UAP: A Political Activist’s Perspective

Opinion

Written by Stephen Bassett - 14 December 2022

Five years to the month after the extraordinary events of July 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico, President Harry Truman made a decision that would alter the course of the 20th century like no other.

The premature press release from the Roswell Army Air Field, confirming the acquisition of a flying disk, had been corrected. The craft wreckage and non-human bodies were recovered and sequestered.

By July of 1952 Roswell had faded into history, and the government was free to address the obvious national security and technology implications in deepest secrecy free of public nuisance. However, awareness of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) was growing, and that license was about to be revoked.

Over the eighteen-day period from July 12 to July 29, 1952, sightings of lights and objects in the skies near and over Washington, D.C. poured into the authorities and the media. It was the most significant “UFO flap” of the 20th century and shattered the one-way mirror behind which the government could comfortably address the UFO/extraterrestrial problem.

The reactions and actions of the President, the Pentagon, and the media were well chronicled. What mainstream historians and journalist are still not able or willing to acknowledge is President Truman and his government knew exactly what was taking place. It was craft of non-human construction, piloted or controlled by non-humans, putting on a rather spectacular display over the capital of the most powerful nation on Earth.

How did President Truman know this? Roswell.

In the weeks and months that followed, a profound decision had to be made. There were two options. It was clear the entities behind the phenomenon were not going away and escalating their activities.

Containing the problem after Roswell owed much to luck, and the government’s luck had run out.

The decision Truman should have made was this: acknowledge the validity and importance of the July 1952 events and incite Congress to create legislation compelling the Department of Defense to set up a public facing, cross-agency working group.

The group’s mission statement would be to address the UFO phenomenon as transparently as possible within the reasonable bounds of national security and report back to Congress.

This course of action could have been taken without confirming the Roswell events. However, it would have initiated an irreversible process, likely leading to that confirmation soon thereafter. The course of the 20th century would have been dramatically altered. Historians will debate for centuries the merit of that decision not taken.

Instead, the government, with the Central Intelligence Agency taking the lead, fretted over the problem for the remainder of 1952, ending with the formation of the CIA’s Robertson Panel in January of 1953.

The fundamental conclusion provided to President Eisenhower was that the phenomenon did not pose a direct threat, but the growing public interest in the phenomenon posed an indirect threat. This conclusion supported the second option in effect to this day: take all necessary measures to prevent the government having to formally confirm to the American people the non-human origin of the UFO reality - a truth embargo.

Could the Robertson Panel have concluded otherwise? Not likely. Historians will have much more to say about this choice.

The current governmental engagement of the UFO (now UAP) reality begins with private briefings of members of the Congress during 2019-2021, leading to inclusion in the 2021-2022 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) of UAP-related sections sponsored by Senators Marco Rubio, Kirsten Gillibrand, and Congressman Ruben Gallego. Further UAP-related legislation submitted by Senator Mark Warner is pending for the 2022-2023 NDAA.

The result of this legislation is the Department of Defense moving to create a public-facing cross-agency working group with a mission statement to address the phenomena as transparently as possible, within the reasonable bounds of national security, and report back to Congress, the White House and the American people.

Sound familiar? Are you beginning to understand why the UAP-related actions of the Congress and the Department of Defense over the past four years are creating so much cognitive dissonance?

The appropriate and public-facing actions now underway should have been taken 70 years ago. At that time those with a need to know, and others within DOD, CIA, Congress, and the media, were aware UAP were real and controlled or piloted by non-human entities. And that remains the case in 2022.

Is this awkward? Yes, but necessary. The legislation, DOD cross-agency working group, statements by congressional members and former national security executives, and the public congressional hearings certainly to come, is a process to “correct the record” in a responsible and minimally disruptive manner.

It is a public-relations-driven extrication process to reduce blowback over the 75-year truth embargo, while building a platform on which the president can stand to confirm the extraterrestrial presence to the American people: Disclosure.

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Stephen Bassett is a political activist and the founder of Paradigm Research Group. In 1996 he was the first person to register with the U.S Congress as a lobbyist on issues related to unidentified aerial phenomena. In 2000 he put forth the term “Truth Embargo” to replace “UFO Cover-up” and worked to develop the term “Disclosure” with a capital “D” to represent the formal confirmation by a head of state of an extraterrestrial presence.

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