The Age of Disclosure: Takeaways from a Frustrating and Fascinating UFO Documentary
The UFO documentary filled with big names, bigger claims, and still lacking proof.
The Age of Disclosure is a trending documentary on the UFO phenomenon which features many famous names but no hard evidence of its core claims. It is both compelling and frustrating, impressive and somewhat hollow.
This is a summary and review, informed by relevant academic research, with a large dose of personal opinion thrown in.
As you may remember, we discussed the math behind UFO conspiracies in an earlier post, which you may want to read as well.
What is striking is that almost none of the core claims in the documentary are new. What is new is that high-ranking people like Secretary of State Marco Rubio are putting their reputations on the line by appearing in a documentary about a once laughable fringe topic. However, no concrete proof of aliens is presented by the movie.
The film claims, albeit without hard evidence, that:
UFOs are real, and are piloted by non human intelligence. To back this up, military pilots and insiders are wheeled out to tell their stories of seemingly impossible encounters, with craft moving far faster than any human ship. Clips of Rubio and Obama are played where they note that these objects seem to exist but we don’t know what they are. These clips of famous people confidently stating we don’t know what these are, are mixed with less famous people who confidently say, in essence, they’re aliens, giving the misleading impression there is an elite consensus on the issue. Photos like the Calvine photograph are shown but not explained, which I think is a weakness of the movie.
The US government has known since at least 1947 (Roswell) and has attempted to reverse engineer these craft. To back this up, insiders who worked on UFO adjacent programs are interviewed. The disinformation campaign to tamp down on Roswell etc. was so effective that people stopped taking it seriously, pushing back research progress.
There is a long-running program called ‘the legacy program’ which is essentially a shadowy group run by defense contractors, which keeps UFO secrets out of the reach of even CIA directors and most Presidents. This is by design, to protect the secrets from FOIA requests, or congressional oversight/leaking. However, this effort also means that private corporations benefit from technological advances they can sell to the US, rather than the US itself benefitting. Rubio specifically talks about this worry, which is a wild thing for a sitting Secretary of State to say.
China and Russia also know, as does the Vatican, but they have apparently kept the lid on it too. The Vatican claim is presented totally without evidence, and China is glossed over. Discussions of Russian nuclear interference by UFOs, and a crash in the Soviet Union, are brief. The part about the Vatican possessing irrefutable evidence of aliens is one of the weakest, most sci-fi, and least supported parts of the documentary. That the China angle is glossed over is also weak, as is the question of why no other countries have leaked UFO crashes/bodies.
It is alleged that alien/non human bodies have been found. There are supposedly at least two species, which is presented without evidence, and also seems to be another weak point.
The fact that nobody has a clear image of these UFOs is explained two ways. Firstly, the evidence is supposedly classified, and everyone interviewed presents themselves as well-meaning patriots who cannot reveal US Government secrets, despite some of them implying that elements of the same government wants to kill them for speaking out. Second, it is explained by two men with PhDs that the craft likely warp spacetime, which is how they travel so fast, and why they are so hard to photograph. The military has more sightings recently because modern fighter jets were upgraded in the 2010s with better sensors, and after that started seeing more UAPs. Additionally, the FAA does not use radar to track planes, they use transponders, implying it’s more difficult for civilian authorities to see UAP.
The fact that these ultra advanced craft crash is explained two ways, neither of them persuasively. First, there’s a ‘shit happens’ explanation that well, even cars that are designed well crash. This seems pretty weak to me. Second, there is the proposed explanation that these crashes might be gifts or an IQ test from an advanced civilization. This claim seems even weaker.
The projected amount of energy used by craft to do this is 1,100 billion watts, which is 100x the daily power generation of the United States. The resulting energy field causes radiation, which means certain survivors of experiences have burns or brain damage. This spacetime warp explains stories which are seemingly illogical, such as: Someone goes inside a craft for minutes but hours have passed (a la contact) or they enter a small craft and inside is the size of a football stadium.
The film ends with discussion of congressional hearings and David Grusch’s explosive testimony before congress, where the whistleblower reveals the legacy program, alien bodies, and more, as well as congressional attempts to pass laws forcing the reveal of the legacy program, as well as other UFO info.
Stepping back, the baseline thing to say about UFOs before we move further is:
We know for a fact that all advanced governments have secret military programs, and almost everyone except the most kumbaya hippie type people will agree these programs should exist and they should be secret. So some UFO sightings, especially in a country with advanced technology like the US, are likely just US government craft. So, we know that there will be some sightings of strange craft, almost no matter what. However, the craft described by military pilots with extreme acceleration do seem to be much better than what we are able to produce.
The Legacy Program and ‘You can’t handle the truth’
“The Legacy Program” is a running theme of the documentary, and is the alleged attempt of the US government to reverse engineer and protect UFO secrets since at least Roswell in 1947. This effort is led by military contractors in a secret program, and thus has mostly escaped US government control.
This was supposedly done intentionally. because US government activity is eventually accountable to Congress, and possibly FOIA-able, but things under the purview of private corporations cannot be easily accessed.
Even if UFOs/UAPs are totally made up, it appears there is indeed a long-running secret military technology program, controlled by defense contractors, which is unaccountable to the public, and unknown by most of Congress and even most Presidents. This is funded with misappropriated funds, or dark money. The contractor conspiracy angle is actually the most plausible part of the entire narrative, and is the part of the movie most likely to be true. However, the secrecy and unaccountability of the program is taken as a bad thing, but I am not entirely sure.
Assuming:
The end user of highly secret US weapons contractor programs is always the US military anyway and;
We really don’t want these secrets leaked.
It’s unclear to me how bad this extra layer of secrecy is. Presidents have affairs, take documents to their houses, and may inadvertently discuss classified issues. As discussed in this earlier article, a basic modeling of secret programs suggests that the more people in on a secret the more likely it is to leak.
Furthermore, let’s assume the contractors are hiding aliens. What benefit does society get from revealing this secret? Chaos, fear, nihilism and religious extremism are possible reactions to the reveal that aliens are here and no government can stop them.
Also unasked is a key question: How would the aliens react to being revealed?
It’s probably unanswerable, but the film really glosses over the ‘you can’t handle the truth’ aspect of this phenomenon, suggesting if the technology is revealed we can have unlimited clean energy and possibly global peace. It suggests this right after implying we are being surveilled by a far greater power and our militaries are being probed by that power.
The implied conclusion that revealing everything will make things better seems naive and dangerous. Of course, allowing a small group of people exclusive access to remarkable technology is also dangerous. But the film does not grapple with these trade offs.
Academic research + threads missing from the movie
The Wilson Memo is missing
The movie features Eric W. Davis, who is the supposed author of one of the most famous documents in UFO-lore: The Wilson Memo. This memorandum is a summary of a conversation between Davis and Admiral Wilson, the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, where this admiral supposedly discovers the legacy program, has legal authority over it, asks to be read into it, is denied, blows his top angry at insubordination, but then receives chilling warnings that if he pushes it further he will lose rank and be forced out of his position.
Davis has neither confirmed or denied writing it, but said once on a since-deleted section of a podcast which you can watch here that he couldn’t discuss it since it discussed classified secrets (implying it is real).
Wilson, pictured above, has denied it entirely.
That this memo was never discussed or mentioned (it was entered into the congressional record, though) is a glaring omission. Given Davis states, in the film, there are two species of aliens/NHI, it seems kind of strange he would go there but not discuss the memo, even obliquely.
We discuss this and other things in our original post on UFOs and the math behind conspiracy theories.
✨What studies say about UFO🛸 conspiracies✨
In a recent congressional hearing, a former US intelligence officer named David Grusch claimed he has seen persuasive evidence that the US Government has alien spacecraft. In light of these explosive claims, I thought it would be worth looking at what academic studies can tell us about the elements of the claimed conspiracy. Even if the aliens part is m…
Academic research and good UFO evidence is glossed over or neglected
Beatriz Villarroel has been conducting research that looks at UFOs through an interesting lens: It uses pre-satellite images of the sky to search for transient objects (e.g. potential UFOs) while totally eliminating the possibility that these objets are man-made satellites, since they didn’t exist yet. (They could however, be artifacts or other things).
This research, which appears to be one of the most promising threads of searching for UFOs, is totally not discussed.
The absence of rigorous scientific methodology is the documentary’s fatal flaw: it treats eyewitness testimony from credible sources as equivalent to physical evidence, when psychological research shows that memories are unreliable. Whenever this problem is encountered, it’s always the same explanation: “I’d love to show you, but it’s classified.” Which raises the question: Where is the UFO Snowden willing to risk everything, if this is really true?
While discussion of craft warping spacetime is discussed, this is only brief, and the other huge thread of inquiry is totally missing: Materials science. Various people across the years have claimed to have fractions of UFO craft, and on UFO podcasts throughout the years you’ll have people like Jacques Valle claim they are testing (or knew people who are testing) fragments of UFO craft.
These claims are never discussed, probably since nobody has ever found conclusive evidence any material are non-human origin, or couldn’t be produced by humans. This is a weak spot in the documentary, as is the core question: If UFOs are crashing, and everyone has smartphones now, why isn’t there footage of a crashed UFO taken by some kid in Montana, or wherever?
Gary Nolan’s work on brain damage is briefly discussed, but the entire thread of Havana Syndrome, and the simple question of whether brain damaged people are more likely to think they’ve seen a UFO (correlation/causation) is not delved into. Gary Nolan is presented as being a normal scientist who got approached by the CIA to research this topic, but it appears he did so only after starting to research an alien-looking skeleton, which was later found to be a human with multiple mutations/diseases.
The Calvine Photograph, which is one of the best pieces of photographic evidence for UFOs is displayed, but not discussed. Basically two men took photographs of a fighter jet and a strange diamond shaped craft in Scotland. Then the UK Government confiscated the images and covered the whole thing up. Years later, one of the photographs leaked. Most people think the event really happened, many think it’s a secret US Government craft, but some think it’s aliens (or NHI) etc.
A few other notable things about the movie:
Very few reports come from the Air Force, they’re almost all from Naval aviators. The implication is that the Air Force is more in on the conspiracy, and tamps down on reports. It’s presented as a quandary, with the point made that “imagine there were undersea mysteries only reported on by the Air Force, and covered up by the Navy—wouldn’t that be crazy?” However, this claim is undercut at other points in the documentary where some interviewed experts claim we haven’t explored 80% of the Ocean floor and if an alien wanted to hide on earth, the ocean would be the best place to do it.
Almost every person interviewed is male and American. (Exceptions to the gender thing are a female fighter pilot and senator Kirsten Gillibrand, as well as Rep. Anna Paulina Luna). This is likely because men are overrepresented in the military and politics. But it does give the documentary a bit of a science fiction obsessed boys vibe, which makes it slightly less believable. The US-centric focus is also a weak point, as one would expect this to happen everywhere, and there are famous encounters in other nations.
The most persuasive people on film are probably the late Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, as well as current Secretary of State Marco Rubio—both of whom are high ranking officials who had a lot to lose by being associated with something as out there as UFOs. (Obama’s comment is interesting, but so short as to almost be a throwaway.)
Anna Paulina Luna and Tim Burchett, members of the House who are passionate on this issue and cited in this documentary, have endorsed other conspiracy theories, such as the belief the 2020 election was stolen, which makes their advocacy around this conspiracy theory less believable.
Rubio seems more circumspect, basically approaching it from a ‘we don’t know what these things are’ angle, while also focusing on the fact that any recovered technology is likely being exploited by defense contractors, which then make profits off the advances, while the US taxpayer does not benefit from them. The clips of Reid (and his other thoughts on the issue not included here seem to suggest Reid is much more convinced of a long-running ‘it’s aliens’ conspiracy, even if he doesn’t say that directly. The documentary specifically notes that Reid requested access to the ‘legacy program’ and was denied.
David Grusch previously noted on Joe Rogan that he thought that the alien bodies were never truly alive, implying they might be some sort of synthetic biological source. This thread is not discussed by the movie. The alien bodies claim really is explosive, and it’s important to remember that many of the most believable people cited in the movie: Rubio, Obama, etc. do not make this claim.
Final Thoughts:
Like almost every aspect of the UFO phenomenon, there are tantalizing claims made with evidence which really amounts to ‘trust this source’ or ‘it’s classified and I won’t break my oath to the United States.’ While I can understand not wanting to go to jail, given Snowden defected to Russia to reveal NSA surveillance, it seems hard to believe that if this is real, nobody has done the same for what is a much bigger and more important story.
I am critical of the documentary since I want more evidence, but I will say that it does a good job of chronicling a real human and national security interest story with multiple potentially overlapping implications, all of them stunning in their own way:
There is a massive disinformation campaign so successful Congress is writing laws to uncover UFOs that don’t exist.
There is a mass psychosis where many people report seeing things that are not real.
A government has developed exotic craft falsely reported as being UFOs, suppressing a huge but secret scientific breakthrough. These programs may be controlled by military contractors outside the control of normal channels.
Alien/non-human craft are real and whistleblowers are telling the truth.
Religious people are right, as some sort of supernatural explanation (which fits some of the strange effects of UFOs) is true.
Ultimately, I am critical of the movie because it makes the most explosive claim of all time without proving it. However, it succeeds in being interesting and compiling a large cast of high-ranking individuals, some of which I am surprised agreed to appear on film. In that sense, the movie is a great success. Nonetheless, it ultimately leaves more questions than answers.
Perhaps the documentary’s greatest trick is making you forget that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence—by the end, you’re so immersed in testimony and government hearings that you almost overlook the complete absence of a single piece of physical proof that could survive peer review. That’s supposedly because it’s all classified. For a documentary that purports to be about truth telling, featuring a cast of characters who believe the US government is hiding the biggest story of all time, we sure have a lot of people unwilling to break their oaths of loyalty to the same government which is apparently deceiving everyone and keeping the biggest story of all time hidden.
This tension, and the story itself—whether it is really UFOs, or exotic US craft, or mass psychosis—deserves more focus.
Note:
UFOs and UAPs represent “unidentified flying objects” and “unidentified aerial phenomena” respectively, but are used interchangeably in this article.
Your point about the absence of a UFO Snowden really cuts to the heart of credibility issue here. If this program has been running since Roswell, you'd expect at least one person over seven decades willing to risk it all with actual physical evdence.