Mobilizing Against Government Disinformation: A Call to Action on UAP

By Kevin Wright

Please note that the following column appeared in the March 24, 2024 digital edition of
the Roswell Daily Record and is republished with permission.

Anyone reading my opinion pieces and weekly column here at the Roswell Daily Record knows I’m a big advocate for people getting loud with their local papers and elected officials – and just about anyone else – about Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) truth and transparency. Recent developments underscore the urgency of this mission.

In December 2022, Congress established the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) with a mandate to investigate UAP. One of AARO’s tasks was to compile a report detailing the historical record of the US Intelligence Community’s involvement in UAP dating back to 1945, predating the infamous Roswell incident of 1947.

AARO recently released the “Report on the Historical Record of US Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Vol. 1” to fulfill that mandate from Congress. However, many view the report as another attempt to obscure what some elements of government, and possibly private aerospace defense contractors, know about UAP.

From the AARO report’s conclusion: “To date, AARO has not discovered any empirical evidence that any sighting of a UAP represented off-world technology or the existence a [sic] classified program that had not been properly reported to Congress. Investigative efforts determined that most sightings were the result of misidentification of ordinary objects and phenomena. Although many UAP reports remain unsolved, AARO assesses that if additional, quality data were available, most of these cases also could be identified and resolved as ordinary objects or phenomena.”

The report’s tissue-thin analysis fell woefully short of providing the comprehensive review Congress intended. After all, we are discussing a record of investigating UAP dating back 80 years. Did AARO carefully analyze and review that record in a paltry 63 pages? The short answer is no.

More alarming, rather than a mere whitewash of the government’s role, particularly that of the Intelligence Community, in UAP investigations, it appears to be part of a more extensive disinformation campaign prohibited by Executive Order 12333 against the American people.

Executive Order 12333 explicitly prohibits covert actions “intended to influence United States political processes, public opinion, policies, or media.” However, the release of this report and the events leading up to it appear to violate this executive order.

Government-orchestrated disinformation campaigns typically involve disseminating false or misleading information through various media channels, including traditional outlets and social media platforms. The release of such disinformation is often strategically timed to coincide with specific events or influence public opinion during critical periods, the success of which depends partly on media literacy or a lack thereof.

The involvement of former AARO Director Sean Kirkpatrick in writing opinion columns previewing the report’s findings, laying the groundwork for AARO’s narrative, is troublesome. The selective invitation to handpicked reporters who appear to have been all too willing to swallow hook-line-and-sinker the preview of the report’s contents before its release to the public without apparent opposition is even more troubling. The report and its release smack of a manipulative process aimed at shaping a predetermined narrative through media channels to influence public opinion that there’s nothing to the UAP story and to thwart further Congressional investigations and hearings into UAP and alleged crash retrieval and reverse engineering programs.

In other words, AARO wrote a report filled with inaccuracies and misinformation. The former Director of AARO starts laying the groundwork, previewing findings through shoddy opinion columns. Then, strategically timed on the eve of public release, AARO invites handpicked media, many of whom are less than informed on the overall UAP subject and its history and eager to curry favor, to preview the report’s findings, shaping the public’s perception and opinion on what the government knows about UAP.

We can not rely on the Department of Defense, AARO, the Intelligence Community, or even the media to give us what we have a right to know: the truth. That’s why it is now even more plainly evident that the public, everyday citizens, need to start organizing in their local communities, mobilizing their friends and neighbors, and writing to their local papers and elected officials. It’s time to make lazy and uninformed journalists, and their media outlets do their jobs, ask tough questions and investigate. It’s time to hold our elected officials’ feet to the burning fire of our right to know. It’s time every candidate for office takes a UAP transparency pledge.

Many throughout the country are already doing their part to educate the people on UAP. There are websites dedicated to cataloging official statements, quotes from astronauts and government officials, and archiving government documents released publicly, usually following Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests. Scientists and former military and government officials are writing white papers on UAP. And there are people throughout the country working to mobilize voters for the cause of transparency. Some create call scripts so voters can call their Member of Congress with a specific request to hold hearings or pass legislation. Others provide real-time information and analysis of the UAP issue and what’s happening on Capital Hill.

Working with Daniel Sheehan’s New Paradigm Institute, we’ve been building a grassroots movement called Citizens for Disclosure, which helps people in their local communities to start petition campaigns, hold rallies, and contact their elected representatives. One of the first events of this movement occurred this past week in New York City; more are in the planning stages.

The bottom line is we have a right to know the truth about UAP and what is being hidden from us by elements inside our government. We have a right to an honest, open, and transparent government that doesn’t use the media as useful idiots to disseminate disinformation. We have a right to a press that does its job. We’ll never get the answers we have a right to until we take the initiative to demand them. We have to hold the complacent media and dishonest government accountable. The time is now for us all to do our part.