2021 in Review

And the Year’s Top UFO Story is …

The UAP report was big. The Gillibrand initiative is huge. But does anyone recall what Mitt Romney told CNN’s Jake Tapper in June?

THE UFO SAGA UNFOLDING in the United States is so inexplicably weird, contradictory and groundbreaking that making an argument for what constitutes the year’s “top” UFO story on this beat offers the prognosticator broad latitude — and these year-end lists are arbitrary, anyway. There is no “right” answer.

That said, I’m going to make a case for the wrong answer — a brief exchange back in June on CNN that didn’t appear to resonate even with the journalist whose question elicited the extraordinary response in the first place.

The “right” answer, of course, would be something like the big splash UAP report released by the Director of National Intelligence in June. UFO skeptics triumphantly painted the public summary of that report as a “nothingburger” (“It didn’t say they were aliens!”) but it — and, more likely, the contents of the classified portion — was apparently enough to light a fire under New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, who worked with her colleagues across the political aisle to create a permanent office jointly administered by the Pentagon and the DNI to ramp up the government’s investigation of UAPs.

That’s also a big deal … a huge deal, actually. It ensures that UFOs will remain in the public eye, and it gives the press an official, public policy reason to keep asking questions and reporting their findings.

So Much News in So Little Time

This was also the year in which the Pentagon’s former UFO investigator, Luis Elizondo, was propelled into the public eye, by way of an appearance on a 60 Minutes segment (along with two U.S. Navy pilots who described their own encounters) that actually took the UAP phenomenon seriously. Elizondo’s subsequent remarks about the phenomenon, made mostly in the realm of Podcastland, have remained safely sequestered from the mainstream. Most Americans have probably never heard of him.

In the context of 70 years of American ufology, these were extraordinary and encouraging developments — all occurring within a 7-month period. In the field of ufology, that’s light-speed.

Also encouraging was the fact that we had people like NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and DNI Avril Haines, and others, making comments that clearly leave the door open to the alien hypothesis.

But none of them went further than Sen. Mitt Romney, a former Republican presidential nominee from Massachusetts (and now Utah).

Shortly after the DNI released a brief summary of the UAP report, Romney appeared on CNN with State of the Union host Jake Tapper. Asked about the UAP report, Romney made what was arguably the most intriguing and important statement that has ever been made by a nationally-known elected official about UFOs on a mainstream media outlet.

The Exchange on CNN:

Here’s Tapper asking the question:

The Director of National Intelligence just a few days ago released a new report on 144 sightings of what they call ‘unidentified aerial phenomena.’ Virtually all of them remain unexplained. Whatever these are, they appear to not only be technology that the United States does not have, but technology that we cannot even explain. I know a lot of people joke about this, but you’re a national security hawk. How concerned are you about these objects and where do you think they come from?

Here’s Romney’s verbatim response, broken into three parts with each followed by commentary:

Well, I don’t believe they’re coming from foreign adversaries. If they were, why, that would suggest that they have a technology which is in a whole different sphere than anything we understand, and frankly China and Russia just aren’t there, and neither are we, by the way. So I’m not worried about it from a national security standpoint.

What’s striking is the absolute ease and confidence with which Romney unambiguously rules out literally all man-made causes — including the United States. There is no wiggle room here: “Frankly, China and Russia just aren’t there, and neither are we, by the way.”

A “national security hawk” who thought there was even a glimmer of a chance that the UAPs in question were made and operated by an adversary could easily have flagged or even feigned his “concern” without creating a problem for himself later on. Romney could have left himself an out, he could have left China and/or Russia on the table, even if they were teetering on the edge of the table.

He could even have given a nod to the UFO skeptic’s go-to favorite explanation: A balloon — particularly since, in fact, one UAP case the DNI felt comfortable saying had been solved was a balloon.

But he didn’t.

If for some reason these came from another, ah, system, if you will, another alien society, which I frankly would find hard to believe, but I guess all things are possible, that would be fascinating, interesting. I know there are, they say trillions of galaxies out there, so who knows what might have developed somewhere else? But that would make me more fascinated, not fearful.

In journalism, this is a variation of what’s called a non-denial denial, in which the person being interviewed or quoted appears to deny “X,” but in fact offers no actual, specific rebuttal of “X,” with “X” in this case being: “They’re aliens.” Romney cleverly presents the alien scenario as a hypothetical — which, really, is all it can be: “If” they’re aliens, he would find that “hard to believe.” Then he circles back to lend support to the hypothesis: There are trillions of galaxies out there, so who knows?

“I guess I also think that we have a lot more significant challenges ahead of us right here and now than worrying about those things. The emergence of China as the dominant player in the world, that gives me concern. The warming of our planet, that gives me concern. The amount of debt we’re taking on as a nation, that gives me a concern. So I’d focus on those things, and infrastructure, before I’d give a lot of attention to unidentified flying objects.”

Sen. Romney is no Lue Elizondo; he’s not going to do a non-disclosure agreement tapdance on CNN. So here he (wisely) moves the conversation back to “normal” issues, signaling to Tapper that’s really all he can and/or will say about UFOs.

The Quintessential Media UFO Moment

In multiple ways, the Romney interview perfectly encapsulated all the main features that characterize where the UFO story stands as we head into 2022:

It was, to crib the title of Australian journalist Ross Coulhart’s recent book, in plain sight. Not a UFO podcast or YouTube interview heard by a few thousand people. It happened on a major American cable news network on CNN’s flagship Sunday morning public affairs program, State of the Union.

There was also the deliberate ambiguity of the remark that related directly to aliens. It’s safe to say that on this count, Elizondo is the champion of the read-between-the-lines statement about what he knows about UFOs, but Romney’s statement is definitely a contender.

And one should note: He could have pushed “aliens” off the table along with China and Russia. He could have said, “Frankly, I don’t think they’re aliens,” or “I don’t believe they’re aliens,” or “the idea that they might be aliens is crazy, absurd,” etc. There are dozens of ways Romney could have left the topic in the realm where “a lot of people joke about this.” He didn’t joke about it.

Finally, the failure of the mainstream press to step up was on full, magnified display. Tapper could have pursued the topic any number of ways:

• “Without violating your national security oath, can you give us any idea as to why you are so certain they’re not made by China or Russia”?
• Or: “Have you seen any videos of UAPs that have not been made public, and if so, how did you react to them?”
• Or even: “The DNI identified one UAP as a deflating balloon. How likely do you think it is that the 144 cases that remain unidentified are similarly prosaic?” And so on.

No, Tapper stood down and settled back into his comfort zone.

Disclosure, Big and Small

Disclosure is usually framed in terms of a live formal announcement by the President of the United States — from the Oval Office, presumably, given the import — to the American public. That’s disclosure with a capital “D,” and if what current and former government officials are hinting is true, that must happen at some point.

What Romney gave us was an opening act for Biden, or whoever succeeds him: soft disclosure in front of a green screen on CNN’s State of the Union.

Mark your calendar. Much is made in ufology of the date Dec. 17, 2017, which is when The New York Times put UFOs on the front page. Let the record show that June 27, 2021 went one better: This was the day a widely respected U.S. senator well-versed in national security issues — and, more crucially, privy to classified data on the UAP phenomenon — said on CNN that he doesn’t believe UFOs are made or operated by human beings.

President Biden, you’re up.

Writer/producer Bryce Zabel co-hosts the popular new podcast Need to Know with Coulthart and Zabel that can be found on all major platforms from Apple to Spotify. Bryce also publishes and edits Trail of the Saucers, a writers’ collective that focuses on UAP news, history, culture, and analysis. Here are several more compelling pieces from the archives —