Strange Disclosures

JJ King explores the possibility of UFOs and the project that might reveal them

You might think it unlikely. A set of high-ranking witnesses putting their careers on the line and risking professional approbation in order to speak out on their UFO experiences. But that’s exactly what the Disclosure Project [http://www.disclosureproject.org] is all about. Witnesses to date include a former US Air Force Intelligence Major; a retired US Navy commander pilot with top-secret clearance; a former Air Traffic Controller for the US Air Force; a United States Army Sergeant and former SAC Launch Controller; and the former Division Chief of the Accidents and Investigations Branch for the Federal Aviation Administration. One witness, Major George Filer of the US Air Force, was cleared as “mentally fit to carry nuclear weapons” before reporting his sighting – a psychological qualification which, like it or not, most ‘rational’ sceptics would fail dismally. Ever afterwards, like every single other witness in this list, Filer will be classed by most people as certifiable or, at best, psychologically suspect.

Dr. Steven Greer, director of the Disclosure Project and a former emergency room doctor, thinks that the absence of evidence of extraterrestrial visitations is lacking largely because the governments of the world are collaborating to keep it from the public. “There is a classified operation that sanitises evidence,” he says. Having interviewed some 400 people claiming firsthand sightings of UFOs or contact with evidence of alien life, he ought to know. The Disclosure Project is calling for congressional hearings into UFO sightings reported by its witnesses, many of whom – given the well-documented history of abuse that many UFO-witnesses experience – will not come forward without congressional immunity. Could there be something in it? On that the rational sceptics, perhaps unfortunately, will have the last say.

JJ King <jamie AT metamute.com> is contributing editor of Mute. His ‘They came, they bored, they conquered’, on ICANN is in the ‘main’ section of this issue. Futurefarming satire ‘The Greenish brown and unpleasant land’ by contributing editors James Flint and Hari Kunzru is in the same section.

The recent Disclosure press conference at the US National Press Club, at which 20 high profile witnesses gave testimony and demanded a Congressional hearing, is available in two parts as a Real Audio stream until Nov. 9th, 2001 at – [http://www.connectlive.com/events/disclosureproject/disclosureproject-050901-28k.ram], and – [http://www.connectlive.com/events/disclosureproject/disclosureproject-050901-28k-2.ram]

You can purchase the edited transcripts of the Disclosure interviews with governmental and military witnesses at [http://www.drgreer.com/]