The following is an op-ed from MUFON President Jan Harzan.
UFOs are REAL, ETs EXIST, and there is a lot more to the story than that, but does anybody really care? I know it sounds harsh, but that is my question. Well sure, WE do. Those of us who have had personal experiences or are open minded enough to understand the reality of what is going on around us every day on this planet. But what about the rest of humanity? Do they really care? Most people seem to be more interested in whether their Steelers won last Saturday, or if they have enough money in their bank account to pay the rent this month, or what they are going to do this weekend doing and with whom, than they are about the subject of UFOs and Extraterrestrials.
I base this observation on the fact that we had probably the biggest NEWS day in UFO History in the last 50 years when the NY Times broke the front-page story about the Pentagon’s secret UFO program, even though the pentagon tried to cool the story by saying it stopped funding the program in 2012 because it had better use for the funds. Then Luis Elizondo, the project lead confirmed it is still running today with the help of CIA and Navy funding. BIG NEWS! In fact it was headline news for several months on over 60 major news programs and publications (CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, NBC to name a few) and now what? Crickets…People are off worrying about those Steelers, working hard to pay the rent, and planning what their weekend will look like without much regard for UFOs or Extraterrestrials.
Now we are told that evidence is being collected and tested that will once and for all conclusively prove that we are not alone. I certainly hope so. But are we setting ourselves up for a repeat of the 1996 disclosure by NASA and then President Clinton holding a nationally televised news conference that we had found life on MARS. You may recall NASA scientist John McKay proudly proclaiming that “the universe is teeming with life” only to be run over by a Mack Truck of venomous hate mail from the “scientific community” questioning the findings and refuting it every chance they got. It seems in science it is only good if you are the one discovering it, otherwise forget supporting colleagues in their pursuit of the truth. Even today, twenty-two years later there is still chatter on the internet debunking the MARS Rock as it became known. Will the same fate await the test results of non-terrestrial matter being studied at present? I certainly hope not.
It reminds me of a conversation I had with Dr. Steven Greer just prior to the 2001 Disclosure Project held at the Washington Press Club. He shared with me his thoughts that once the press conference was over the world would know the truth about UFOs and disclosure would be done. I like everyone else was hopeful, but politely cautioned him that our biggest enemy in the search for UFO truth is not the government, nor the CIA, nor the NSA, it is the ability of the human mind to deny the truth even when the facts are right in front of it. I hope and pray it will be different this time. It is time for the paradigm to change.