best tactics they could employ to keep the truth from coming out would be to tie ufology up in knots with another conspiracy theory that has even less public currency — i.e. 9/11 as an “inside job”. Yet this is exactly what the UFO community seems intent on doing to itself. When we embrace 9/11 conspiracy, we are, de facto, discrediting ourselves in the eyes of the very people we need to convince.
The job of advocating public openness on the issue of UFOs is challenging enough as it is. Why do the job of those who would slow down full and honest discussion?
As we contemplate the tragedy of 9/11 on this tenth anniversary, surely the UFO community can accept that making this controversy our fight does not further the cause, but risks setting it back decades.
Let's get back to basics. UFOs exist. The truth about what they are and who's behind them has not yet been definitively revealed. That's a big enough challenge for now.
Nick Pope and Bryce Zabel welcome a full and complete discussion of this issue on the AfterDisclosure.com website. We hope you will post your comments here as a matter of public record. Please keep them civil as we expect media outlets to read this article and the comments it leads to. Thank you.
To read Bryce's recent article "Hollywood in Wartime" about his role as chairman/CEO of the TV Academy during the 9/11 Emmy cancelations, visit either The Wrap (edited) or Movie Smackdown (complete).
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...
Roger Ebert has been getting a lot of attention this week for his beautifully written essay titled, A Quintessence of Dust. In it, he features the graphic below -- created by NASA -- showing 1,235 planets we know to exist as well as the suns they orbit.
Here's the key concept to appreciate this: each planet is a black dot. Below the top row, you'll see our own sun over on the right side. The people who estimate such things are estimating that millions of such planets exist in our galaxy alone. Ebert's mind boggles at this and, of course, so does mine and probably yours, too.
I have a small bone to pick with Roger Ebert, however, even though I am a great admirer and have probably read several hundred of his film reviews. But, before I get to that, I want to invite you to feel some of the same wonder, mystery and curiosity that comes with this image. Take a few seconds now and look at it, and let it sink in. And, if you want to see it larger, just click on it and you'll see it on an even grander scale on your computer.
As I said, I love Roger Ebert and, as a fellow writer, I have to stand in awe of his skill and capacity. These traits have made him the most significant film reviewer of our time.
My bone to pick is that he appears to not understand the UFO situation and indirectly put down those of us who do. In the same week he wrote his essay about the worlds the Hubble is exposing us to, he also wrote this in his review of the new film, "Source Code."
"Source Code" is an ingenious thriller that comes billed as science fiction, although its science is preposterous. Does that matter, as long as everyone treats it with the greatest urgency? After all, space travel beyond the solar system is preposterous, and yet we couldn't do without "Star Trek."
Ebert is saying that if you believe that it is possible to travel the galaxy and the universe that you believe in something that is preposterous. I say that very statement is preposterous.
I think Ebert is a smart enough man with, as he speaks about in his article, the curiosity it takes to consider these big questions and be on the leading edge of things. He could do the world a tremendous service, now that he is thinking about such things, if he would bring his game up on this subject.
This weekend I attended my first UFO conference. It was also a first for the conference organizers in Lawrence, Kansas. Dubbed OZUFO Summit, it promised to be a high-level event by inviting some of the big names from UFO research and investigation.
The expressed goal of the conference was to bring together "variously experienced world-class authors, investigators, researchers, and speakers" to share a "sincere and urgent call for complete UFO Disclosure of the UFO-ET Reality."
For those interested in UFOs, the names were noteworthy. Physicist and researcher Stanton Friedman and dogged investigator Donald Schmitt both spoke about their parallel investigations into Roswell — the Watergate of UFO cover-ups. Jesse Marcel, Jr. recounted the historic event from his childhood when his father (Jesse Marcel, Sr.) showed his family debris from the Roswell crash. And former airmen, Capt. Robert Salas and Col. Charles Halt, discussed their separate experiences while in the Air Force.
On the other hand, there were those whose connection to the UFO phenomenon was more personal. Kim Carlsberg discussed her abductions and how she had been used as part of an extraterrestrial cross-breeding program. Rosemary Ellen Guiley drew parallels between alien abduction stories and the folklore of the djinn (a.k.a. genies). And Butch Witkowski shared the results of his investigations into cattle — and human — mutilations.
With all these different voices to discuss the UFO phenomenon, one thing was notably missing: a consensus. When one thinks of a summit, one imagines high-ranking officials coming together to reach an accord. While the goal of government disclosure was the predominant theme of the conference, it did not seem to be shared by all.
It's a question of balance. Again, today, the question was called, and fell short.
NASA should know better about non-human life, and may, but still pretends it doesn't. Or the working scientists, who are pursuing legitimate research in their own worlds, know not to ask big uncomfortable questions that will get their funding cut. Meanwhile, the ruling elite of the media buy the the scraps but miss the meal.
Today we heard about some microbes that can exist in the extremely salty, alkaline, arsenic-rich body of water in eastern California that's known as Mono Lake. This death-stew should kill most living things, crushing any primitive will to live completely. But not this new life form that uses arsenic in place of phosphorus to build DNA and proteins. Because Mono Lake is such an inhospitable environment for life, the scientists say, this means that maybe we can find life "in some places we might never have thought to look before."
That's low-hanging fruit. They could start by craning their necks up and opening their eyes.
The esteemed scientists gathered today say their discovery clears the path "for a whole new way of thinking about where to look for life" in the universe, and even in this Solar System. Well, now...
It isn't just that NASA should be scolded for looking down when they should have been looking up, it's the sense of importance they bring to their bacteria while ignoring so many other solid facts, witnesses and reports and that, by doing so, they allow the sense of derision the media heaps on anyone who dares believe that UFOs are sometimes physical craft from someplace that isn't here.
The Web has been percolating for a couple of days now about a hush-hush NASA press conference scheduled for Thursday afternoon about a major discovery in the field of astrobiology — the search for life on other planets. "Has NASA Found Life Near Saturn?" asked the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "Has NASA Found Alien Life?" wondered PC Magazine. Well, no, and it's unfortunate that all of this nonsense has been out there, because the real story is important enough without the hype. What a team of scientists actually found, as described in a paper in Science, is what may be the oddest bacteria on Earth.
Let's start with the fact that reporter Michael Lemonick wrote his article from the point-of-view of knowing what was in the paper, but he wrote it before the news conference. This means that he had an early release copy. That's right. Lemonick, like all the other favored reporters, gets his back scratched and he probably likes his insider status. And, in return, he attacks other people for speculating while he acts like the sage and wise man of knowledge. That's just not right.
Remember, it was NASA's own press release that caused all the speculation in the first place, and not just in the blogosphere. So they gin it up by design, then guys like Lemonick get to deplore as "unfortunate" all the "nonsense." Then he assures us the story is important on its own because -- gasp -- scientists have found an unusual and hardy bacteria right here on Earth! On Earth! Amazing!
I'm sure Lemonick also thinks UFOs are deplorable nonsense. He's probably never looked into the area and, if he has, he clearly has not done so with an open mind. I wonder if he would read Leslie Kean's great new book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go On the Record. How exactly would he dismiss all that Kean reports so clearly? What about my co-author's excellent first two volumes of UFOs and the National Security State? There may be different interpretations for what's being reported in those works, but nonsense they are not.
But we can't single out for shame any one reporter on this story. They all contribute to the problem. NBC's Lee Cowan managed -- twice -- in his report to use the phrase "little green men." It's just so ignorant, and the fact that he can invoke this canard in his story, that a segment producer lets it go, that the show producer approves it, and that Brian Williams says, "Well, that settles it" after the piece, simply shows how deeply the media does not get it.
So it's probably no surprise that media poobahs don't fare too well in the new book that Rich Dolan and I have just published, A.D. After Disclosure. But, then again, neither do the scientists. So let's end with another great quote, this time from lead report author Felisa Wolfe-Simon of NASA's Astrobiology Institute and the U.S. Geological Survey. She actually said this at today's news conference:
"We've cracked open the door for what's possible for life in the universe, and that's profound. What else might we find?"
Well, Felisa, how much time do you have?
The problem here is that Felisa Wolfe-Simon is probably an incredibly bright woman, and a top notch scientist. But she is a product of the system that discourages such brainpower as hers from actively looking into the UFO phenomenon. She is doing good, if limited vision, work. Someday, and maybe soon, she is going to have her mind blown by the idea that she was looking at Earth microbes to learn more about non-human, possibly extraterrestrial, life at a time when advanced intelligent non-human creatures had traveled here from wherever "there" is.
Felisa might just answer her own question by looking up at the skies. If she did, with all the sophisticated technological equipment that her employer could bring to bear on that endeavor, we would wager she would find evidence for something like this:
Some Unidentified Flying Objects appear to be physical, structural craft with performance characteristics that defy current public knowledge, things that aren't supposed to exist. But they do, and they don't appear to be from here, and they act with intelligence, either remote or on-board.
That is what else we might find.
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.
UPDATE: When we first wrote about the Thursday NASA news conference, we ended with the advice to "Lower your expectations."
On that much, at least, we were right. Arsenic-laced life may be a big biological moment, but it's not life on Europa or copping to the truth about ET/UFO reality.
In any case, here is the original post...
NASA has called a news conference for this Thursday "to discuss an astrobiology finding that will impact the search for evidence of extraterrestrial life." Their words, not ours.
Of course this causes people to speculate about what those carefully chosen words might mean. Life on another planet? A new way to look for life? Evidence of previous life?
And, if you read the coverage from the establishment media types, many of them use the blog chatter the NASA announcement has stirred up to then imply "there go those crazy UFO guys again." It's a maddening game, to be sure. This graphic to the left is what CBS used to illustrate its coverage. They get to have their cake (invoking real ET contact) and eat it, too (making people who know something about the subject seem goofy). There's another excellent example of this shell game on CNN where they have goofy aliens in the photo and use the story as a springboard to smackdown people who take the bait and discuss this on the Internet. Sigh...
Back to NASA. We don't know what they've discovered, and they're not talking until they're good and ready, so we'll just have to wait. We tend to think that this will not be a blockbuster type of event, just something that moves the ball a little further down the field. A few yards gained, no score.
Clearly whoever's writing press releases for NASA has put something in writing that makes it seem that they may have found evidence to support the existence of ET life. Of course, Walter Haut wrote a pretty famous press release from Roswell back in 1947 and then had to pull that one back... you never know...
It's been a busy year, looking for life. The Kepler Mission has already found almost a thousand possible alien worlds while scanning a small section of space holding less than 200,000 stars. In September, NASA found Gliese 581g, a planet they think could hold liquid water on its surface. Two months later, NASA said they'd catalogued the 500th planet beyond our solar system.
But that's not what they're going to announce.
From a basic reading of the press release (you can read it at the end of this post), this has all the earmarks of the space agency finding the right chemical signatures -- possibly relating to the Moon or Mars or (our own pony to bet on) one of Saturn's moons. Rhea has been found to have some oxygen and CO2. Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is also the subject of speculation given that two of the panelists named have written about the place in relation to the search for off-Earth life.
Then there is Europa, of course, with (we believe) more liquid water than Earth!
Reason to consider the Microbes-on-Moons theories: the group of scientists in attendance includes an oceanographer who has used photosynthesis, arsenic and life in the same sentence; a geologist who's used knowledge of rocks to look for life on Mars; and a biologist who has speculated that Titan strikes him as resembling an adolescent Earth. There's also an ecological astrobiologist who specializes in the chemistry that has to happen in an environment to create life.
The bottom line is that these are not SETI-type disciplines. They are, however, relevant to planetary issues, or findings from our own solar system as opposed to Hubble-like discoveries of planets out there that might be suitable for life.
As for the huge revelation, don't look for NASA to make a disclosure with a capital "D." They haven't found a whale on Europa or even an insect on Mars. And even if they had, recall that these people are historically very closed minded on the subject of there actually being intelligent life visiting us here on Earth. For NASA, the action is all "out there."
As evidence that we should temper our sense of anticipation about Big-D "Disclosure," we offer this statement from NASA's own website, lifted from their "Ask an Astrobiologist" page, which goes to the mind-set of the astrobiologists who'll be sitting at the conference table:
Question: Has NASA any had UFO problems? (I'm doing a school project on them.)
Answer: No, I can't imagine that NASA would have any problems with something that doesn't exist. The sad thing about UFO reports is that they distract so many people from understanding and enjoying real science. (There is a lot of nonsense on the Internet about UFOs, but I do recommend the website http://skepdic.com/ufos_ets.html). David Morrison NAI Senior Scientist
Thank you for your open mind, Mr. David Morrison. After Disclosure, you will have to sit in the corner and wear a special dunce cap. We hope you won't be too distracted. We digress...
We're not saying the news conference has anything at all to do with UFOs -- it doesn't. What we're saying here is that the way they think is to get excited about the discovery of an organism that can thrive on a cold moon but maintain a completely closed mind to the actual evidence for advanced, complex life-forms coming to visit us right here on Earth.
The smart money is on Microbes-on-Moons. This is a far bigger deal than who Kim Kardashian is dating but it is not as big a deal as it probably should be, given that NASA -- or at least a few people there -- must actively know that Others are running around in our skies in vehicles that aren't supposed to exist from places that aren't here and that the life-forms operating these vehicles are definitely not just microbes.
Because of this head-in-the-sand mentality, we have one piece of advice for the rest of us about Thursday:
Lower your expectations.
Just so you can see for yourself, however, here is the word-for-word release that NASA has up on its official site as we speak.
This cover to your left, from August 2009, is the only cover story Newsweek has ever done about aliens that wasn't really about a movie version (they did a Close Encounters cover in back in 1977 when the film was released). But the article inside this issue barely mentions UFOs, and the whole thing is only a page or so long. You see, Newsweek doesn't cover UFOs, except to ridicule the idea, and they certainly aren't going to give their precious cover real estate to a subject their editors and reporters treat with such contempt.
So we did it for them.
Here is a faux tricked-up version of a Newsweek magazine as it might look the week that Disclosure arrives. We originally thought we might be able to use it in the book as one of our between-chapters "vignettes" but eventually the decision was made not to use heavy graphic design elements like this. But we present it here, well, just because we like it, and it's fun to imagine this artistically interpreted version of how the establishment media (like Newsweek) which has ignored this important story for so many decades will pivot instantly to riding it to big newstand sales.
The alien and the flag concept was originally done by Alicia Fernandez and Michael Kaplan of Blue Sky Creative for NBC's Dark Skies promotional campaign. Our graphic designer Nancy Tokos re-interpreted it for us for After Disclosure and, at one time, we were going to use it on our book cover but the more we wrote on the book, the more we felt it would say "science fiction" to buyers when we wanted them to think "science faction." We still have affection for the design, however, and it's nice to bring it back for a stage bow here on the website.
Maybe someday, and even someday soon, a cover like this one will grace the cover of an establishment media giant like Newsweek (especially with Tina Brown taking over as editor!).
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.
While Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert had the media focused on their Rally to Restore Sanity,we conducted a poll of our readers to decide which of the two comedian commentators shows should be approached first about an author interview for the A.D. After Disclosure project.
Last night, as the polls closed on the nation's mid-term elections, we counted your own ballots.
It was no contest. Our readers overwhelmingly favor The Daily Show with Jon Stewart as a better environment to discuss the issue of the Disclosure of UFO/ET reality.
Stewart got 75.6% of the vote.
Colbert got 24.4%.
There were numerous reasons expressed for this but it seemed to come down to Jon Stewart's likeability, his perception of open mindedness and the opinion of those who had seen Leslie Kean's appearance on The Colbert Report that going on with Colbert playing his conservative persona, rather than himself, makes talking sense about UFOs even more difficult than it usually is.
So, the people have spoken (or at least our slice of people) and we'll be reaching out to The Daily Show with Jon Stewart to see if he'll have us.
