DISCLOSURE???

One of the comments under the first of the CE2p posts asked if I would write some views of the topic "Disclosure" as regards UFO information, as it is a "popular" word-in-the-air nowadays. Very much against my better judgement I am going to honor that request. The inquirer also gave the opinion that this would not require me to have access to my historical etc files in Michigan .... Hah!! Yeh, that's true only if I decide to give you folks some superficial mental meanderings, which one should absorb only with massive additions of salt. But, here we go. Get out the saltshakers.

This sort of question is rife with possibilities of being so misunderstood from the first sentence that it subtracts from the knowledge base of the Universe rather than adds to it. This is because [primarily], we haven't even said what the heck we even mean by "disclosure". I am going to separate the myriad of possible "disclosure" concepts into three, which I will try to comment upon without offending the Cosmos too much. There are other definitions of the term which could serve as the basis for discussion as well. I'll stick with these three.

"Disclosure Type One" means the general revealing of government information about UFOs to the public. A Disclosure project of this type would be any serious attempt undertaken by an organization to do so.

"Disclosure Type Two" will here mean the specific recent attempts by [mainly] Leslie Kean to accomplish that same thing, sometimes in a specific case; sometimes more generally.

"Disclosure Type Three" will here mean those activities sponsored by Steven Greer.

A few words about Type One. This has been going on for a very long time. It was the primary agenda item of NICAP, Major Keyhoe, Richard Hall, and many of the Giants of "ancient" UFOlogy. It was an extreme irritant in the hide of the intelligence community and particularly the Air Force, and required a special Pentagon/Wright-Pat hit-team to thwart them in the late fifties and early sixties. The released insider documents describing this "team's" struggles to head Keyhoe off are the clearest statements of government deliberately blocking UFO inquiry that any conspiracy theorist would desire. Was NICAP a success??? Well, sure, in piecemeal ways. Here and there military people and other witnesses came forth, but the intel community held tight. NICAP was also a success in its inspiration of people like Jim McDonald and in a way caused the environment that required the Colorado Project. And on non-NICAP notes: was Captain Ruppelt's book definable as "disclosure"?? Were Al Chop/Dewey Fournet's releases to Keyhoe?? That all sounds pretty disclosure-ish to me....but I guess that's not what we're really talking about, nor what inspired the request-----though it SHOULD be the basis for any such discussion.
"Disclosure Type Two" Leslie Kean-style. Leslie Kean is an outstanding reporter and a very smart lady. She is no nonsense and works hard at vetting the information that she features. Most people know of the Press Conference she and John Podesta organized in 2007, but probably don't even remember her name. She [and people like Podesta] deserve all the credit for that, however. And I am talking about positive credit---praise. Most of the witnesses or secondary testifiers who presented their stories on that day are rock solid. Some of the great cases of recent UFOlogy were featured [The Iranian Jet chase; The JAL airliner case; The real part of the Phoenix AZ sightings---rather than the bogus pictures everyone cites; etc etc]. These were outstanding testimonies in a classy presentation with a minimum of embarrassing gaffs. This conference is written up in her book: UFOs--Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On The Record. If you want good UFOlogy, you should buy the book.

Having justifiably praised Leslie for a job well done, did it result in "disclosure"?? Well, yes, if you mean the testimonies themselves. No if you mean government consequently releasing what it knows. In a way, this was another, somewhat better done, classier, NICAP-like activity---getting witnesses of high credibility to publicly state what had occurred, sometimes behind closed doors.

This sort of excellent UFO work is classed, by me, along with other "modern" things, such as her own championing of Stan Gordon's efforts to get the Kecksburg documents released [which failed to do so], Don Schmitt and Kevin Randle's heroic efforts [beyond any such ever in UFOlogy] to get the government to come clean on Roswell [parasitic "efforts" such as Right-to-Know, were at best toothless and at worst embarrassing, simply adding to our reputation as screwballs and idiots], and the similar but different heroism of the great FOIA-hunters such as Barry Greenwood, Jan Aldrich, and Robert Todd. Of all of them, it has only been the FOIA-Masters who have pried loose "hidden documents" and thereby created "disclosure" by their own tenacity. Keyhoe would be proud.
Then there is "Disclosure Type Three". Lord save us!! I'm not going to go into this mess. Suffice it to say that although pop-UFOlogists glue Leslie Kean's 2007 press conference and Greer's "Project" together, in her book Leslie politely thanks him for loaning her some FOIA documents and never mentions him nor his project at all. There are myriads of reasons to discount most of what has been presented in Type Three, and once in a while there has been someone roped in to present who actually has something to say. Not worth it, folks. Don't pollute your knowledge. It's as shaky as his suggestions that you join him in pursuing anti-gravity and free energy technologies learned from the UFOs. Run!! Run away!! At least don't send a check. .... and, as I knew I would, I've said too much already.

If you want to look for real "disclosure", look at the countries of Spain, Australia, Sweden. They've unloaded their files. In every case it was with the assistance of very credible and cooperative UFOlogists---people like Vicente-Juan Ballester-Olmos in Spain, Bill Chalker in Australia, Clas Svahn and Andres Liljegren in Sweden, all of whom I am proud to call colleagues in this great Mystery Chase we are on. Some other countries like France, Italy, and Belgium have had their moments as well. Don't yet get too excited about the UK---their "releases" [despite heroism by David Clarke] don't look at all like the "good stuff" yet to me.

Read Leslie Kean. Read the great non-US researchers' releases-work. Read the great US FOIA-Masters' work. That's where "disclosure" happens. Not with amateurish show-boating like writing to Obama.