It has been a momentous year in terms of UFO disclosure.
But before getting into recent events, let me start by examining the 'social contagion' scenario, which I'll admit holds some water...
I'll skip decades of UFO history and begin with Robert Bigelow. The Nevada-based entrepreneur made hundreds of millions of dollars developing a chain of motels before moving into aerospace defence contracting. Bigelow has a deep interest in UFOs, as he does in in consciousness and its survival after death. Now, Bigelow was friends with Nevada senator Harry Reid, who went on to be Senate Majority (the later Minority) Leader. Bigelow persuaded Reid (who died in December 2021) to set up the first (officially recognised) UFO programme within the Pentagon since 1969. This was the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), initiated in 2007 by Reid when he was Senate Majority Leader. With a $22m budget, the AATIP contract was awarded to Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies. It was led by Luis (Lu) Elizondo, its task was to collect and classify encounters with UFOs made by the US military in a systematic manner. A further important figure here is Christopher Mellon, former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence in the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. It was Elizondo and Mellon who secured the now-famous 'Tic Tac' video from the US Navy, recorded in 2004, which was published by the New York Times six years ago today. The story, by Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper, also acknowledged the existence and budget of AATIP. The US Navy did not deny nor attempt to explain away the videos.
So - up to the start of 2023, the social contagion scenario might have been sufficient to knock the whole current UFO story on the head (accepting that the Tic Tac footage was no more that sensor error, parallax or other forms of optical distortion). From this nexus of contagion centred on Bigelow, Elizondo and Mellon, others like Harvard astronomy professor, Avi Loeb, or Stanford immunology professor, Garry Nolan, had just got in with the wrong crowd.
But so much has happened this year to have pushed matters closer towards some form of disclosure.
None of what has happened would have happened without legislation starting with the Fiscal Year 2022 National Defense Authorization Act passed in late 2021, which made it easier for whistleblowers to come forward to tell Congress what they know about UFOs (or, as the new term by then termed them, unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAP) without fear of reprisal. On the basis of this whistleblower protection legislation, former intelligence officer and decorated serviceman, David Grusch, stepped forward in May of this year, to reveal to Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, not only that the UFO phenomenon was real, but that the US had possession of craft and beings of non-human origin. This led directly to the historic Congressional hearing on 26 July 2023 of the US House Committee on Oversight and Accountability, entitled Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety and Government Transparency.
Grusch's testimony, under oath, is compelling. It is hard to undermine; he is clearly a highly intelligent, articulate man who knows what he is talking about. All the debunkers could say by way od rebuttal was "he showed us no proof". And he also knows where to draw the line in terms of national security.
The Congressional hearing, at which Grusch was accompanied by Commander David Fravor, who encountered the Tic Tac-shaped UFO in 2004, and Lt Ryan Graves, another US Navy fighter pilot whose squadron had many UFO sightings in 2014/15, led to the Schumer-Rounds amendment to the 2024 NDAA.
The draft amendment, proposed by Senate Majority Leader, Chuck Schumer - who had taken on Harry Reid's mantle - had bipartisan support, being jointly proposed by Republican Mike Rounds, as well as Republican Marco Rubio and Democrat Kirsten Gillibrand. Sixty-four pages long, the original version of the amendment would have forced private aerospace contractors, who are said to hold craft and 'biologics' of non-human origin, to hand them over to Congressional oversight. Full text of the original draft, passed by the Senate, here. If enacted, the legislation would have compelled the National Archives to collect all federal government records on UFO sightings and make them available to the public. It would have forced government agencies, such as the Department of Defense, the CIA, the Department of Energy, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Agency etc, to submit their UAP data to an Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Records Collection, and it would have given the government powers of eminent domain over non-human craft and biologics held by private industry.
The draft amendment was passed by the Senate before moving to the House of Representatives, where it was effectively neutered. Influential voices with links to major aerospace facilities, such as Representatives Mike Turner (Dayton, Ohio, home to the Wright-Patterson Airforce Base) and Mike Rogers (whose largest campaign contributor was Lockheed Martin), helped water down the language in the legislation. Currently awaiting President Biden's signature, the 2024 NDAA no longer calls for an independent, Senate-confirmed review board with subpoena powers to be set up, nor for a professional staff to search out records, nor for meaningful resources with which to carry out such as task. Also missing is the 'eminent domain' clause, which means that the US government could legally take control of such non-human craft and beings as are in the hands of the defence contractors.
If you feel the need to dive in deeper, the original version is here (64 pages), and the emasculated current version is here (21 pages).
But still - if there's nothing to see - if there's no such thing as non-human craft zipping around our atmosphere while being recorded by the US military's myriad sensors, why did congressmen linked to aerospace contractors fight so hard to water down the legislation's wording? If there are no craft of non-human origin sitting on those contractors' premises - what's their problem?
We come round again to the notion of ontological shock and mankind being emotionally, intellectually, and indeed, spiritually ready to accept the fact that we are not alone as intelligent species in our solar system. The process of acclimatising humanity is one that should be gradual.
I mentioned Garry Nolan. He is a founder of the Sol Foundation, which held its first conference last month. A presentation was made here by Lt Col. Karl Nell, former deputy chief of staff for strategic planning at the U.S. Army Reserve, about how disclosure should be handled over a ten-year time scale. He presented a phase-by-phase plan as to how acceptance by science and society would be reached, avoiding 'catastrophic disclosure'. This, I think is crucial. By January 2035, it will all be out in the open. How will you cope? I for one will have questions of a deeply spiritual and philosophical nature...
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This time 11 years ago:
Welcome to the machine, Mr Kaczyński
This time 13 years ago:
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This time 15 years ago:
Christmas lights: all in the best possible taste
This time 16 years ago:
Letter from Russia
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