In 1976 presidential candidate Jimmie Carter promised the American people that he would open any government UFO files that might exist. Recall that while governor of Georgia, Carter had a UFO sighting and actually filed a report. After winning election to President, Carter met with CIA Director George H. W. Bush seeking a briefing on the topic. Bush turned him down, claiming that neither as President nor as Commander-in-Chief did he have a "need to know." Once in office Carter turned to NASA for information, directing presidential science advisor Frank Press to ask NASA administrator Robert Frosch to "form a small panel of inquiry" to investigate the UFO situation. This letter and other correspondence may be found in "UFOs and NASA" (Journal of Scientific Exploration, pp. 93--142, 1988). Nothing at all came of this as recounted by Richard C. Henry -- then a young astrophysicist (now a prominent Johns Hopkins professor) working as a deputy to the director of what was the Astrophysics Division at NASA headquarters -- on whose desk this "hot potato" request landed. For five months NASA went through some amusing twists and turns, recounted by Henry, before politely declining.
Discounting the NASA farce, and assuming that any possible UFO program would exist as a Special Access Program in the Department of Defense, on what legal basis would the President and Commander-in-Chief be denied access?
It is likely that the UFO topic is actually classified by one or more laws duly enacted by Congress in the late 1940s concerning national security -- but without any overt reference to UFOs of course -- and signed by President Truman. Only a handful of members of Congress, if any at all, would have known that more than Cold War issues were involved in this far-reaching national security legislation enacted at a time of near panic over a Soviet nuclear threat. There are at least two bins into which the UFO topic could have been placed such that a future President could not unilaterally release it (legally) or, in fact, maybe even know about it. One bin is the category of Restricted Data (RD) established by the Atomic Energy Act in 1946 and pertains to Special Nuclear Material (SNM); another bin would be what has since evolved into the Waived Special Access Program system set up under the authority of the National Security Council which traces back to the National Security Act signed by Truman in 1947 (interestingly only a couple of weeks after the Roswell episode).
That means that even if an incoming President asked someone who knew about the existence of such a program, that individual would be required by law to not only not tell the President, but also to actively mislead him, if necessary. (Such a policy is actually spelled out in controversial documents that researchers Ryan and Robert Wood obtained and traced back to CIA Director Allen Dulles in the 1950s. The source of these documents is unclear.) If a president today tried the same thing without the appropriate clearances (which he could not give to himself) he would likewise be told (legitimately) that there was nothing disclosable. If this hypothesis is correct, then UFO information would be "Born Secret" by the Atomic Energy Act, and not releasable to anyone without at least an AEC "Q" clearance (and likely higher, R or above), plus a legitimate need to use it in his/her job. By law, all RD is "owned" by the AEC Commissioner at its inception. The AEC clearance standards are somewhat different than executive branch standards. In order to grant a Q or higher clearance, the Commissioner must find that the applicant is of "good moral character," among other things. Thus, if the Commissioner didn't like Richard Nixon's burglary at the Watergate Hotel, or Bill Clinton's dalliances, the Commissioner could withhold access to RD even on those grounds.
A new President who wants to know what the government knows about UFOs would have to be persistent, clever, and informed before beginning the quest, as Clinton's failed attempt via Associate Attorney General Webster Hubble attests. Simply issuing a presidential executive order declassifying the topic might yield the mistaken conclusion that there is no such material. The first step would be to determine under exactly what legal jurisdiction the matter is classified. This could best be accomplished by a small dedicated research team reporting directly and personally to the President with at least high enough clearances to be able to read all classified Presidential Decision Memoranda and the classified appendices to the Atomic Energy Act and the National Security Act.
http://www.ufoskeptic.org/president.html
Dolan earlier writing on Disclosure
. Disclosure is a pandora’s box with a panoply of taboo topics just waiting to spring out. It is, as one friend of mine calls it, “a sloppy tar-baby,” a threatening, friendly, frightening, and inseparable bundle of unavoidable eventualities.
So I can imagine a few questions, even from a media as compliant as the American. “Mr. President,” one correspondent might say, “what are the intentions of these aliens?” Or, “Mr. President, what does this say about the claims of alien abduction? Are they real, after all?” Or how about, “Mr. President, what about claims of underground alien bases? Or claims of secret possession of alien technology?”
These questions might not arise immediately. But they would arise eventually. Once you open that lid, it will be very difficult to control the outcome. The answers would not be pretty.
For this reason, I doubt that disclosure will come from America’s political establishment. But there are always other countries. There are always the aliens. The truth is already here; it’s simply waiting to land.
After all, what exactly are the secret keepers protecting? Let’s see. Power, wealth, control, their plans for the future, access to information, underground bases already built, the status quo.
But there must be more. How about communication with aliens? Worm hole technology? Access to our genetic code? Or any number of technologies that we have not even begun to discuss openly in our society. Remember the statement of an Area 51 insider to aerospace journalist James Goodall – this was back in the 1980s – “we have things in the Nevada desert that would make George Lucas envious.” In other words, Star Wars technology.
Can you imagine the front page of the New York Times following a true disclosure of all this? “MASSIVE COVERUP EXPOSED.” The biggest journalistic fiasco in history would finally be acknowledged, wholesale resignations would sweep the intelligence community, a political third party would do a clean sweep of Washington. Congress would promise emergency hearings, Arab oil nations would be in a state of collapse as oil price futures plummet, and the stock market would be in a headlong tailspin.
People would realize that a massive power structure has existed for generations, and has siphoned away trillions of dollars. They would learn that it has played a dominant, though unacknowledged, role in shaping their lives.
Think about NASA and the space shuttle program. There are no shortage of quiet discussions about the antiquated nature of NASA’s shuttle technology. Astronauts have died because better technology was denied to them. And that is merely the tip of the iceberg, for this issue goes far beyond NASA.
No, people wouldn’t be pleased or especially understanding. Heads would roll.
The American system of government, as it has come to exist, and by extension American society, and by extension our current global civilization, is not compatible with true UFO disclosure. Disclosure would rip it all away.
You might argue that this would be a good reason to maintain the secrecy. On the other hand, I would argue it’s the best reason for disclosure.
http://www.richarddolanpress.com/#!ufo-secrecy-and-the-death-of-american/c1pce
So as far as Podesta and Hillary claim on disclosure goes, its a hype, a Window Dressing for her false openness, hell just release her banking transcripts which she won't do but she will release all the UFO stuff? Are we really buying this spill? I'm not.
Besides 66% of the DOD today are private contractors which legally don't have to reveal anything, anyway to anyone so if there is a UFO connection, and evidence points there is with internal government memos from the 50s, 60s, 70s and very early 80s, acquired through FOIA shows a forensic pattern of government awareness of this unexplained phenomenal and their concern about it. Hillary nor any president can access the deep vault even if they wanted to and naive for anyone to buy the story that they could.
So the question is.......... what is really going on?
= new reply since forum marked as read
