The Age of Disclosure

Are we living in the Age of Disclosure? We’re certainly living in the age of the documentary film, The Age of Disclosure (Prime Video).

Passionate disclosurists such as Danny Sheehan and the New Paradigm Institute energetically plugged the film’s debut along with plugging Global Disclosure Day (October 19, 2025), as if they were readying us for the imminent Apocalypse. Podcaster Colin Cowherd interviewed Dan Farah, director of The Age of Disclosure, because it was “the number one movie on Prime.” The fanfare leading up to the film’s debut in late 2025 excited audiences with the equivalent of Chicken Little’s, “the sky is falling.” Would we learn secrets kept by the Pentagon for 80 years? Would we learn that the US government has retrieved crashed space ships and dissected alien biologics? Would we learn of reversed alien technology that jump-started AI and related industries? Would we learn that AI dispensed military secrets that make the American military the most powerful on our planet?

My wife, Karen, and I raised the drawbridge, posted lookout guards on the parapets, starved the crocodiles in the moat to make them aggressive to intruders. Then we sat down in our television room undisturbed to watch The Age of Disclosure. Nobody interrupted us. We chomped on our popcorn with eyes glued to the screen.

What we saw, disappointingly, was the same ol’ material we’ve been viewing for nearly eight decades. The film’s central question was this: are UAP (Unidentified Aerospace Phenomena) real? Well, this question was answered already in Donald Keyhoe’s 1950 best seller, The Flying Saucers Are Real. Nothing in this 2025 documentary said anything qualitatively new that had not been part of the discussion for three-quarters of a century. Same ol’ criticism of government conspiracy. Some newer cases, to be sure. But structurally the same ol’ documentation of sitings aimed at stressing their importance.

“Here we go…again,” writes Skeptic editor Michael Shermer.

“Another documentary film about how disclosure of alien contact is imminent….The Age of Disclosure is packaged and produced so well that naïve viewers may come away thinking that something strikingly original, shockingly new, and world-shaking is about to be loosed among the world….We have been hearing of pending disclosure for half a century and are always left wanting….Alas, it is not to be. Every fact, opinion, or anecdote in the film has been rehearsed elsewhere in recent years.”

One kinda new theme surprised me. The Age of Disclosure introduced a new hero, Luis Elizondo. My wife and I could put three handfuls of popcorn into our mouths during each long scene where we watched Lou silently staring up at US government buildings, pensively pondering the significance of contact with nonhuman extraterrestrial civilizations.  Sigh. Might Elizando become a new shaman, connecting earth with what lies beyond the heavens?

Shermer and I agree on another point. For a superior film on the same theme, try James Fox’s films, such as  The Phenomenon.

UAP, Government Cover-Up, and the Washington Oracle

In a Substack post, “UAP disclosurism compromises US national security! Really?,” I attempted to formulate the puzzles and paradoxes endemic to the UAP Disclosure movement. Like rear wheels spinning in a Minnesota snow bank that prevent the car from moving forward, ufologists have been spinning the same responses to unanswerable questions from generation to generation. Are UAP real? Why is the government hiding the truth? Are we being visited by extraterrestrial intelligences? Are aliens already living among us?

Here is the kind of thing we keep running into in disclosurism. Popular UFO columnist Ross Coulthart claims that a crashed alien spacecraft was so large that the only option was for the US military to construct a building around it in the country where it was found. Now, that’s exciting news. Just where is it? Can we go take a look? No. Coulthart told an interviewer on the Project Unity Podcast that he knows exactly where the craft is, but he won’t say. It is my observation that the cloak of secrecy increases our feeling that UAP are important. So disclosurists repeatedly offer the same cocktail: tease and postpone; tease and postpone; tease and postpone.

Keeping the Questions Hanging Unanswered

My observation is this: it is important to disclosurists that such questions never get definitively answered. Why? This puzzles me.

Like the Pythia priestesses discerning the messages of Apollo at Delphi — Delphi was the omphalos of the ancient Greek world — the oracles UAP disclosurists receive today are nearly always ambiguous. Just what could the messages mean? Disclosurists gather repeatedly at the US Capitol in Washington, DC, today’s American omphalus. Those testifying declare that UAP are real and that we share our cosmos with nonhuman intelligences. Almost nobody resists. Congressman Tim Burchett (R-Tennessee) accuses his own government of a cover-up. And then everyone goes home until the next set of hearings gets scheduled. The drama gets repeated over and over.

Perhaps the best-known Pythia priestess in the disclosure army is medical doctor turned ufologist, Steven Greer. In 1993, he founded the Disclosure Project. Greer believes that UAP are craft ferrying extraterrestrials to Earth. He regularly interviews government authorities and files for freedom of information documents. He pesters Washington like the Delphi priestesses pestered Apollo.

Also among the oracle’s priestesses we find the exciting public interest lawyer mentioned above, Daniel Sheehan. Sheehan and the New Paradigms Institute have issued a “new call to action” when presenting at the Contact in the Desert conference May 29-June 2, 2025. See: “Investigate the Use of Disonfo & Classification Abuse.” We also find disclosurists within the US government. U.S. Representative Anna Paulina Luna (R-Florida), who, according to MUFON investigator Bob Spearing, believes that “interdimensional beings” exist, is a member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform. She has vowed to get to the bottom of the UAP phenomenon and has even spoken to some very reliable witnesses such as F-15 pilots. And she has also written directly to Secretary of State Marco Rubio.

Why has Representative Luna not yet definitively disclosed the truth? Because there exists a “national security state” that clandestinely hides the truth from Congress for its own purposes. This means that even if Congress demanded disclosure, the so-called national security state would resist declassifying the information it possesses.

Curiously, Steven Greer suspects that Luis Elizando and Christopher Mellon might belong to a government cabal — to the national security state — to press the national security threat scenario. Greer fears some UAP disclosurists in cahoots with the Pentagon might plan a false flag incident, blaming space aliens, and ask for increased funding for national defence. For this reason, Greer recommends viewers boycott the film, The Age of Disclosure.

So, despite the persistence of these disclosurists, the tires keep spinning. When, oh when, will the spinning tires take traction? Please don’t tell me it’s imminent.

Wag skeptics, V.J. Ballester-Olmos and Luis Cayetano, have published a lengthy and detailed report, “On the AAWSAP-AATIP Confusion.” They speculate. Had extraterrestrial intelligence really wanted to communicate with us on Earth, after all this time, such intelligence would have found a way to succeed. “We feel that any entity that needs almost 80 years to pose a question or convey a meaning to be understood does not seem very intelligent” (p.64).

Well, despite such pot shots, I maintain a fascination and appreciation for Danny Sheehan and such colleagues who sustain vigorous study of UAP, chronicle events, exact scientific investigative methods, and interview those who have valuable input. There is definitely a mystery here that needs to be resolved.

Concluding Observations and Hypotheses on the Age of Disclosure

Let me repeat some observations and hypotheses I’ve been considering. I call my surmises discourse clarification.

First, it is my observation that disclosurism today is virtually unchanged from what we saw already in the early 1950s. Donald Keyhoe and other popular flying saucer authors of that era depicted a recalcitrant government hiding the truth. The truth the government was hiding had to do with ETI. National security was the smokescreen to keep ETI knowledge secret. So Keyhoe and others claimed. And, of course, this claim was confirmed during the Project Blue Book era.

Curiously, government secrecy is built right into the comprehensive category, the UFO phenomenon. One of the most widely read of today’s UAP interpreters, D.W. Pasulka, partially resolves the earlier puzzlement. She contends that the US government purposefully confuses us. “We’re talking about why the government is not being forthcoming….Their intention is to make it confusing. And they’ve done a very good job of that.”

Second, despite frequently used words such as ‘imminent’, we are no closer today than we were 75 years ago to the anticipated great moment of revelation. Why? I hypothesize that we find living without disclosure is more exciting than obtaining what information Washington actually has. No matter what Washington reveals, we still want to say that Uncle Sam is hiding something. Uncle Sam’s successful secrecy only makes us all the more admire the power of the state.

There is a paradoxical advantage to this. Without final disclosure, ufologists can continue to project imaginaries onto Uncle Sam without fear of factual refutation. A curious kind of paradox is at work: the demand for disclosure is more important than the actual disclosure itself.

Third, the hidden entelechy at work here is power. Of all things the human spirit desires, power is the most coveted. Notions of advanced extraterrestrial civilizations with the power to traverse the immense distances between star systems tantalize our imaginations. Such power could just as easily destroy as save. To add to this imaginary, the notion that the US military has benefited from reverse engineering advanced alien technology only increases our respect for American power. Alien power and American power together awe us. Alien power sanctifies American power. Without ever getting definitive and final disclosure, we can float ecstatically and perpetually in the sea of awe.

Fourth, my observation is that for decades, ufologists have interpreted UAP as benign if not benevolent. In my book, UFOs–God’s Chariots?, I describe how extraterrestrials have become, for many, our celestial saviors. But disclosurists are ambiguous. Visiting space aliens could be benevolent or hostile. Or some of each. Disclosurists have ascribed to the Pentagon the fear that alien craft in our skies pose a security risk. This justifies Pentagon secrecy. Ufologists feel empowered by knowing the truth while trying to get the Pentagon to admit it.

Here is a new twist. At least at a certain level. Luis Elizondo and some Silicon Valley conspirators are confusing things. Ufologists are themselves categorizing UAP as a security threat. These ufologists believe they can justify expanding the military budget to defend Earth from an interplanetary invasion. Those who know the UFO phenomenon well — such as Jensine Andresen — are aware that there is no evidence of military threat coming from either UFO experiencers or extraterrestrial visitors. Therefore, this new movement to describe UAP as a security threat is misleading. The puzzles only multiply.

These are my observations and hypotheses. By no means is this the last word. Like a dust devil, disclosurism kicks up enough swirling to blur our vision and cause some stumbling.

Patheos SR 1211. The Age of Disclosure

Patheos SR 1177 UFO 7. Are UFOs demonic?

Patheos SR 1184 UFO 14 Against UAP Disclosure?

Patheos SR 1194, UFO 24. Demons and UAP in the Pentagon

Patheos SR 1195, UFO 25. UAP in the Nation of Islam?

Substack SR 1198, UFO 28. UFOs, UAP, and Science Plus

Substack SR 1199, UFO 29. After the Flying Saucers Came

Patheos SR 1200. K2-18b: New Space Neighbors?

Substack SR 1201. UFO 31. Convergence of AI, NHI, and ETI

Substack SR 1202. UFO 32. UFOs are Politically Dangerous! Really? Is Tony Milligan correct about Disclosurism?

Substack SR 1203 UFO 33. Ufology is a new religion! Really? D.W. Pasulka on UAP as Techno-Religion

Substack SR 1204. UFO 34. UFOs are Demonic! Really? Is Daniel O’Connor correct about UAP and Satan?

Substack SR 1205 UFO 35. UAP disclosurism compromises US national security! Really? The warnings of Jeremy McGowan and Jensine Andresen

Substack SR 1206. UFO 36. Ufology is Corrupt! Really?

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Meet Ted Peters. Ted Peters directs traffic at the intersection of science, religion, and ethics. Ted is an emeritus professor at the Graduate Theological Union, where he co-edits the journal, Theology and Science, with Robert John Russell on behalf of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, California, USA.

In the field of Ufology, Ted served one stint as Louisiana State Director of Investigations for MUFON. Currently he holds active membership in the Society for UAP Studies and the Scientific Coalition for UAP Studies. He is author of UFOs: God’s Chariots? Spirituality, Ancient Aliens, and Religious Yearnings in the Age of Extraterrestrials (Career Press New Page Books, 2014).

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