As is often the case, the world media under-reported what should be a game-changing event that took place at Washington DC’s storied National Press Club, close to the very centre of American political power for five days from April 29 to May 4, 2013.

The Citizen Hearing on Disclosure was convened by the Paradigm Research Group, an advocacy lobbying organization founded and headed by “beltway insider” Stephen Bassett who has for years fought a very public battle to coax, lead or force the Federal Government to acknowledge publicly that it knows a lot more about the 70 year old issue of Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs), which thanks to leaked documents, are found to have been designated as “Alien Visitation Craft” in civilian and military classified communications and reports within the American Government.

In the words of the communiqué from PRG: “The Citizen hearing (will) attempt to accomplish what the US Congress has failed to do for forty-five years: seek out the facts surrounding the most important issue of this or any other time”.

In the last few years a real flood of information on UFOs and their occupants has streamed from official sources in various parts of the world, from France to Brazil and from Russia to New Zealand. It is no longer possible to any unbiased, minimally briefed investigator to deny that a massive phenomenon is taking place all over the world, almost constantly and often in the presence of many witnesses, some of whom sport impeccable technical and moral credentials.

UFOs of many different kinds and sizes, hovering, flying in the air, diving in the water or landed on the ground can be seen in photographs, films, sketches drawn by observers and radar screen printouts, many if which come from military and intelligence agencies using the most sophisticated up-to-date equipment. No country in the world is immune from UFO sightings. So-called “close encounters” of various types, and reports collected so far (not including what is still inaccessible or unknown in classified government files) must amount to hundreds of thousands if not millions of pages.

Additionally many retired civilian and military officials, several of high rank, have given sworn public testimonies about their personal exposure and involvement in UFO-related incidents such as the 1947 Roswell crash in New Mexico and various other similar ones in which “alien vehicles” in whole or part were recovered by the USA Government. More than four hundred such witnesses were interviewed by Dr Steven Greer and a number of them spoke on record at a press conference also held at the National Press Club in 2001, under the aegis of Greer’s Disclosure Project. In 2007 a group of eminent persons gathered, always at the Press Club, at the invitation of film maker James Fox and ex-Arizona Governor Fife Symington.

Faced with an avalanche of hard evidence, most governments have had a muted response and tend to display a embarrassed attitude, often stating that they are not interested in “UFO sightings” (a position mirrored by most high-profile scientists concerned with the search for extraterrestrial life) although many give evidence to the contrary by quietly investigating the cases that come under their purview. However in recent years several nation-states have officially acknowledged their awareness and preoccupation with the matter of UFOs and suspected ETs and have released a large number of documents from their archives to the public. They include the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Italy, Spain, Turkey, Japan, Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru, Ecuador, Chile, Mexico and New Zealand.

The US Government continues to claim that it has no knowledge of any “Alien” or “Extraterrestrial” activity behind the UFO situation. But it has been confirmed for some years that this position reflects an official policy enforced under National Security directives since at least the late 1940s and is designed to hide the truth rather than reflect it. There is considerable evidence that some agencies belonging or linked to the American Government have for decades carried out very complex, secretive and expensive research and development activities, with budgets running into hundreds of billions of dollars, based on scientific and technical information they could muster on the UFOs. The official denial of the reality or significance of the phenomenon is thus intended to protect the secrecy of the programmes being pursued in connection with that self-same phenomenon.

In this situation, Bassett gathered a group of former Congressmen and women in the National Press Club to listen to the most convincing and solid information and witness the best proofs that could be assembled on UFOs, in conformity with the time honored hearing procedure which the US Congress should normally have called many years ago but consistently avoided, reportedly under pressure of the National Security organizations that consistently prevented or opposed any public acknowledgement of the issue.

The Hearing was held by six retired Congressmen who all had extensive experience in sensitive issues of national security during their respective tenures in either the House or Senate on Capitol House. For more than 30 hours they listened to some 40 witnesses, among them eminent former civil servants and senior military officers from 10 countries, and often questioned them to seek clarifications or elicit controversial points. The organizers adopted that procedure to overwhelm the ambient skepticism with a massive amount of precise and wide-ranging information, where possible backed by hard physical data and confirmed by multiple sources from diverse backgrounds and several countries.

The former Congressmen are:

Senator Mike Gravel (D-Alaska), a former Presidential hopeful who served on the Senate Finance Committee and the Ad hoc Subcommittee to study secret and Confidential Government documents.

Representative Darlene Hooley (D-Oregon), a former whip of her party and member of the Science, Space and Technology Committee.

Representative Carolyn Kilpatrick (D- Michigan), who served on the Appropriations Committee.

Representative Lynn Woolsey (D-California) who was on the Committee for Space, Science and Technology.

Representative Merrill Cook (R-Utah)

Representative Roscoe Bartlett (R-Maryland) a former member of the Committees on Space, Science and Technology and on the Armed Forces.

Some controversy arose over the fact that the six panelists were paid 20,000 Dollars each for their time, but in the US today there is no free lunch and it is understandable, though regrettable, that people no longer actively employed in the legislative branch of government may expect to be compensated for a rather strenuous work week. Some of the notable testimonies they heard may be quoted here in a few words, though not in the order in which they were heard.

Stephen Bassett as convener of the Hearing and founder of PRG pointed out in his recapitulative summary that some high ranking officials in various Presidential administrations, such as former White House Chief of Staff and head of President Obama’s transition team, John Podesta, and former New Mexico Governor and cabinet member Bill Richardson, went on record to demand a release of government documents and information on the UFO issue. Podesta significantly stated on camera: “the American people can handle the truth and…It is the law”.

Bassett announced that the proceedings of the hearing would be used by PRG to produce a new documentary on the subject, entitled Truth Embargo.

Gary Heseltine, former British police detective, a veteran investigator of UFO-related events, declared: “I now have 425 cases involving 940 police officers (in the UK). Over 70% of those cases are multiple witness officers’ cases” (conducted while in service as part of police work).

Nick Pope, former “UFO Desk” officer at the British Ministry of Defence pointed out that his Government released to date some 50,000 pages of files pertaining to UFO case investigations and that he personally ordered reopening of the famous 1980 Rendlesham case at the Bentwaters RAF base which involved “multiple UFO encounters by military personnel”, some of which were attested by radio-active anomalies and other physical traces. One of the direct witnesses to the case, Sgt James Penniston (US Air Force, Rtd.) also gave his testimony, backed by his credibility as a former Strategic Air Command (SAC) Elite Guard with US Top Secret/BI/SCI and NATO Top Secret Cosmic/ATOMAL clearances.

Going back to the fabled Roswell incident in New Mexico in 1947, nuclear physicist and veteran researcher Stanton Friedman PhD recalled that multiple military witnesses from that Base had confirmed, some under oath, that, as stated at the time and reported in the media before a denial was issued, there had indeed been a UFO crash in the region; the army recovered pieces of the downed craft as well as bodies of its occupants who were found to be from a non-human species. He was supported in this conclusion by Jesse Marcel Jr. MD , son of key witness late Major Jesse Marcel (USAAF), the first officer on the Base to see the craft wreckage, some of which he brought home and showed to his son, then a child of twelve. Another recognized expert on the Roswell story, Dr Kevin Randle, also a military veteran, testified at the hearing.

James Callahan, ex-Director of Accidents and Investigations Division of the US Federal Aviation Administration commented on a number of UFO-related situations to which he had been confronted in his official capacity, such as reports from civilian pilots, airport personnel and air traffic controllers.

Linda Moulton Howe who founded and manages the earthfiles.com and is one of the leading Ufologists in the USA and perhaps the greatest authority on cases of unexplained animal mutilations in the American West which have run into the tens of thousands,  pointed out that “ranchers have seen the glowing discs shoot beams down. They have seen the animals rise (in those beams)”. She underlined that there is “a US government policy of total indefinite silence and denial”.

Canadian UFO historian Grant Cameron produced transcripts of the papers left by the late Canadian Government scientific investigator Wilbert Smith, first made public in 1982 after his death. Smith who worked for Canada’s Transportation Department attested that “tons of ET equipment” had been collected and analyzed by US military laboratories in the fifties and that some of it was sent to him for further research and testing as well as much film material, some of which reportedly was of the downed flying saucer and bodies retrieved from the crash at Aztec, New Mexico in 1948.

Former Defence Minister and Deputy Prime Minister of Canada, the Hon Paul Hellyer, a member of the Queen’s Privy Council and the highest dignitary from a G-8 power to have formally recognized the extraterrestrial presence, gave a historical background to his own interest in the issue. He recalled receiving an unequivocal confirmation of the US Government’s involvement with ETs and their technology alleged by the late Colonel Philip Corso in his book The Day after Roswell by a top-ranking unnamed US General. Hellyer said according to his sources at least two aliens were currently stationed in an American Government facility under a cooperation agreement and quoted a well known abductee who had reported, like many others, that the “Extraterrestrials” had given him an urgent warning about the rapidly worsening environmental situation on earth and the need for people to act fast to reverse that trend, mainly induced by the current industrial exploitation of planetary resources and the polluting technologies that go with it.

There seems to be a remarkable consistency in the Extraterrestrial messages as they mostly focused on the grave danger we are in because of our misled race towards material growth. Hellyer gave full support to the call for making all information on UFOs available to the public with the possible exception of certain facts which he felt might not be disclosed as yet, in view of their possibly troubling or upsetting nature, probably to the belief system of millions of people. He did not elaborate.

Captain Robert Salas (US Air Force, Rtd.) a former Missile Launch officer, reported in detail on the incidents at the Malmstrom Minuteman base when the launch and control mechanisms of several missiles were temporarily and suddenly de-activated while UFOs came down and stopped at low altitude nearby.

Commenting on that particular testimony which is confirmed by several similar cases in other nuclear weapons launching facilities, including another witness at the Hearing Captain David Schindele (USAF, Rtd.) a launch control officer who experienced a similar situation in 1966 at the Minot ICBM base, Ex-Senator Gravel said at a press conference afterwards: “The smoking gun of the whole issue is when they saw hovering spacecraft in Wyoming and South Dakota over the ICBM silos that the missiles could not work”.

Colonel Dr Edgar Mitchell, former Apollo program astronaut and the sixth man on the moon, confirmed that awareness of an alien presence is prevalent in the NASA personnel, especially among his fellow astronauts, some of whom witnessed UFOs. He pointed out that classified Government documents refer to “Extraterrestrial Biological Entities” (EBE) as a factual reality. “There is no doubt we are being visited” was his unambiguous conclusion.

Dr Daniel Sheehan, an eminent lawyer who was chief counsel to the Jesuit Order in the USA and was professionally involved in many highly publicized cases including the Iran-Contra Congressional Investigation and Silkwood legal case, narrated how director of the CIA George Bush Sr. refused to provide information requested by president-elect Jimmy Carter, saying he had no “need to know” and referring him to the Science and Technology Service Division of the Library of Congress. Sheehan was eventually allowed to peruse in the Library, under strict conditions of confidentiality “eyes only”, the classified sections of the Bluebook Report commissioned by the US Air Force where he saw photographs of several UFOs and at least one crashed saucer carrying inscriptions in unknown characters which he noted surreptitiously on a pad he managed to smuggle out of the building.

Sheehan was not the only witness to mention the intrinsic and still poorly understood connection between UFOs, their technologies and the mental effects felt by human experiencers or contactees. It is noteworthy that the glyphs etched on the “Roswell” craft appear similar to those of some very ancient and long vanished eastern alphabets.

Steven Greer MD, founder of the Disclosure Project and convener of the first National Press Club conference of May 9, 2001, reported that he had briefed General Patrick Hughes, director of the Defence Intelligence Agency who was “not aware of the Cabal” controlling access to UFO-related intelligence. Greer mentioned that according to his information, more than two billion “chips” designed for implant in humans had been manufactured at a factory in the neighbourhood of Nellis Air Force base  within Area-51, and that directed energy weapons had been secretly built based on the physics of scalar electro-magnetic waves, without any Congressional or even Presidential authorization or supervision. Those programs along with many other “waived” special access ones (SAPS) may have been funded with some of the “2,3 trillion Dollars missing from the Pentagon’s account” according to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s statement on September 10, 2001. Greer indicated that there were reports from National Security and military sources of at least one “alien” spacecraft of a size estimated at 26 miles. The fact that those seemingly incredible allegations were taken seriously by the panel shows that on the subject of UFOs nothing is to be viewed as impossible in principle and that some of the evidence in existence is too “far out” to be easily shared with all and sundry.

Dr Sun Shih, the sole Chinese expert called to testify, is a former translator to Chairman Mao who founded the first study group on UFO related phenomena in the People’s Republic. He said he was often called at the Air Force Headquarters to give his input to the military and civilian personnel tasked with analyzing the observations made. He noted he had been shown photographs of disc-shaped UFOs over the national airspace, including some shots taken from Chinese military satellites. There were rumors of at least one “alien” craft shot or downed on the PRC’s territory though he could not confirm this. He indicated that the official viewpoint in his country was, after initial apprehension and fears of invasion, that the UFOs were non-threatening and should not be attacked. The armed forces were hence generally instructed to desist from making aggressive moves against the unknown visitors although jets were occasionally scrambled to watch and follow them.

Richard Dolan PhD, the noted UFO historian and author of the research volumes UFOs and the national Security State and other authoritative books, highlighted the fact that the two leading UFO investigative bodies in the USA (MUFON and the NUFORC) collect every year a combined average of 10,000 UFO reports. He pointed out that documents pertaining to UFOs released by the US Government so far mostly belong to a classification rank below Top Secret so that hardly any truly sensitive information is declassified so far. Dolan also read out some early public statements on the subject of UFOs by American statesmen and military leaders from the fifties and sixties and cited memoirs showing that President Truman got a briefing on UFOs from his military liaison officer Colonel Robert Landry every three months.

Dolan took pains to make clear that several times a year even now the US Air Force scrambles jets to intercept and chase away UFOs, sometimes over restricted air space and that speeds, maneuvers and technical abilities of the “alien” visitors remain well beyond the capability of any known man-made plane or missile. He noted that no one in the official chain of command in the US Government seems to be in control or even in the know and wondered who might be. A short filmed interview by Dolan of the “deathbed confession” of a former unnamed CIA officer was shown.

The man testified that in 1960 while in the CIA, he was sent with his superior, one of the Agency’s top members, to Area 51 in Nevada by President Eisenhower who wished to find out about the organization tasked with UFO-related research. According to his testimony, the President was not being informed and threatened to send an army contingent to occupy the facility if he was not briefed. The two White House envoys were shown in the S-4 section of Area 51 some of the alien vehicles and bodies and met, according to the filmed testimony, a living ET who was hosted on the Base. When they reported to the President in Washington, he appeared shaken and concerned. His last term in office ended that year. It is now known that he may have entrusted his successor John F Kennedy with that information apart from issuing a very significant if cryptic warning to the nation about the “military industrial complex” and its unwarranted and creeping power.

Gravel summed up the conclusion of the panel: “I believe the White House is hiding the truth about the extraterrestrial influence that is investigating our planet. It goes right to the White House and of course, once the White House takes a position: “well there is nothing going on”, it goes down the chain of command, everyone stands toe”.

Apart from the formal resolution issued and signed by the panel of ex-Congressmen (www.citizenhearing.org/foundation.html), a few major conclusions can be drawn from the evidence presented:

1] There is an “alien” or “non-human” factor at work on our planet and in the space around it. Many who are either afraid to admit it or who have a vested, religious, ideological, political or economic interest in denying it, have been resorting to implausible and illogical tactics to “debunk” or cloud the issue when they don’t simply refuse to take it seriously in principle and even turn abusive or threatening in certain cases.

Grant Cameron has drawn a long and complete list of possible reasons for governments, especially the US Government, to hide the facts and discredit or punish witnesses and whistle-blowers. No matter what their motives are, they stand exposed for trying to keep mankind in the dark about reality, even though a flood of feature films, TV programs, press articles and books have been spreading awareness of Alien life at all levels of society, especially among children and the young.

 According to Steven Bassett, since 1951, more than 300 American fiction movies have been produced about Aliens and spacecraft, generating revenues over US$ 50 billion 2012. This may be the capitalistic entertainment industry realizing the commercial value of Extra-terrestrial visitors for the box office, but there may also be a covert interest from the Intelligence community and Military Industrial sector in popularizing the theme of alien visits and even invasions, peaceful or violent. It is well known that almost since its beginning, Hollywood has been used by the US Government and its military and counter-espionage branches to send messages and shape public opinion at home and abroad.

In any event, the time for pleading ignorance and raising jejune objections and doubts is past. It has become as disingenuous to claim that there is no proof that UFOs are real and non-humanly crewed as pretending that the earth was created in 4004 BC which, let us not forget it, was part of the “official” cosmological doctrine of the western world as late as two hundred years ago and remains a core belief for many today.

2] There is also considerable evidence that at least some of the “aliens” (in the sense that they are not people belonging to any known nation or ethnic community) are using their very advanced technological knowledge to carry out a number of activities and operations, many of which remain mysterious, such as abductions of people (Vanity Fair, May 10, 2013, www.vanityfair.com/culture/20135/05/american-alien-abduction-science), quotes a Roper poll to point out more than half a million Americans claim to have been taken on board spaceships by “ETs”), cattle mutilations and implanting of “microchips” in humans (documented at the Citizen Hearing by Dr Roger Leir, a veteran medical investigator) along with collecting of soil and vegetal samples, lifting electricity from high power lines, pumping water from lakes, rivers and seas, diving and moving under water, tunneling and penetrating deep underground and surveying military and industrial installations, especially nuclear plants and missile bases while in some cases disabling the missiles, perhaps for their own protection or to send a message.

Among abductees prominent figures have been listed: Ronald Reagan (long before he became president), UN Secretary General Javier Perez de Cuellar  in 1989 (according to the investigation presented in the 1996 book by Budd Hopkins Witnessed) and more recently the President of the Russian Republic of Kalmykia, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov who went public on a national television show from Moscow. Perez de Cuellar refused to discuss or deny the allegation to Vanity Fair journalist Ralph Blumenthal and Reagan reportedly commented on his experience only to a few intimate friends.

The visitors (maybe not the same) also resort since more than 25 years to designing sophisticated geometric patterns on the ground, the famous “crop circles”, possibly to convey certain messages to mankind in general or to specific recipients capable of understanding their meaning. There is much evidence that at least some of the Aliens collect genetic materials from the humans they abduct and in some cases impregnate women or artificially inseminate them or take semen from human males.

The inescapable conclusion is that those who indulge in such practices are carrying out some kind of genetic engineering, breeding or hybridization programme and the ominous implications of that finding may have led many governments to hide the truth from the public. Such a conclusion was presented at a 1992 seminar held at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, convened by eminent nuclear physicist David Pritchard with the participation of the well known Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry John Mack and historian from Temple University, David Jacobs. It is worth highlighting that in spite of the popular impression that “Ufology” concerns marginal characters and tabloid sheets, it is a matter of intense scrutiny by some of the best and brightest minds in scientific research, technology, intelligence analysis and military planning.

3] The Aliens, at least those who are involved in the breeding and manipulation of life on earth may or may not have an interest in making their presence “official” and engaging in open public interaction with mankind. Indeed they may prefer to operate in secrecy or at least semi-secrecy by not lifting the veil of fear, confusion and doubt. On the other hand, some Aliens seem to show great concern for the fate of the planet and all creatures on it, and though they don’t intervene, at least not directly and visibly in “our” affairs, they issue warnings and put pressure in various ways.

According to various contactees and researchers, the Aliens have long ago concluded, or perhaps always knew, that governments don’t have the power to change important things or control the populations for good so that they act in other ways on the “zeitgeist”, to influence mankind subliminally or subconsciously. There is a lot of controversy in ufological and exopolitical circles on whether and to what extent some Aliens may be cooperating with certain agencies in certain governments, particularly the US Government, as various statements during the hearing, such as the allegation by Paul Hellyer, implied.

It would appear however that any such contacts are rather one sided as the human side does not seem to have much if any control over the alien counterparts who retain the ability to act as they please if only because the parties are so unequal. An implication of the many reported and documented cases of UFOs tampering at will by remote control with the atomic weapons of nuclear powers is that those powers don’t have a free and sovereign control of these weapons and at some level must be aware of that limitation which may make the stockpiling of such arsenals appear futile.

4] At least some Aliens appear to play a seminal role in transferring and launching new technologies which have revolutionized life on earth in the last half a century more than all the changes that occurred in previous centuries. There are many accounts from people in positions of authority tracing such breakthroughs as lasers, fiber optics, silicon chips, artificial intelligence, the Internet, quantum and cloud computing and nano-technology to the reverse engineering of “exotic” samples at the Foreign Technology desk of the Pentagon, ATIC at Wright Patterson Base, DARPA, Area 51’s Dreamland, Rand and other known and unknown public and corporate laboratories and think tanks. Other, even more game-changing “discoveries” are in the pipeline, many locked in the more than five thousand patents that the US Government took “off the table” by secrecy orders for national security reasons since 1951 (G C Schultz, Center for Investigative Reporting, 04-16-13, www.wired.com/threatlevel/2013/04/gov-secrecy-orders-on-patents/).

Although the sheer volume of innovation appears too massive to be absorbed by the body politic and the economy in a short span of time, some of the most critical opportunities in the areas of energy generation, high speed propulsion and new materials are clearly being hidden, restricted and denied by those who have access to them in the government or in the private sector out of sheer greed and lust for power.

While the US Military-Industrial complex wishes to control and dominate “battlefield earth” for generations to come and thus fears all possible rivals, major corporations wish to continue as long as possible their exploitation of fossil fuels and other resources in which they have gigantic investments. They arguably fear above all the impact of a decentralized energy generation process which would make power plants, stations and grids redundant and would provide people free, potentially unlimited access to electricity on a local or even individual basis. The global ambitions and the financial income of some dominant elites are indisputably threatened by the ongoing process of ET-inspired transition to new form of socio-political and economic organization.

Given that elected government officials in the USA and other countries even at the highest level seem to have incomplete or scant knowledge of the “Alien” situation, the inescapable conclusion is that other, not publicly identified and unelected persons and agencies are managing it and not keeping executive and legislative decision-makers informed. The existence of a secret government at least in the USA, over and above the “official” one has been often alluded to by eminent figures, including a few US Presidents themselves. The UFO “enigma” is one telltale sign that this allegation is no mere conspiracy theory. In this regard one may wonder who in the United States has the authority or ability to deny access to UFO-related information to the US President, the chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, the Intelligence Director of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Director of the CIA as has been the case time and again?

5] The fact that the Aliens present here must all be more developed, technically if not biologically and mentally, than us, leads us to think that they must be much older in the scale of evolution. Indeed many of the statements reported by abductees as well as by government and military-related sources confirm that the Aliens are far ahead of us in many if not all areas to the extent that their understanding and awareness of the universal reality is too complex for our minds. That lends credence to the often heard claim that they have been coming to earth for thousands of “our” years, have played a critical role in our evolution, even allegedly genetically engineering our homo sapiens ancestors and shaping our religious beliefs, either by sending us “prophets” or “gods” to teach us or by projecting visions of the icons and symbols which many people have worshipped through the ages and still do.

6] Finally, the irruption on the world stage of the ET factor is likely to bring about radical geo-political changes once inter-national and inter-civilisational divisions fade into relative insignificance compared with mankind’s natural unity and solidarity in the midst of a densely populated universe or multiverse teeming with life, some much more evolved and sophisticated than our own. What effect that would have is still a matter of speculation. Would it lead to further disorder and strife or to the rapid formation of a global government over and above discredited and collapsing national authorities once their inability to face the ET issue and their failure to tell the truth to their citizens are exposed? Would the power shift already taking place in the world – from G-7 to BRICS, from West to East – accelerate or would a new balance emerge as in the 1815 Vienna Congress or the 1945 Yalta Summit?

The answers to those questions may be forthcoming in the next few years and the recent Washington DC Hearing provided a sounding board to ensure they are no longer ignored.