After a long while out of the spotlight, the UFO topic has been having an extended run in the public eye since 2017, when The New York Times published its famous article by Leslie Kean and Ralph Blumenthal, setting off a sequence of events that led to the establishment of the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). And last week, things got even spicier with the bombshell revelations from ‘UFO whistleblower’ David Grusch, a former intelligence agent, who claimed that the US government not only had extraterrestrial vehicles in its possession, but even aliens themselves.
For many, the growing chorus of whistleblowers and government insiders all claiming that the government has evidence of non-human craft visiting our planet might seem convincing. But those with an understanding of the history of the UFO topic – in particularly, how the US military has regularly interfered and sowed disinformation in the field – there has been a lot more skepticism.
One such person is author/researcher Adam Gorightly, who charted numerous instances of UFO hoaxes and misinformation from government agents, crackpots and opportunists in his book Saucers, Spooks and Kooks: UFO disinformation in the Age of Aquarius (released by Daily Grail Publishing in 2021). And so it was perfect timing when myself and RPJ sat down with Adam for a video interview last Friday (video embedded below), just a few days after the Grusch revelations (we had been organising the chat for a good while beforehand, the universe kindly threw that news story right into our laps).
We’re aiming to do a bunch more video interviews and roundtables from now on, so please subscribe to our YouTube channel (and hit the bell for notifications of new videos), and support us through Patreon so that we can hopefully free up more time to do this regularly. We remain an independent website run purely by enthusiasts, not business people (and have been for almost 25 years now), and we rely on reader support – so thanks for any way you can help us out!
As I try to make clear in the video, we are not saying definitively that all the revelations over the past 6 years have been a massive disinfo operation. But we are urging anyone interested in this topic to understand the history of UFO disinfo, and how there are a lot of similarities that should make anyone cast a critical eye over these recent claims. And you should definitely grab a copy of Saucers, Spooks and Kooks to get a grasp on this history.
As Adam says in the interview:
It’s always been something the manipulators, whether they’re the government, whether they’re political operatives, whether they’re foreign nationals trying to cause division, UFOs are something you can tap into and use to that end… it’s a subject that can be used as a wedge, to seed disinformation and basically get people questioning certain things.
Some quick timestamps below to offer a rough guide to the topics covered:
3:16 – Adam discusses how his book Saucers, Spooks and Kooks came about.
6:03 – Discussion of some examples of military disinformation on UFO topic.
12:30 – On AFOSI agent Richard Doty and his UFO disinfo over the years, including (naturally) the Paul Bennewitz affair.
35:15 – Adam points out how Doty put himself forward as a whistleblower, and how that might apply to the current situation.
45:32 – On these claims being propagated through the same circle of journalists, news outlets, researchers and group of military/government insiders.
1:13:08 – On UFO apps and other motivations for leaking UFO rumours and secrets.
1:17:40 – Discussion of how the UFO topic has been embraced by/sold to libertarians, right wingers, and QAnoners, and the broader topic of radicalisation of people through these sorts of fringe subject areas.
