For all of you UFO fans out there, something interesting popped up at Medium over the weekend from Bryce Zabel. He’s been reading the various tea leaves in the news recently, both mainstream and among the ufology subculture, and finding that there is once again a growing air of excitement over the possibility that some serious “big D” Disclosure on the subject of government secrecy regarding unidentified aerial phenomenon may be on the horizon as we sweat out the sweltering summer heat in the midst of a pandemic and civil unrest. Of course, as Bryce notes, this “moment” has come many, many times before, and it’s never panned out. Could this time be different?

He begins by referencing a friend of his, a pseudonymous “UFO influencer” only referred to as John. It seems that John is convinced that this could be the moment so many have been waiting for. The government wizard may be preparing to pull back the curtain, if only a little, and let the public know what really going on with all of the UFOs we keep hearing about. And perhaps… dare we suggest… extraterrestrial life visiting our world?

For years now, John has routinely predicted that Disclosure is imminent, and lays out a detailed play for how it will happen on which president’s watch and why. So far, he’s never been right. Eventually, he will be. That’s playing the long game…

Is there something different this time, here in the coronavirus summer of 2020? The UAP crowd wonders — can a country as torn as ours is by pandemic and politics really take on The Phenomenon at the same time? There may be reason for cautious optimism that conditions are better than ever, they allow themselves to think, but everyone needs to remember how hope was alive before, then faded.

On the other hand, it does pay to lay it out, and look at it for what it is. Here’s a partial list of how the UFO/UAP issue has played out over the last two-to-three months as we approached #UFOSummer2020.

Bryce stacks up a number of bits of recent news on this subject, almost all of which my regular readers are already familiar with. Those include the Pentagon validating the Navy UFO videos, the recent Senate Intelligence Committee order for a public report on UAPs, President Trump appearing to drop some hints about Roswell, and the increasing coverage of this subject in mainstream outlets in recent months.

But does this add up to anything? As Bryce says, in the heat of the summer amid all of this madness, it certainly feels as if there’s something in the air. But then, for those who have long believed in the idea of Disclosure, it’s been feeling like that since the 1950s. And it’s never happened. The author has a lot more great material, both current and historical in that piece, so the entire thing is well worth a read. But at the end of the day, one looming question remains. Okay… check that. Two looming questions remain.

First, would the government really spill all of the beans, or at least a significant portion of them, whether of their own volition or because of the mainstream media forcing their hand?

Second comes the potentially more disturbing question, at least for the faithful in the ufology community. What if the government doesn’t have anything of consequence to disclose?

The first question assumes that the government has been sitting on a ton of information about UFOs and possibly even extraterrestrial lifeforms for more than half a century. I’ll confess, that’s always been my belief, though there’s little or nothing out there to confirm it beyond a reasonable doubt. Bryce touches on a subject I’ve mentioned here recently and those of you who follow me on Twitter have probably seen me ranting about at various times. It’s the current rumor that the New York Times is preparing to imminently publish an article detailing a beyond top secret black ops program dealing with UFO crash retrieval and possibly even government possession of alien bodies. It all deals with the so-called “Admiral Wilson Documents” which have long been a subject of hot debate. There are quite a few of the old hands in the ufology news stable who are close to 100% sure this is true.

Of course, “imminent” was thought to be possible as soon as last week. Nothing yet, but who knows? Perhaps it’s this week. Or if this is more like the wave of assurances we received in the 70s, maybe it’s still half of a century away. I spent more than an hour last night listening to a panel discussion among a number of these seasoned researchers who are in the “it’s coming shortly” camp. You can click through and delve into that yourself if you want to take a long swan dive down that particular rabbit hole. And for all I know, they may turn out to be right, no matter how crazy some of it may sound to me personally.

But then there’s that second question I mentioned above. This whole Disclosure debate hinges on the belief that the United States government (and probably others) not only knows more than they’re telling us but very likely have more than they’re revealing. If they actually are in possession of technology created somewhere beyond the Earth and possibly even physical proof of intelligent, extraterrestrial lifeforms, it would be a story that would change the course of human history. Of course, they’d have to come up with one heck of a mea culpa over why they’ve been lying all this time, but I think most of us would forgive them quickly if they came clean.

But… and this is the tricky part… what if they don’t have much of anything? What if there were never any crashes? What if the aliens never contacted anyone in a position of power? After all this time, if all they have is a collection of videos and weird pictures of things that show up in our airspace, well… then they don’t really know all that much more than we do. Maybe the government is just as stymied and frustrated as we are. If that’s the case, then Disclosure already happened and it was a huge flop.

But even if that turns out to be the truth, there’s one more ugly reality to come to grips with. Nobody in the ufology community is going to believe them. Everyone will simply assume they’re “still lying.” Hell’s bells, Francis… I’ll predict right now that I’ll assume they’re still lying. We’ll be right back to square one where we were during the summer of 1947 and where we’ve effectively stayed ever since then. And wouldn’t that just be a fine kick in the teeth? #UFOSummer2020 indeed.