As we have said, the decision to disclose the UFO reality will probably not be made on Capitol Hill or even in the West Wing. The power center of this secret—the Breakaway Group—will meet, maybe virtually, but probably in person. Although it may not be called Majestic-12, this UFO “Control Group” or “Silence Group” will come together and hash it out.
The first thing on the agenda will be a review of the event itself—the event that is pushing Disclosure beyond its normal habitat of radio shows like Coast-to-Coast AM and Discovery Channel specials. In this future turn of events, the growing momentum toward Disclosure will be discussed on the front pages and covers of newspapers and magazines, and become the lead story on network newscasts.
The discussion begins. One of the Majestic members will argue that, as bleak as it looks, the group has weathered previous storms like this one. The Phoenix lights in 1997 came close. Someone else will mention the sighting over Stephenville, Texas, in 2008, and the near-panic they felt as a result. Another member will note ruefully that, ever since Roswell, they have skated near the edge.
They take an informal, anonymous straw poll, just to gain a sense of where they are. Imagine their surprise when, after counting the votes, they find they are deadlocked, six votes to disclose and six votes to stonewall. Every time Disclosure came up in the past, the idea had been defeated soundly.
Wishful Thinking?
Since the beginning of the UFO cover-up, interested observers have expected an imminent disclosure. In some of the earliest flying saucer books, U.S. Marine Corps Major (ret.) Donald Keyhoe predicted that the “Silence Group” could not keep the lid on much longer. As far back as 1950, in his book The Flying Saucers Are Real, he wrote “the official explanation may be imminent.”
Opening the floodgates. Six decades of secret contact means a massive amount of suppressed evidence. Image by Mastersfx.
The feeling that Disclosure is imminent surfaces every few years, like Ahab’s White Whale. It appeared again during the mid-1960s, when there were so many American UFO reports that even Congress wondered what was going on. Then again, during the late 1970s, when the Freedom of Information Act provided a new weapon against secrecy, some activists thought it just might be possible to pry the lid open. Even after the weakening of FOIA in the 1980s, researchers periodically believed that leaks from sympathetic insiders would turn the tables.
Some believe that Disclosure has been happening slowly over the years, via a policy of public acclimation to the UFO reality. To some, it is an article of faith. Indeed, Keyhoe himself believed this. “If we were fully prepared, educated to this tremendous adventure,” he wrote, “it might come off without trouble.”1
But if there is a public acclimation program in place, how would it be undertaken, and how would the public be prepared without causing panic?
Lights, Camera…Disclosure!
Some UFO researchers believe that the entertainment industry is part of the effort to acclimate the public to accept the concept of alien life. Hollywood, it has been argued, has collaborated with the intelligence community to release disinformation, and at other times leak a few details to prepare people for eventual contact with non-human life.
Certainly several 1950s movies look like CIA-sponsored attempts to deal with Roswell. Researcher Bruce Rux cited 1951’s The Thing from Another World, considered to be the first realistic flying saucer movie, which reflected certain elements of the crash and recovery at Roswell four years earlier. The film’s maker, RKO, was up to its eyeballs in intelligence assets. It was owned by billionaire defense contractor and test pilot Howard Hughes, plus it was a subsidiary of Time-Life, which was owned by CIA-connected Henry Luce. The movie also captured the essence of the Top Secret government study, Project Twinkle, which was then classified.2
Some of the other movies of the era look suggestive, also. Several key industry players had connections to military intelligence and later the CIA. Edmund H. North, the screenwriter of the 1951 UFO film, The Day the Earth Stood Still, had worked in the Army Signal Corps during the Second World War. It would seem that the secret-keepers wanted to float some trial balloons before the public, and that Hollywood producers were happy to oblige.
If so, their message seems unclear. Although The Day the Earth Stood Still demonstrated alien tough-love, many other movies from this period were invasion-oriented. They included Earth Versus the Flying Saucers, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and The War of the Worlds. Were these also examples of CIA influence? And were they the result of official policy, or some unauthorized leak?
If there is continued intelligence community influence amid the out-pouring of ET-related movies today, it is even harder to know what the message is.
Consider the career of Steven Spielberg. When he developed Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1977, some wondered if he was part of a government acclimation program. Spielberg has always denied this, saying that he simply believes in extraterrestrial life and knows a good story when he sees one. Although such a denial is to be expected, Spielberg’s choices in this genre support his position. His films have hardly been limited to a monochromatic meme about contact, something one might expect if he were receiving inside information. His early films, such as Close Encounters and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial, both portrayed the Others as benevolent scientists. His later treatments, however, showed no such optimism. Taken, his epic television series, depicted abductions as the core UFO secret, The War of the Worlds presented Martian predators wiping out humanity, and his television series Falling Skies features the resistance against an alien invasion of Earth. Spielberg has also been behind such diverse projects as Men in Black, portraying Earth as a cosmic way-station, the historical fantasy Cowboys and Aliens, and Transformers, with its robotic threat. The easiest explanation for this extraordinary diversity of treatment is that Steven Spielberg, like other people, reads the literature.
The same can be said for the rest of Hollywood. During the 1990s, TV series such as The X-Files (“The Truth Is Out There”) and the historical conspiracy Dark Skies (“History Is a Lie”) portrayed the government as involved in a UFO cover-up and willing to go to almost any lengths, often extra-legal, to maintain the secret. Both were subject to much speculation, usually either as a means to prepare the population, or else to provide disinformation.
Yet, why would the covert elite authorize dramatic content highlighting their own lies and deceit? If anything, Hollywood’s natural method of operation may work in opposition to Disclosure. Its product is of such uneven quality, its messages so diverse, that any citizen hungering for its truth will receive only confusion.
If the Breakaway Group indeed had been using Hollywood as a means either to prepare the public for the eventual truth, or else to obfuscate and bury the truth still deeper, the moment of Disclosure will have caught them off guard, as it will have caught everyone else.
Points and Counter-Points
Let us imagine that the Breakaway Group has decided to break its deadlock by allowing one member from each side argue their respective positions.
First up is the member who supports the status quo. His argument will boil down to three fundamental points.
First, the public’s right-to-know is not an absolute, especially during wartime. Moreover, he adds, there is evidence that at least some of the Others are hostile, given the abduction and mutilation phenomena. National security concerns dictate that they maintain control as long as possible in order to reverse engineer hardware and develop defensive capabilities.
Second, Disclosure will not stop with a simple acknowledgment of the presence of the Others. The world will be unable to grasp the complexity of this collection of disparate intelligent life-forms. And the Others themselves (or some of them) may have a negative reaction that we will have brought on ourselves. Because they have not made their presence clear, why should we go first?
Third, the results of telling the truth are unpredictable. The economy of the world is based on the status
quo. Disclosure will cause it to falter and may create another Great Depression. With national unity weakened and governments undermined by years of lies, they will not be able to mount an effective response.
Public panic, he adds, is a real danger. It’s not impossible that 1938 can happen all over again, he says gravely, only worse this time.
This refers, of course, to that iconic moment in American history when, on Halloween night, radio listeners who changed stations during the popular Chase and Sanborn Hour to avoid the singing of Nelson Eddy got the surprise of their lives. They heard a frightened eyewitness in Grover’s Mill, New Jersey, stating that large tube-like spacecraft were on the ground. People were riveted, they called their friends, and the audience grew. As it did, listeners were informed that the human race was under attack by Martians. The aliens were massacring American troops and marching in New York City, as other spacecraft were landing across the United States.
These terrified listeners had tuned in to Orson Welles’s Mercury Theatre of the Air. They were listening not to a news broadcast, but a radio play—an adaptation of The War of the Worlds, the book authored by H.G. Wells four decades earlier.
Orson Welles told the drama as a news story based on breaking events because he wanted it to be realistic. It certainly was. But many people never heard the disclaimer that the broadcast was a play. People heard the names of real places and government officials and assumed the broadcast was “real.” In the streets, people were seen packing their prized possessions into their cars and speeding out to the countryside. Some became hysterical and others simply prayed and waited to die.3
The speaker might well add that panic was repeated several times. When The War of the Worlds was rebroadcast in Chile in 1944, it caused riots. Five years later, it happened in Ecuador. As late as 1988, citizens of Portugal panicked.
It is also possible he will add the comments of Winston Churchill, if a declassified report from the British Ministry of Defence files can be believed. The story came from a scientist who said his grandfather was one of Churchill’s bodyguards during the Second World War. It had been passed down to his mother and then to him.
According to the scientist, his grandfather was present during a meeting between Churchill and General Dwight Eisenhower when they discussed an intriguing UFO incident. This involved a Royal Air Force reconnaissance plane returning from a mission that was approaching the eastern English coastline when it was intercepted by a strange metallic object that matched the aircraft’s course and speed for some time. Then it accelerated away and disappeared. Churchill appears to have been more concerned about the social repercussions than the military implications of such a device. He said the report should be immediately classified because it would “create mass panic amongst the general population and destroy one’s belief in the Church.”4
No doubt some of the secrecy insiders know whether this story is true or not. If it is, it may be invoked to bolster their position.
It takes two sides to make an argument, however. One member supporting Disclosure now stands.
Facing his debate opponent, he states firmly, “First of all, the hype over the Wells radio broadcast has been overblown for years.” Most people who listened in did not panic, and those who did lived in a much less sophisticated time. Besides, that broadcast was about an attack, accompanied by death rays and destruction. If there is any attack going on today, it’s a silent one, and public reactions will be much more modulated.5
Secondly, he continues, despite what you claim, the public does have a right to know, no matter what the truth is, at least with the passage of sufficient time and on issues that are large enough. We are talking about a planetary issue that has to be dealt with by bringing in the talents and experience of the entire population, not just an elite few.
Moreover, he continues, the initial reason for the cover-up has long passed. The Cold War is over. We’ve had enough time to assess and prepare the public. We know a great deal about who the Others are and what they want. And the signs point to the likelihood that the public will be able to assimilate this information and deal with it.
Finally, the world has too many problems to ignore this any longer. We can finally unleash the technology that has been developed in secret throughout the past seven decades for the betterment of humankind. Why not?
Just before taking his seat, he recalls a statement made by the famous Swiss psychologist Dr. Carl Jung. During the 1950s, Jung had made a thorough study of UFOs. Despite being portrayed by skeptics as dismissing UFOs as psychological in origin, Jung believed there was something important to the phenomenon. A quick search on his tablet retrieved the quote he was thinking of:
What astonishes me most is that the American Air Force, despite all the information in its possession and its so-called fear of creating panic, seems to work systematically to do that very thing since it has never yet published an authentic and certain account of the facts…this is the most unpsychological and stupid policy one could invent. It is self-evident that the public ought to be told the truth, because ultimately it will, nevertheless, come to light.6
“It will nevertheless come to light,” the pro-Disclosure advocate repeats and takes his seat.
The question on the minds of everyone at the table on this fateful day is whether or not this is the moment when Jung can say “I told you so.”
What It Will Take
What will it take to create a condition where all the secret keepers can do is simply to get it over with?
Considering that seven decades of secrecy have given them no incentive for changing the status quo, the answer can only be something so public and so undeniable that the decision has been taken out of their hands. Ex-officio Disclosure must be in progress, based on some event that is causing the exponential growth in the numbers of people who understand that UFOs are real. Under those conditions, the Breakaway Group’s only real choice will be to manage the revelation the best they can.
That is the moment when the impossible act of Disclosure becomes inevitable. Not because the men and women managing the secret have decided to release it, but because they will have seen their own credibility plummet until their only option is change. When that becomes the sole alternative, we will finally have Disclosure, and a not a minute sooner.
There are several avenues by which the truth will be placed so boldly in front of us that we will have to pay attention. We have considered them carefully, talked to other researchers, and even consulted our potential readers through private polling. Taking it all into consideration, we believe the road to Disclosure could begin with one of the following triggers which have been ranked from least likely to most likely. They are:
Photographic evidence.
Investigative journalism.
Whistleblowers and leaks.
Public confessions.
Physical evidence.
Foreign declassifications and public statements.
Political instability.
A heavily-documented mass sighting.
Finally, in a class of its own, a decision taken by the Others themselves.
Photographic Evidence
Without a doubt, some UFO photographs have received detailed analysis from scientific teams and passed the test of authenticity. Two of the earliest were taken by an Oregon farmer named Paul Trent in May 1950. Trent and his wife, both shy people, never tried to capitalize on their extraordinary images. Local friends, however, realized their importance, and the photographs were soon featured in Life magazine. Nearly two decades later, they were analyzed by the University of Colorado’s UFO study. Even though the Committee’s leader, Edward Condon, had been predisposed to debunk all UFOs, the Trent photographs passed muster with the staff specialists. In 1968, the Condon Report concluded that “all factors investigated…appear to be consistent with the assertion that an extraordinary flying object, silvery, metallic, disc-shaped, tens of meters in diameter, and evidently artificial, flew within the sight of two witnesses.7
Although the report acknowledged the possibility of some sort of hoax, it argued that a photometric analysis of the negatives made this very unlikely. In other words, there was no evidence of a string supporting the discs photographed—the only realistic hoax method. Subsequent computer enhancements of the images reinforced this claim. The object was not a model, but in the air.8
Yet, there have always been vocal skeptics who argue that no photograph is ever good enough. To those who have taken the time to study the history of UFO photographs, this brings no small amount of frustration. There are many truly excellent images that have received in-depth analysis. In any rational courtroom or laboratory, these would be considered images of genuine UFOs. Yet the fact remains that any photograph, no matter how compelling, is open to the charge of having been enhanced or faked, no matter how remote the likelihood often seems. Therefore, neither the Trent photos, nor any of the other good photos taken throughout the years, have forced an open acknowledgment of the reality of UFOs.
The irony is that even though cameras are better and more common than ever before, any digital image today is liable to be seen as “Photoshopped,” even if it is not. An element of doubt has irrevocably entered the realm of photographic analysis. Today, there are an incredible number of seemingly outstanding UFO photographs, but they are ignored en masse by most journalists and scientists, as if they do not exist. In our own reader poll at the A.D. website (AfterDisclosure.com), still photos ranked as the single least-likely event to initiate Disclosure.
Even so, cameras do have an important role to play, and in all likelihood it is one that will increase in the coming years. The tremendous proliferation of digital cameras means that multiple photographs of the same object are much more possible than during prior decades. Even in the digital age, this is likely to constitute compelling evidence.
A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact Page 9
