ET disclosure petition on the White House website (credit: WhiteHouse.gov)

“We The People” was launched by the White House to provide “a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country.” The site enables anyone to create a petition about any topic.

One of the UFO/extraterrestrial petitions called on the White House to “Immediately disclose the government’s knowledge of and communications with extraterrestrial beings.” The other petition sought formal acknowledgement of “an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.” Both petitions were created on September 22, 2011, but of the two, the latter petition received nearly 6,700 more signatures–12,078.

Phil Larson, who works on space policy and communications at the White House Office of Science & Technology Policy, responded to these two petitions with the following statement:

The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public’s eye.

But as Alejandro Rojas pointed out when he wrote a story about the UFO/ET petitions, there may be evidence to the contrary. Rojas mentioned a Bill Clinton interview from Hong Kong in which the former President stated:

I did attempt to find out if there were any secret government documents that revealed things and if there were, they were concealed from me too. I wouldn’t be the first president that underlings have lied to or that career bureaucrats have waited out. But there may be some career person somewhere hiding these dark secrets, even from elected Presidents. But if so, they successfully eluded me, and I am almost embarrassed to tell you that I did try to find out.

In his response to the petitions, Larson added, “However, that doesn’t mean the subject of life outside our planet isn’t being discussed or explored. In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth.” The examples he provided were SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence), NASA’s Kepler mission, and the Mars Science Laboratory.

Stephen Bassett

When “We The People” launched, a petition needed to receive at least 5,000 signatures within 30 days to be eligible for a response from the White House. Both of the previously mentioned petitions achieved this goal. But due to greater-than-expected activity on “We The People,” the White House has amended the terms of participation, requiring new petitions to reach 25,000 signatures within 30 days.

The PRG Extraterrestrial Disclosure Petition

Stephen Bassett of the Paradigm Research Group has posted a petition on the White House’s new petitioning website, calling for the president to “formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race.” According to their website, the White House will review the petition for an official response if 5000 signatures are collected in 30 days. Created on September 22, 2011, Bassett’s petition has already collected over 2000 signatures, well on its way to meeting the goal. One can only wonder what the White House response may be, if they choose to respond at all.

The White House’s new petition website is part of “We the People,” an effort to create more access for the public to voice their concerns. The site says, “We the People provides a new way to petition the Obama Administration to take action on a range of important issues facing our country.”

Bassett’s petition reads:

We, the undersigned, strongly urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon.

Stephen Bassett

However, looking back on efforts by the White House to gain access to this sort of information, past presidents have been unsuccessful in getting answers. According to Daniel Sheehan, in 1997 while serving as the General Counsel to the United States Jesuit National Headquarters in Washington, DC, he was approached by the then Director of the Library of Congress’ Science and Technology Division, Marcia Smith, to help with a UFO research project. He says that during the course of his participation with Smith, she had told him that President-elect, Jimmy Carter, had requested that George Bush, Sr., who was Director of the CIA at the time, brief him on the UFO situation. Bush refused, telling Carter that he did not have the need to know.

Bill Clinton’s efforts to look into the UFO subject are well documented. The best archive of this material is at Grant Cameron’s PresidentialUFO.com website. One of the more interesting stories was printed in a book by Clinton’s friend William Hubbell. Hubbell was a friend of the Clintons from Arkansas, and was indicted for fraud in the Whitewater scandals. Before his indictment he was assigned to the Attorney General’s office as the Associate Attorney General. Hubbell wrote in his book Friends in High Places:

Clinton had said, ‘If I put you over at Justice, I want you to find the answers to two questions for me,’ Hubbell recounts. ‘One, who killed JFK. And two, are there UFOs?’ Clinton was dead serious. I had looked into both, but wasn’t satisfied with the answers I was getting.

In an interview with Cameron, he told me he felt he had amassed enough evidence to show that the Clintons were interested in the subject of UFOs, but that not even the President has the power to demand that sort of information. In an interview in Hong Kong, Clinton was asked about his UFO interests. Clinton said that he looked into Area 51 and the Roswell UFO crash, but didn’t find anything. However, he added:

I did attempt to find out if there were any secret government documents that revealed things and if there were, they were concealed from me too. I wouldn’t be the first president that underlings have lied to or that career bureaucrats have waited out.  But there may be some career person somewhere hiding these dark secrets, even from elected Presidents. But if so, they successfully eluded me, and I am almost embarrassed to tell you that I did try to find out.

Clinton’s interview in Hong Kong:

I emailed Bassett asking if he believed Obama has information about an extraterrestrial presence visiting earth, and if not, given Clinton’s apparent trouble gaining access to this information, if he thought Obama could get access to it. His response was: “Whether or not he knows it to be true, he could easily find out.”

Bassett’s petition will most likely get the signatures it needs. In a best case scenario, would this prompt the President to then try to gain access to secret government files on extraterrestrials? If it did, would he have any success, or face the same problems as Clinton? Most likely, if the White House responds at all, we will get the typical statement that the Air Force looked into this in the 60s, and found there was nothing of interest.

Click this link to access the PRG extraterrestrial disclosure petition.

McKinnon with mother Janis (credit: FreeGary.co.uk)

In response to this news, Janis Sharp, McKinnon’s mother, posted the following message to her Twitter account: “Obama said on TV with Cameron, Happy to let UK make extradition decision and U.S will abide by it. #FreeGary.”

McKinnon and Sharp had their hopes raised last year when Obama stated that the U.S. would find an “appropriate solution” to the situation. But just two weeks ago, those hopes were crushed when U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder vowed to take all necessary steps to extradite McKinnon. Following today’s developments, however, there is renewed hope that McKinnon will be allowed to remain in the UK.

McKinnon is accused of hacking into U.S. federal and military computers, perpatrating the “biggest military computer hack of all time.” McKinnon says he was looking for evidence of UFOs.

Book Cover

The book, UFOs: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go On the Record, by experienced journalist Leslie Kean and a long list of distinguished collaborators, should be required reading for all skeptics and people who mistakenly believe that there is no credible evidence supporting the existence of UFOs. Those interested in the subject should also read it, since they will probably learn a lot about important foreign cases from firsthand witnesses and officials and scientists who investigated them. This is indeed a unique and much-needed contribution to ufological literature. Out of the nineteen collaborators brought together by Kean, no less than five are retired air force generals from Belgium, Brazil, Chile, France, and Iran. The other fourteen include former Arizona governor Fife Symington; military and civilian pilots from various countries who encountered strange craft; and official government investigators who dealt in one way or another with UFO investigations, such as Nick Pope, a former employee of the British Ministry of Defence, James Callahan from the Federal Aviation Administration, and Jean-Jacques Velasco, from the French space agency UFO department, GEPAN (now called GEIPAN).

The foreword to Kean’s books is written by a respected political figure, John Podesta, who was the chief of staff during President Clinton’s presidency and led the transition team for President Obama. It’s highly unusual to see such a well-known politician stating, in public, his interest in UFOs; Podesta calls himself “a curious skeptic.”  Then again, Podesta supported Leslie Kean’s efforts with her Coalition for Freedom of Information to obtain government UFO data a few years ago. “Kean and her distinguished co-writers call for the establishment of a small U.S. government agency to cooperate with other countries that are already formally investigating, reviewing, and releasing information relevant to UFOs,” states Podesta’s foreword. “This new agency would handle release of documents and any future investigations with openness and efficiency. It’s an idea worth considering.”

Leslie Kean

We here at Open Minds sincerely hope that the largest number of scientists, academics, mainstream-media commentators, and other influential people get a chance to read Kean’s book. It will surely dispel many beliefs and prejudices that people probably have about this subject. Where else can you open a UFO book and see, not just references and quotes from documents by important generals, but actually short essays written by those generals? General (Ret.) Wilfried De Brouwer, for instance, was once the Belgian Air Force point-man for the famous UFO wave that hit Belgium between 1989 and 1991.  In Kean’s book, De Brouwer tells the full story. Additionally, Kean’s book includes commentary by Iranian Air Force General (Ret.), Parviz Jafari, who was one of the fighter pilots involved in the celebrated UFO dogfight over Tehran in September 1976.  Jafari was also a panelist at the very important 2007 event at the National Press Club (NPC) in Washington, DC, which was organized by Leslie Kean and filmmaker James Fox and would later become the basis of the acclaimed documentary, I Know What I Saw.

Most of the contributors in Kean’s book attended the NPC event, but Kean also includes others who didn’t speak. The bulk of the UFO cases and investigations described in the book deal with aviation and military incidents from a total of nine countries including Belgium, Brazil, Chile, France, Iran, Peru, Portugal, the United Kingdom, and the U.S.

Podesta (right) with Obama.

The other retired generals included in the book are Denis Letty from France, Ricardo Bermúdez from Chile, and José Carlos Pereira from Brazil. A former fighter pilot and head of the southeast zone of the French Air Defence, General Letty was the chairman of the Committee for In-Depth Studies, composed of a number of retired French military and intelligence officers, space officials, and scientists who released the now famous 1991 COMETA Report entitled, “UFOs and Defense: What Should We Prepare For?” It was this French study, in fact, that triggered Kean’s interest and curiosity on the subject, leading to her first UFO article featured in the Boston Globe. General Letty writes, in Kean’s book, about “The Birth of COMETA in France,” explaining that his interest was sparked in 1965 when he heard of fighter pilots scrambling to chase unknown objects over French skies. He was particularly puzzled by the case of Captain Jean-Pierre Fartek, who saw a UFO on the ground with his wife near Dijon, France in 1979. “I found the Farteks’ testimony so disturbing that I have been preoccupied by the UFO problem ever since,” wrote General Letty.

James fox with Leslie Kean in D.C. (image credit: James Fox)

In addition to testimony from multiple military officials, Leslie Kean analyzes the different official approaches that various nations have taken over the years. Some countries like the United Kingdom, Brazil, and Uruguay, among others, look at UFOs from a military standpoint—namely, whether these objects could potentially pose a threat to their air defenses. Other countries, such as France, take a scientific approach, conducting a thirty-three-year-long investigation of UFOS through its specialized unit within the CNES—the French equivalent of NASA. Jean-Jacques Velasco, who led this department between 1983 and 2004 (variously called GEPAN, SEPRA, and now GEIPAN) contributed a chapter on these investigations. Velasco was the case investigator of the Trans-en-Provence UFO landing case of January 1981. Yet other official agencies like Chile’s CEFAA (Spanish acronym for Committee for the Study of Anomalous Aerial Phenomena), established in 1998, which is under the Department of Civil Aeronautics (DGAC, equivalent to our FAA), take a different approach, that of keeping a tab on UFOs to insure aviation safety.

Will Leslie Kean and her team of experts succeed in helping to create a new, open-minded official U.S. agency that can take a fresh look at this phenomenon and cooperate openly with other governmental investigations elsewhere in the world? That remains to be seen, but the publication of this book is an important first step.

Leslie Kean (middle) with the Generals, Pilots, and other officials in Washington D.C. (image credit: James Fox)

Researcher Grant Cameron, who runs the website HillaryClintonUFO.net, was able to retrieve documents through the Freedom of Information Act that showed Rockefeller was soliciting help form Hillary’s staff on drafting a document to President Bill Clinton in 1995.  The title of the document was: Lifting Secrecy on Information About Extraterrestrial Intelligence as Part of the Current Classification Review.

In August of 1995 the Clintons made a trip to Rockefeller’s JY Ranch near Jackson’s Hole, Wyoming.  Many speculate that UFOs and ETs must have been a subject of conversation during the visit.  However, there has never been any proof of this, until now.

Hillary Clinton and Laurance Rockefeller walking at his Wyoming Ranch (image credit: Clinton Library)

Hillary Clinton and Laurance Rockefeller walking at his Wyoming Ranch (image credit: Clinton Library)

In these famous pictures of Hillary and Rockefeller walking on a wooded path during the visit, Hilary is holding a book.  For years researchers have been trying to figure out which book she is holding, to find out if it would provide clues as to the nature of their conversation.  Finally, Tonio Cousyn (known as elevenaugust at Open Minds Forum) has figured it out.  He discovered that the book is Paul Davies’ Are We Alone? Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life.  The images below show how he discovered this.

Front cover of Paul Davies' book

Back cover of Paul Davies' book

Close up of the book in Hillary Clinton's arm. Click the image to go to a book cover comparison created by Tonio Cousyn.

Amazon describes the book as: “The authentic discovery of extraterrestrial life would usher in a scientific revolution on par with Copernicus or Darwin, says Paul Davies. Just as these ideas sparked religious and philosophical controversy when they were first offered, so would proof of life arising away from Earth. With this brief book (160 pages, including two appendices and an index), Davies tries to get ahead of the curve and begin to sort out the metaphysical mess before it happens. Many science fiction writers have preceded him, of course, but here the matter is plainly put. This is a very good introduction to a compelling subject.”

Professor Paul Davies

Paul Davies is a theoretical physicist, cosmologist, astrobiologist, and award winning bestselling author.  He is currently director of the Beyond Center of Fundamental Concepts in Science and co-director of the Cosmology initiative at Arizona State University.  He even has an asteroid named after him.  He has often written about the SETI project, and the philosophical ideas behind extraterrestrial contact.  In November of 2009, he was a speaker at the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Sciences’ Study Week on Astrobiology event.

Although we do not know whether Hillary brought the book or if Rockefeller gave it to her, it does confirm that extraterrestrial life was part of their conversation.

For more information on the Clinton’s UFO history read our story on Obama and UFOs, or for detailed information visit Grant Cameron’s HillaryClintonUFO.net and PresidentialUFO.com.

Special thanks to Angelia Joiner for her help with this story.