The story continues a thread of mainstream UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena) reporting that started with dam-breaking articles in the New York Times on encounters between Navy pilots and UAP that defy what we know about aerial maneuvering and physics. The accounts were accompanied by remarkable video footage, captured by military aircraft sensors. In those reports, witness Lt. Ryan Graves claimed that UAP encounters were actually quite common. 

This was the only time we, the general public, had seen anything resembling an official disclosure of UAP evidence. But the GIMBAL, GOFAST, and FLIR footage is still very much open for interpretation.

Those stories were pushed out and evangelized by Tom Delonge’s To The Stars Academy, and by former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Chris Mellon, who wrote an editorial for Politico calling for UAP disclosure in the days leading up to David Grush’s story going public. Former Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Director Luis Elizondo was also a key figure surrounding the disclosure of the Navy pilot encounters.

We also learned that AATIP was funded by the US Government to investigate UAP, and much of the project’s money went to Robert Bigelow, the founder of Bigelow Aerospace, a space habitat company that quietly shuttered in 2020 facing a "perfect storm" of financial and legal issues, laying off its 68 remaining employees. The company still had its BEAM module attached to the ISS when it closed, and NASA still uses it today, five years past the expected lifespan of Bigelow's mission.

Today, the newly-formed AARO handles UAP investigations for the Pentagon and they participated in NASA’s first UAP hearing on May 31st, 2023, where Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick, Director of AARO, said that flying spheres have been spotted around the globe and that display “very interesting apparent maneuvers.” Nearly a year before, on May 17, 2022, Congress held its first UAP hearing in 50 years where a video of an unknown flying metallic-looking sphere was revealed to the American public.

Veteran UAP researcher George Knapp and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell, who brought whistleblower Bob Lazar’s Area 51 story back into today’s news cycle with a documentary and appearances on Joe Rogan, are also making connections between Lazar’s claims and the UAP being talked about today. Lazar’s story first came to light in the late 80s through Knapp and others with his story staying somewhat consistent since. Lazar claims to have examined and worked on crashed alien spacecraft, far more advanced than our own. Lazar's account is considered by many to be the primordial ooze from which modern UAP mythology was born. It is very interesting that the specific capabilities described by Lazar over the years do somewhat correlate with the odd maneuvering seen in the Navy pilot videos.

The UAP news cycle reached a new height with NASA’s meeting, a gathering of researchers, space professionals, and scientists tasked with looking at the data and forging a path for understanding the phenomenon. While they’ve got a ton of catching up to do, the group helps with removing the stigma around future reporting and investigations that might be pursued by serious reporters and investigators.

This brings us to another group: The Disclosure Project. They want to be the center for UAP eyewitness accounts and hope to convince the government to disclose alien existence and deploy the recovered tech to solve all of humanity's problems.

Supercluster was invited to attend an event on Monday, June 12th, being held by the Disclosure Project at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. The gathering was touted as a “disclosure” event where startling evidence and testimony regarding UAP coverups would be put forth by whistleblowers from the military. A rep used the word “definitive” in describing what they had to reveal.

The event was hosted by the Disclosure Project’s controversial leader Dr. Steven Greer, who you’ll know if you’ve seen more than a couple of high-profile UAP and disclosure documentaries in the past decade. He’s been in the game for 30 years and is a central figure in the movement to get the US government to declassify and disclose knowledge of extraterrestrials, and an activist fighting for whistleblower protections for those who come forward.

Greer is also promoting a documentary, The Lost Century: And How to Reclaim it. The title refers to Greer's main thesis that shadow entities operating illegally without congressional oversight are hoarding and reverse-engineering advanced alien technology that could benefit humanity. An example often mentioned by Greer is unlimited free energy.

I didn’t attend the event as a beat reporter, haven’t done that since a sportscar was yeeted to space. Instead, I was on a mission to understand who these witnesses were, to see if Greer had an internet-breaking piece of evidence, and to hear what they wanted from the public. I explained my current role to his representative in detail to manage expectations about reporting on the event.

While there’s not a ton of UAP conversation happening on space Twitter, I spoke to a handful of folks from the spaceflight community that included high-level engineers and execs from commercial space, other space reporters, and congressional aids whose bosses are now taking a serious interest in the UAP news cycle. In late 2019, I asked Elon Musk if he heard or saw anything relating to extraterrestrial activity to which his response was no. He sticks to that story until today.

There are some concerns about where the story is going — whether it's actually aliens or not. Space exploration lives and dies by two things: congressional interest and therefore congressional budgets, and the knowledge of spaceflight’s many achievements and advancements among their constituents. If the American public by large starts to believe that the US Government is in possession of interstellar technology, they aren’t going to give Boeing another 3 billion dollars to build more lemons.

With these concerns and our own curiosity, I attended the Disclosure Project’s event with an open mind and tried to be as observant as possible. Over the weekend before the event, I spent some time digging into the backgrounds of the eyewitnesses and whistleblowers that would be testifying. One of them was a Raytheon subcontractor that would make claims about a facility at the South Pole to examine and reverse engineer a recovered UAP. Another witnessed a spacecraft built by Raytheon using parts from a recovered UAP. These are extraordinary claims and I hoped they had photos or video.

The Disclosure Project’s program started at 2 PM ET and they asked me to arrive an hour early, which I did. People flooded the large room on the 13th floor, I was directed to sit right in front of the handful of panelists and Dr. Greer, but opted for the second row where I saw a few open seats between what I thought was a group of journalists. I did a quick look for Dan Akroyd, an old-school UAP influencer. He wasn’t there.

The audience was pretty full with very few seats left vacant in a space built for a maximum of 700. Plenty of cameras clicked and chatter grew among the crowd as Greer and his witnesses, who he called “American heroes” took the stage. There was an image projected behind them of the organization’s previous disclosure event that occurred in May of 2001 — this was the first I’d heard of it. 

About 8 years ago, I started working on the UAP story for the New York Observer through interviews I conducted with Apollo astronaut Dr. Edgar Mitchell at his home in Florida, and with Stephen Basset — a known UAP lobbyist in Washington DC. Mitchell was convinced that extraterrestrials had visited our nuclear testing sites and missile silos. I imagine his claims would have carried more weight today. Mitchell passed away in February 2016.

Basset always pushed for UAP disclosure from the White House and had hoped the Clintons would do so once Hillary won the presidency. Another space reporter and I had dinner with Basset in DC last year and the conversation indicated to me that the central personalities and researchers surrounding the UAP story were not working together and even carried grudges. Basset always pointed to another so-called disclosure event that occurred in 2013: The Citizens Hearing on Disclosure, which was actually covered by the Washington Post and others. It was a gathering of similarly fashioned whistleblowers: former intel community, military, and defense contractors from the US and allied nations. There was very compelling testimony at this event but no physical evidence was presented for examination.

You can watch those hearings and Monday's meeting on YouTube.

With UAP, the news cycle never really means new and none of the claims being repeated in these disclosure events these last couple of years are really fresh. What’s new is congressional interest and official UAP hearings. And public forums on the subject held by NASA. 

While sitting in the crowd at the Press Club, I took a look around me. The crowd ranged from serious aerospace historians to a guy who believes Queen Elizabeth was a lizard wearing human skin. I wasn’t entirely sure I was sitting next to other journalists. One of them was too excited and said something about getting Greer’s autograph, another said it felt like a court hearing, which is interesting. The foundation of many court trials or hearings includes the presenting and cataloging of hard evidence. Evidence that can be analyzed and verified by a third party. 

The best space reporters work with an unspoken rule: believe half of what you see and none of what you hear. And it's a huge red flag when a company or organization has nothing but terrible concept art to show you. If Boeing says “We have a new spacecraft that flies humans” you don’t believe that statement until you see Boeing’s spacecraft flying humans. The same rules apply to the UAP story. 

In front of me were the witnesses. Michael Herrera, a former U.S. Marine, witnessed a craft built with captured UAP technology being loaded with drugs and weapons in 2009. D.C. Long, a US Army serviceman who was stationed at Ft. Bragg, NC, has knowledge of Range 19––a secret UAP facility within the base. Steven Digna, Jr. who was a Private First Class in the U.S. Army and stationed at Ft. Irwin, CA witnessed a “V” shaped UAP built by Raytheon with recovered UAP. Eric Hecker, a former Raytheon subcontractor stationed at the South Pole and claims there is a facility there, and Col. Donald Heckert, a Retired Lieutenant Colonel, Program Manager, USAF, ASD, at Wright Patterson Air Force Base.

On paper, these guys are very serious and credible witnesses. Most of them had something that resembled a thousand-yard stare. Some of them barely blinked at times, sitting for a couple of hours without moving or flinching before it was their time to speak. They looked focused and determined. They didn’t seem like guys about to tell a tale or put on a show. While Greer is profiting from documentary and book sales, these individuals don't seem to be gaining anything from coming forward.

Herrera stood up to describe the event in which his squad encountered a UAP in the jungles of Indonesia and where he implied American-led forces disarmed him and his fellow Marines and threatened their lives. He seemed visibly scared and emotional, his voice breaking a few times while he held back tears. Unfortunately, his and the other’s testimonies were driven by digital art. Red flag.

And the art wasn't even good, which really bothered me.

The Disclosure Project says it has terabytes of data from years of eyewitness accounts, declassified files, and other compelling reports. But we've seen no hard evidence from them, especially at this meeting. And beyond the fighter pilot videos we’ve all seen but don't understand, there’s been no compelling evidence to really support any UAP recovery claims. The narrative that’s being pushed by all these disclosure groups is too extraordinary and fantastical for paperwork and word-of-mouth. Sure, there have been photos throughout the years, some fascinating, but nothing concrete. Nothing worth printing on the front page of major newspapers.

The Disclosure Project claims there are dozens of cases throughout the decades where some kind of exotic UAP material or even bodies were recovered. If that's the case, there should be something a civilian scientist can test or some hardware that an aerospace engineer can examine. Or photos and videos of the many objects the Disclosure Project claims to exist under the control of secret black-site programs around the world. Programs they claim involve many people, acres of property, and what seems to be billions of dollars of R&D. But still, no evidence is smuggled out?

That’s my big criticism here. But also, there doesn’t seem to be a line or ceiling when it comes to the claims I’m hearing. UAP and disclosure groups don't seem to have a filter. They’ll dish everything they've heard: details about anti-gravity propulsion and teleportation technology, and in the next breath, little green men (like really little) or the man-bear-pig. In the space industry, we’ve learned a very important lesson: what you do say to the public is just as important as what you don’t say. Why don't we get aligned on the alien craft before moving on to interdimensional beings?

One of the digital renderings Greer pulled up during his long-winded opening statement showed a pair of earless nude humanoid figures that emerged from a UAP, a male and female alien. It looked like a rough storyboard sketch for a sci-fi B movie. The aliens looked like they fronted an ABBA cover band. Greer also declared that all extraterrestrials that visit Earth are entirely peaceful and benign––every last one. My soul almost left my body. Even if I believed most of Greer's claims, he'd lose me here. It's a wild claim on top of a pile of other wild claims. That specific declaration about universally benevolent alien beings gave the presentation a cult-like vibe.

Many of those who believe, and are vocal about UAP disclosure online, also subscribe to a constellation of related conspiracy theories with a seemingly unending thread. There are times when UAP evangelists and members of the disclosure movement use bureaucratic goals as a great Trojan horse into a destigmatized conversation about aliens. Then they hit you with it: the CIA killed JFK because he knew about aliens or something of that nature.

And some of the narratives coming from disclosure groups seem to cast others as false flags who sow more black-site deception. Greer insisted that the lives of UAP witnesses and whistleblowers were at risk after coming forward. He claimed that false flag operations using robotic aliens are used to intimidate and discredit people while showing an illustration of the fake robot alien. Greer noticeably sped through the Disclosure Project's contribution to the disclosed Navy fighter jet videos: their input is that the famous tic tac vehicle is man-made using recovered alien tech. The proof? A variety of napkin illustrations.

Greer is known globally for his UAP work, involving himself in many cases. He makes strong, definitive statements, and uses his experience briefing the Pentagon and CIA on these cases to reinforce the narrative. He claims to have been offered 2 billion dollars to stop his work and activism and has accused those involved with covering up UAPs with threatening the lives and well-being of his whistleblowers, who he does seem to genuinely care about. 

I decided to leave the Disclosure Project’s hearing around 4 PM, about 3 hours after I arrived. I had seen more than a dozen CGI renderings and had enough. It’s almost double what we typically get from NASA or the many vaporware startups out there. Each witness was given a standing ovation after their time on the podium, I used one to leave the event without making a scene or creating awkward optics for the many cameras in the room.

A thousand eyewitnesses and whistleblowers can come forward, but without any hard physical evidence, this story can't really move forward in a real way. We want to believe these whistleblowers but have to remain objective. Someone at some point has to come forward with hardware or exotic material that can be examined and tested by civilian scientists and aerospace engineers. Not just for public diligence and accountability, but to validate those whistleblowers that are telling the truth.