November 1, 2000
Stephen Bassett
Abbie Hoffman would have titled it, “Disclose this Book”
Washington, DC – It is the question most often asked. “How will it happen?” A more important question is, “How should it happen?” Both deserve an answer. Putting optimism aside for a moment, our first recipe serves up an order of “will.”
It will be bi-partisan. The predominant party affiliation of career military, intelligence, corporate defense contractor and NASA personnel is Republican. But for the select few in command and control of the UFO/ET agenda, a political party biased disclosure process would be both dangerous and transparent. It would directly threaten the civilian control of the military and call into question the patriotism of line officers and managers, who, in most cases, would be learning of this new reality at the same time as the general public.
It will happen early in the administration of the new president. While a second term scenario would be preferable to the party in power, a first term will do if circumstances require it, and they do. The nation, and this projection is confined to the nation, will need as much time as possible to digest the disclosed information prior to reentering the next presidential election cycle. The mid-term election is not a factor.
Preliminary briefings directed at the Democratic and Republican candidates will begin during the campaigns. They will be done with great care and not without some risk. Any of the four candidates might choose to go public based upon personal ethics. However, this risk is small as the arguments for keeping the subject from exploding into the middle of an ongoing election will be persuasive.
This strategy to inform both aspiring presidents and vice-presidents “before” the election outcome is the ultimate act of bipartisanship. By this act the military/intelligence agencies place themselves outside of politics for the coming process, as either party might win – a very close election would serve to accentuate this neutrality.
These briefing will be logistically difficult. Any leak to third parties would portend chaos. So they will be direct, avoid any electronic transmission, and will take place as close to the source as possible. Think campaign airplanes sitting on runways in the right airports.
After the election is over, briefing of the new president will continue during the transition period. This is ideal as this period is nothing but meetings which can be held anywhere in the country. Once a president enters the White House, the issue is formally enjoined and the logistics change dramatically.
And from where will this information and people to transmit it emerge? There are many possible vehicles. It will be a national security focused and somewhat ecumenical, cross agency entity. It will likely be in the control of the CIA because this agency has the cleanest hands and whitest hats (surprised?). It is also the symbol of national security intelligence to a general public largely ignorant of the myriad of other extant agencies conducting intelligence.
A possible candidate would be the National Intelligence Council.
The National Intelligence Council, managed by a Chairman and a Vice Chairman, is comprised of National Intelligence Officers–senior experts drawn from all elements of the Community and from outside the Government. The National Intelligence Officers concentrate on the substantive problems of particular geographic regions of the world and of particular functional areas such as economics and weapons proliferation. They serve the DCI in his role as leader of the Intelligence Community by providing a center for mid-term and long-term strategic thinking and production. Through routine close contact with policymakers, collection, research, and community analysis, the NIC provides the DCI with the information he needs to assist policymakers as they pursue shifting interests and foreign policy priorities. The NIC also draws on nongovernmental experts in academia and the private sector to bring in fresh perspectives and analytic methods to enhance the intelligence process. Finally, the NIC assists the Intelligence Community by evaluating the adequacy of intelligence support and works with the Community’s functional managers to refine strategies to meet the most crucial needs of our senior consumers.
From the 2001 CIA Website
Selected individuals from any segment of the nation’s infrastructure (with high security clearance being a likely qualifier) could be brought in and engaged on the subject within the confines of such an entity. From these meetings would come the specific content of the pre- an post-election briefings.
The Disclosure Event
If Washington, DC was a cruise ship it would sink in half an hour. Here, leaking information has been perfected to a fine art. There will be an enormous challenge facing the White House as it formulates the disclosure event itself. Given that our nation, in its wisdom, has chosen to permit several hundred media members to operate inside the West Wing of the White House on a daily basis, maintaining the integrity of the process will be extraordinarily difficult.
For that reason alone, things will happen quickly. The disclosure event will take place within a few weeks or months of taking office. What form will it take?
There will be considerable internal debate over two approaches: 1) the classic presidential address to the nation, and 2) the mega press conference modeled after the NASA Mars life event of 1997. Both will be used with the emphasis on the second – a brief announcement from the White House immediately followed by what will be the largest and longest press conference in the nation’s history.
The concerns here are these: 1) a presidential address to the nation alone would be too ominous and would not permit immediate broad based questions from the press, 2) a presidential press conference would be too political and would also not permit extensive broad based questions with answers from experts in each aspect of the matter at hand. The public is going to want information and a lot of it, and they are going to want it immediately.
The President, who is both the leader of the nation and the leader of a political party, will open the event which then will shift location to a press conference with several dozen participants. The usual suspects will have been rounded up. A likely cast would include: Senate/House majority/minority leaders, the CIA Director, the Chairperson of the Joint Chiefs and possibly the Joint Chiefs (an important tactical decision which will be affected by the content), the NASA administrator, a half-dozen scientific specialists (biology, exo-biology, chemistry, physics, cosmology/astrophysics, propulsion engineering, etc.), two or three well-know religious leaders, and three to five social/political community leaders (there will be gender and ethnic diversity).
And, yes, Carl Sagan addressed this structure in Contact. That was a novel.
A spokesperson will be selected to present the basic statement of facts. That statement will define the rules of engagement and the boundaries. It will be made clear that some information will for the time being remain classified. The amount and nature of that information will be the most important tactical decision of the disclosure team and will be the first indication of the direction the process is going.
The press conference will, of course, be universally broadcast. And while it will be broadcast around the world, it will be a national event with an American focus.
It will begin at mid-morning and will still be going on late into the evening. Members of the panel will take breaks from time to time, but the press conference will go on uninterrupted until the fatigue of all participants, press and panel, will bring it to an end.
The Paradigm Clock will be set to midnight.
Within a week, the Congress will begin a series of fact finding hearings on the UFO/ET subject matter and related issues that will go on for several years.
Note: Knowledgeable readers will be wondering, “what happened to open congressional hearings before and forcing the disclosure event?” Good question. The people who run the United States government are, contrary to the opinion of some, not stupid. This includes the UFO/ET management team. They are sufficiently wise to know they do not want to be forced into a disclosure event by congressional hearings. If they do not act, those hearings are going to take place. So they will act.
What should happen
While the disclosure event will certainly reflect the reality of human foibles and the imperfection in this world, if ever there was a time to rise above the behavioral status quo, this will be it.
First and foremost, it has to be the truth. If leaking is an art form in Washington, lying is a science. Some individuals at the initial disclosure event and in the subsequent hearings will lie and they will regret it. The level of complexity of this subject matter and the degree of scrutiny to which it will be subjected will make lying to serve ulterior agendas a risky and foolish choice.
It needs to be global. Logistics will likely prevent a proper globalization of this event in which the United Nations and a host of other countries are direct participants at the outset. In a world in which national and religious divisions are often close cousins, a strong association between the extraterrestrial presence and one country or one religion is not desirable.
It needs to incorporate the UFO/ET research community. The temptation to shut out the thousands of people worldwide who have pressed for the truth in this matter for 50 years will be great. They serve as constant reminders of certain institutional failures. Whether in or out, they are not going away.
Truth, global cooperation, inclusiveness – these are virtues of the new paradigm. What better time to embrace them then the event that ushers in that new world?