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/

New Edition of "A.D. After Disclosure" Out Now in 2012!

After an extremely successful hardcover run from Keyhole Publishing, A.D. After Disclosure has been picked up by New York's Career Press - New Page Books and released for the summer of 2012.

The book about how the world changes after the reality of UFO and alien contact is revealed can be pre-ordered from both Amazon and Barnes & Noble now. In fact, B&N has decided to feature the book in their front entry table's "New & Noteworthy" sections.

The provocative and leading-edge book was originally published in October 2010 and has now been extensively revised and restructured by authors Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel.  

The new version includes updates from the world of UFOlogy in 2011, corrections, additions and new thinking. Additonally, it will feature an extensive photographic element. That new look includes the cover design below:

The title has been changed from A.D. After Disclosure: The People's Guide to Life After Contact to A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact.

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.

New A.D. Video - Coast-to-Coast Appearance Version

This video debuts in association with the May 8, 2012 "Coast-to-Coast AM with George Noory" appearance of Richard Dolan and Bryce Zabel. It is part of the new C2C use of videos that support appearances of their guests. 

This book is now available on Amazon and Barnes & Noble sites for shipping and as an e-book. It will be in stores by the end of the month of May throughout the world.

As Stan Lee says on the cover of the new edition: "Zabel and Dolan have brilliantly created a compelling blend of history and informed speculation that makes their exciting world seem like tomorrow's news today. Don't dare miss it."

After a successful run as a Keyhole Publishing hardcover, A.D. AFTER DISCLOSURE: WHEN THE GOVERNMENT FINALLY REVEALS THE TRUTH ABOUT ALIEN CONTACT is being released by Career Press - New Page Books as a trade paperback. It has been revised, edited, updated and, if ordered from Amazon or Barnes & Noble on-line site will ship today. It will be in major bookstores throughout the nation by May 22, including Barnes & Nobles (and is a featured book in their stores this July and August).

With the book getting a major polish, the authors have taken one of their original book videos containing interviews and given it a major production overhaul as well. Please give it a look and tell your friends.

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:

The Extremely Strange Abduction of Charles Hickson

The passing of Charles Hickson gave me the opportunity to reflect on his extraordinary story. On the evening of October 11, 1973, Hickson was fishing off a pier at the Pascagoula River in Mississippi, with his younger friend and co-worker Calvin Parker. Later that night, he and Parker told police that an elongated domed craft had appeared, and three creatures emerged from it, grabbing them and somehow floating them to the ship.

The creatures surely were among the strangest ever reported in UFO abduction literature. They were roughly humanoid, with pale and wrinkly skin, and about 5 feet tall. But they did not seem to have eyes, and instead of ears and a nose had long “carrot-like” growths. Instead of a mouth, the beings had only a slit. Instead of hands, they had claws. And instead of two legs, a single leg that looked as though two legs might have been fused into one, ending in an elephant-like foot. Hickson added they moved in robotical fashion -- I would wonder how they moved at all.

Details of the abduction itself were hazy. Hickson claimed he was levitated inside the craft and examined by a mechanical eye shaped like a football, which seemed to scan his body. Parker remembered even less of the specifics. After about twenty minutes, the men were released, levitated back, and left on the river bank.

They sat in their car for nearly an hour afterward, trying to compose themselves. Hickson had some whiskey with him and drank some. Soon, they drove to the sheriff’s office where, not surprisingly, they were met with considerable skepticism. Yet, both men were adamant about what had happened to them. The sheriff did think the men seemed honest. But still.....

So he did something interesting. He left them alone in the interrogation room for a while, not letting them know that he was recording their conversation the whole time. After all, if they were making a story up, they would be more likely to talk freely if they thought they were alone.

Instead, their recorded conversation made it clear that these men were for real. As did all of their subsequent interviews. The men were never publicity seekers, and indeed Hickson was angry at the sheriff when the story became headlines: he had never given permission to tell the media. Calvin Parker became rather reclusive after the ordeal, but Charles Hickson made occasional appearances and statements in which he discussed his experience. The man never wavered, never gave a bad impression, never seemed anything other than what he was: a hard-working, honest man who had an extraordinary experience. Hickson even took a polygraph test to prove his truthfulness. He passed.

But what of the experience itself? How do we explain the bizarre alien he and Parker claimed to see? Such a creature as what they described makes no sense to me. No eyes? One leg? Claws?

Well, perhaps it was some fantasy, but if so, it’s a hard one to diagnose. If it really happened, and I have no reason to doubt their sincerity, my suspicion is that they either their memories were tampered with (and they received a ridiculous impression so that no one would believe them), or they dealt with artificial creatures with some sort of genetic and technological modifications. Why a single leg would be considered an advantage is something that I honestly cannot answer, but perhaps it wasn’t necessary in view of the ability to levitate. The case is bizarre, to say the least.

One thing to remember about their abduction, though. It occurred amid a significant wave of UFO and creature sightings in the American southeast at that time. Hickson and Parker were not the only two witnesses claiming to have had an extraordinary experience. There were many others. Just what they experienced will continue to be debated. In time, I think the answer will come out, as it will regarding everything related to UFOs and the presence of “others” here on Planet Earth.