The following is an excerpt from personal memoirs I’m currently working on. It summarizes my thoughts on the UFO phenomenon which some might find interesting, intriguing, and maybe even disturbing.
By Robert A. Vella
Regarding UFOs, I’ll state the following as concisely as I can and encourage readers to set aside any preconceived notions and honestly study the facts of the phenomenon for themselves. Why? Because there are no greater questions facing the human race than the nature of the cosmos and our place in it. Based on my own studies, which have been lengthy and exhaustive, I can assert without reservation that the UFO phenomenon is absolutely real. What these objects are and what intelligence controls them is a separate issue, and I do not know the answers. First of all, unidentified flying objects have been seen, documented, and even worshiped since at least the dawn of agricultural civilization some 10,000 years ago. The prevailing myth that UFO sightings began after WWII and only occur in the U.S. is demonstrably false. Prehistoric petroglyphs (a.k.a. rock art) found all across the globe depict various styles of unusual humanoid figures and airborne objects. The ancient Sumerians described a race of godlike super-beings called the Anunnaki in their cuneiform texts and pictographs. The Book of Enoch, an early Hebrew religious text which was excluded from the Biblical canon by the Council of Nicaea in the 4th century, describes UFO-like occurrences such as the author being taken high above the Earth in what can best be interpreted as a space ship. Many examples of Renaissance paintings, such as The Annunciation of St Emidus by Carlos Crivelli (1486), portray objects in the sky which unmistakably look like the modern images of “flying saucers.” And, in recent times, thousands of photographs by civilian and military observers have documented UFOs in virtually every country and region on this planet. Yes, some of these photos were faked; but, the rest have withstood thorough scrutiny from journalists and technical experts. If all these were simply random and isolated examples, then drawing any sort of profound conclusion about them would be absurd. On the contrary, the weight of this circumstantial evidence is compelling and cannot be flippantly dismissed as unrelated incidents of misidentification, hallucination, hyperbole, and outright dishonesty. And, as more and more governments are releasing previously confidential information while publicly admitting that certain UFO sightings are indeed real, the compelling nature of this phenomenon is only intensifying. Since December 2017 when the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was begrudgingly acknowledged, the U.S. government has been spurred by further internal leaks to disseminate video evidence and other documentation on several UFO encounters with the U.S. Navy including incidents in 2004, 2014-2015, and 2019 involving the USS Nimitz, USS Theodore Roosevelt, and USS Omaha off both the Pacific and Atlantic coasts. I strongly urge everyone, especially those who have made-up their minds about UFOs without diligently examining the available facts, to read Encounter in Rendlesham Forest – The Inside Story of the World’s Best-Documented UFO Incident by former U.K. Ministry of Defense (MoD) official Nick Pope (who led the U.K.’s UFO project from 1991 to 1994) which objectively details direct contact with UFOs by U.S. Air Force personnel – notably John Burroughs, Jim Penniston, and Charles Halt – at the twin RAF Bentwaters/RAF Woodbridge nuclear armed bases in England from December 26-28 1980 and which reveals systematic attempts by the U.S. and U.K. governments to conceal the incident from the public (note: Margaret Thatcher – who was U.K. Prime Minister at that time – vociferously told journalist Georgina Bruni in 1997, “You can’t tell the people!” i.e. about the reality of UFOs.). Pope’s harshest criticism is not directed towards those government officials, whom he sees as understandably acting with prudence, but towards both pro and con activists within the UFO community as well as within the news media who acted irresponsibly by spreading misinformation tailored to suit their opposing viewpoints. Why would government secrecy on UFOs be prudent? That is the big question here which gets to the crux of the UFO phenomenon. If the intelligence controlling real UFOs was a foreign power (e.g. China or Russia), then the U.S. and its allies would certainly want to keep it a secret because the acknowledgement of far superior military technology by its adversaries would generate fear and distrust among the populace. On the other hand, adversaries typically relish the opportunity to publicly humiliate their opponents as President Harry Truman did to Imperial Japan in 1945 after the U.S. developed the atomic bomb (but before dropping it on Hiroshima and Nagasaki); however, no friendly or unfriendly power including the U.S. has ever claimed UFOs to be their technology. If the intelligence behind UFOs was extraterrestrial, then the U.S. reaction would depend upon what was known about it. If it was deemed hostile, then the U.S. government would surely suppress the information. If it was not seen as hostile or if the government didn’t know one way or the other, then the U.S. would act as it has apparently been acting all along – to say as little as possible while downplaying any perception of it by the public as a cover story for efforts to replicate (i.e. reverse engineer) its advanced technology before foreign powers are able to. There are other possibilities too with one that is even more intriguing. What if the intelligence behind UFOs was terrestrial but not contemporaneously human with the present time? What if it was a highly evolved race native to Earth or had colonized Earth long ago or had travelled back in time from the future? That would mean that we modern-day humans might not be the masters of our planet! Think of the shock effect such a revelation would have on the world population. Government reliance on the “consent of the people” would collapse almost instantaneously. Religion, which institutionalizes the second most effective structure for social control, would have its theological foundations ripped asunder. What would compel religious followers to continue worshipping an almighty god if humankind was subordinate to mortal yet superior beings? Obviously, governments could never willingly allow the public to become aware of such a reality. The resulting chaos would be calamitous. This disturbing possibility is analogous to an ant farm where most of the colony scurries about doing their daily routine unawares while a few curious individuals catch occasional glimpses of something they can’t understand (i.e. their human overseers). So, here’s the bottom line on UFOs. They are here and we – at least the public – do not know what they are. As you contemplate this, consider what the government is telling you. If they release verifiable information, no matter how slowly, we shouldn’t have too much to worry about. But if they clam-up, destroy evidence, and intimidate witnesses into silence, then I suspect we would have plenty to worry about.
The Secular Jurist 