A.D. After Disclosure: When the Government Finally Reveals the Truth About Alien Contact

by Richard Dolan

  Can You Arrest the Others?

  Criminal law is not about money. It is about exacting punishment and deterring others who may be tempted to break the law.

  When it comes to criminal law’s applicability to the A.D. world, we have to discuss whether the Others will recognize authority. We even have to ask whether they will be physically present in a post-Disclosure society, for in fact they may not. Because we are not really clear on who they even are, all we can say is that based on the last 60-plus years, it seems rather unlikely that there could be criminal penalties applied to these beings. As years go on, if relations become normal in some regard, then perhaps. Even this, however, represents a stretch of the imagination.

  Can You Sue the Others?

  The same would appear to apply regarding lawsuits. But here, things become more interesting. Civil law is all about torts, which range from personal injury and fraud to negligent and intentional misrepresentation. It also includes false imprisonment, defamation, assault, battery, and so on. Given the nature of things that might be disclosed in a coming clean period, there seems to be ample cause to sue regarding human-to-human interaction brought about by contact with the Others. For example, Mac Brazel was supposedly detained in Roswell back in 1947, held incommunicado while he got his head right about what he found on his ranch that famous day in July. Brazel is long gone, but his grandchildren are still around. Or what about Communion author Whitley Strieber, who has been ridiculed on South Park, no less, for being subjected to an alien “rectal probe”? He may have a case against the people who allowed him to look crazy when he actually was as sane and maybe saner than most.

  Civil suits require an injured party. Lawsuits will be filed to seek either money or some kind of injunctive relief. A multitude of new injuries—based on precedent—may present themselves. It may get very messy before order is restored.

  The first issue that lawyers will want to resolve is the nature of the Others and whether we have any formal understandings or treaties with them. They will want to know if they are here outside our laws and have presented themselves as a threat to our military, or whether they are as regulated as, say, cruise ships entering a foreign port of call. If the answer is ambiguous, along the lines of “sporadic continuing informal contact,” it will be necessary to define a legal relationship with these beings. Lawyers are apt to incorporate this changed reality into our existing legal structure, and the system will continue doing just that on an ad-hoc basis.

  On a basic level, attorneys, judges, and officers of the court will want to know if the Others acknowledge the concept of our “jurisdiction.” On an even more practical level, they will want to know if the Others accept or refuse “service of process.” Although there has been some testimony (and potentially disinformation) about treaties being signed with EBEs (Extraterrestrial Biological Entities) going back to the Eisenhower years, the idea that there is any kind of formal understanding, written or otherwise, between us and the Others is probably a long-shot. This means that lawyers will have to be content dealing with secondary effects and collecting damages from human institutions.

  By way of example, consider the abduction phenomenon. Being kidnapped and deprived of your freedom is, by definition, a personal injury. Who to sue? In the first months A.D., it is likely that some enterprising lawyer, prodded by an aggrieved client, will try to sue the Others for damages. This will be a tough sell in the court system, but it is apt to generate publicity for the client and the attorney, something both will probably be seeking if they are the first to initiate such a case.

  Once in a courtroom, the judge will ask the sticking question: do the Others acknowledge our jurisdiction? The answer will be no, not really, or at least we do not think they do. We can proclaim our jurisdiction based on precedent and statute, of course, but then the question becomes: how on Earth (literally) do we serve them? The legal answer to that will be some form of publication. If the right judge has been found to hear the case, he or she will accept the plaintiff’s argument that any group able to come “here” from “there” (wherever “there” may be) will also have the technology to monitor our communications. The final hurdle a judge would still have to ask is how, if the plaintiff prevails in court, will they ever collect the damages? The lawyer for the case will need to be at his or her best here, but will doubtless argue that while there are no formal relations with the Others now, there are bound to be in the future, and when those relations become clear, they will collect damages as part of that opening agreement.

  Bureaucracy Grinds On

  On a global scale, many international agreements and understandings will be put to a prolonged and strenuous test.

  One area will be the hot-button issue of immigration law. The term illegal alien will have a different meaning here, but it will be impossible to avoid the implications. Every government around the world will be forced to discuss whether or not the Others are actually here, on Earth, in their country, walking among the population. If they are, then the nations of Earth have a new immigration issue.

  Because we are talking about UFOs, which are flying objects, much of the legal action will focus on the area of aviation and space law.

  The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO), a specialized agency of the United Nations, codifies the principles and techniques of international air navigation. It adopts standards and recommends practices concerning air navigation, its infrastructure, flight inspection, prevention of unlawful interference, and facilitation of border-crossing procedures for international civil aviation. In addition, the ICAO defines the protocols for air accident investigation. Virtually every aspect of their mandate will be re-examined in light of ET-reality and the fact that UFOs share our airspace.

  The International Air Transport Association (IATA) is an international industry trade group that represents some 230 airlines comprising 93 percent of scheduled international air traffic. It will have issues about Disclosure—looking to the past, and planning routes and safety for the future.

  The Foreign Sovereign Immunity Act (FSIA) is the statute that establishes the limitations as to whether a foreign sovereign nation or its agencies may be sued in U.S. courts. It provides the exclusive basis and means to bring a lawsuit against a foreign sovereign in the United States.

  Where this is likely to become important is in the reverse. Other nations and their representatives may not be able to be sued in the United States, but because most countries are signatory, then it follows that the United States and its own institutions will be protected from being sued in other nations.

  What might the United States legitimately be sued for?

  If the United States government, for instance, has recovered crash wreckage and alien technology throughout the years, it is likely to have submitted it to private industry, discretely and secretly, for analysis and even reverse-engineering. A company that was given this contract may be judged to have had an unfair advantage over its competitors. It is likely, if not certain, that any such contracts awarded by the U.S. government would have gone to American companies.

  The Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) provides a limited waiver of the federal government’s sovereign immunity when its employees are negligent within the scope of their employment. Under the FTCA, the government can only be sued “under circumstances where the United States, if a private person, would be liable to the claimant in accordance with the law of the place where the act or omission occurred.” Translated, this means that the government cannot be sued for things it did as a government; in this case, covering up UFOs.

  Let us say that the Majestic-12 organization, or whatever else it may call itself, has resorted to extreme measures to keep this secret from time-to-time throughout the years, such as death threats, torture, or even assassination. Under the FTCA, the government is not liable when any of its agents commits the crimes of assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, malicious prosecution, abuse of process, libel, slander, misrepresentation, de
ceit, or interference with contract rights. However, it also provides an exception. The government is liable if a law enforcement officer commits these crimes. Would MJ-12 agents be considered “law enforcement officers,” or simply “agents” of the government? The courts will have to make that call.

  There will be a political fight to create a new exemption to the FSIA, so that interest groups—in and outside the United States—can sue the government, based on the “Act of God” status of Disclosure.

  Let us say that Northrop-Grumman (an example only) received either crash wreckage or something else of its kind. No Disclosure would have come from the government about its origin; it would have only been referred to as “foreign technology.” Engineers at the company would know not to ask questions—the material could have come from the Soviet Union, and it would not be their concern. Yet, the company would have profited from any discoveries, held any patents, and would have reaped incredible advantage in the marketplace.

  The government may hold itself as being immune to lawsuits, but private contractors may not be. If details were not forthcoming in a limited disclosure, some people may start by filing Freedom of Information Act requests designed to see what technical details were given, how formalized the sweetheart deal had been, and to what benefit. If technology is patented, then it is publicly available but you cannot use it. On the other hand, if technology has been treated as a trade secret, then other companies can literally tear it apart and try to reverse engineer it for their own patents. Therefore, what if the technology was never patented in order to keep its origin secret and to keep questions from being asked, but its use conveyed an unfair competitive advantage on the company to which it was given? Moreover, the government helped maintain the secrecy from which the company benefited.

  The companies who are damaged include virtually all that did not receive favored status. The question grows more complex legally, however, because the history gleaned from the past behavior of our Office of Foreign Technology shows that the government almost never shares the big picture with any one company, preferring instead to share a piece here and another piece there.

  The Ultimate Aviation Law Case

  The reality of UFOs, given that they are flying objects, may cause members of the legal profession who specialize in aviation law to see this as a golden opportunity to be involved in the thick of the action. Most aviation law deals with accidents, but that may change, too.

  There are many lawsuits one envisions following Disclosure. For example, what about a pilot who, in our pre-Disclosure world, saw a UFO come so close to his aircraft that he saw windows on it, so close that he took evasive maneuvers to avoid collision? When the pilot informed traffic control of his situation, he was informed that multiple ground-based radars confirmed his sighting. When he landed, shaken by what he saw, he filed a formal report. His reward for his honesty? His company grounded him from flight status for more than three years. This is exactly what happened to the pilot of a Japan Air Lines jet when he flew over Alaska in 1986.

  Was the pilot damaged by the actions of his company? To the extent that he loved flying and derived status from it, yes. His ability to seek other employment may have been diminished as well. He may have lost salary because he was not flying. All of this is actionable even if the airline had no knowledge about UFO reality. But what if an authority figure at the airline did have professional reasons to believe that UFOs were authentic and real? And what about the radar reports and other witnesses that the airline decided to ignore?

  In 2010, it was reported that commercial pilots were encountering UFOs in such numbers, creating such an air traffic hazard, that pilots operating out of London’s Heathrow Airport started developing unofficial aircrew reports for their colleagues, to ensure that they knew of potential UFO trouble spots. All of this was privately done, without sanction from their employers.11 When it comes to aviation safety, pilots are educated on wind shear, birds caught in engines, and a litany of other infrequent events, but not UFOs. This may not yet register heavily in a world built around denial, but in the A.D. world it is likely to look like negligence of the highest order.

  There are many potential cases affecting aviation law that may emerge A.D. For instance, as documents are released and old stories are reinterpreted, what if it becomes clear that an Airbus crash with hundreds of people on board occurred at the same time a UFO sighting was recorded by military radar operators—but was never revealed? Perhaps the black box recorded something that, in a world where UFOs were fiction, got past investigators. In a world where UFOs are fact, however, the data might now be interpreted as a potential cause of the crash. Would the NTSB—an independent agency—want its own reputation bolstered by proving that the government withheld relevant information to its investigation? What about the airline itself, which paid huge settlement money to the families of the dead? Supposedly settlements are final. In the world of A.D., however, such theories may be tested as airlines try to recover funds and shift responsibility toward the government.

  Perhaps all of the airlines will gang up on their respective governments, or perhaps they will specifically target the U.S. government. They could easily claim that the government knew the airways were more hazardous than it acknowledged, and that the FAA (and its non-U.S. counterparts) had not done its job.

  Eventually, we may see a sub-specialty within aviation and space law. Particularly if there have not been treaties signed, this specialty may become known as “Extra-Legal,” the study of an extraterrestrial presence that operates not above or within the law as we know it, but simply outside of it altogether. Although the rest of the world may refer to these strange visitors as “The Others,” it is likely the legal profession will call them by a more specific name: “Extras.”

  An Entirely New Court System

  The court system will be able to stretch, within limits, to accommodate many of the issues that will arise among humans based on an acknowledgment of the Others. Under such circumstances, the Others are simply a factor in the criminal or civil issues that have created conflict between us.

  It may seem like bad science-fiction to think that the Others will ever be a part of an official court system. It seems unlikely that they ever will be. Yet, there will be those who immediately push for such a result. They will focus on the need to get these beings to sign a treaty recognizing our courts and jurisdiction. After all, we currently attempt to deal with foreign nationals of countries with whom we have no treaties. It is not always easy, it usually takes time, and often yields less-than-perfect results.

  Perhaps the Others would agree to contractual relationships but balk at a nationalistic country-by-country approach. We may have to create an entirely new court system to deal with criminal and civil relations between us and them on a global basis. If there are multiple groups of Others and one of them is responsible for abducting our citizens or mutilating them, we may need a treaty with the “other” Others to police the situation. And if we are trading technology for, say, minerals, then we will need an agreement about how to enforce a contract. Again—assuming they are willing to deal formally with humanity.

  The bottom line is that all issues will require discussion about what governing document will apply when trying to resolve disputes between a human and an Other. The term used between residents and companies of different states is “diversity jurisdiction.” These are cases that cannot necessarily be heard in one state or another, but have to be heard in the federal courts.

  It seems pedestrian to discuss such things. But, depending on the relationship and how it evolves, something of the sort may already exist. If not, it may be created in the first years A.D.

  Media

  As we have noted elsewhere, A.D. will be the best of times and the worst of times for the major media establishments. It will instantly make reporters relevant again and will make news a commodity for which the public is willing to pay. At the same time, it will reveal the complicity and laziness that the journali
stic institutions of the world have brought to this story, now proved to be authentic, The Greatest Story Never Told. To appreciate how badly the media has blown this story, here are three examples from thousands that illustrate its embarrassing lack of professionalism when it comes to this topic.

  Example #1: Apollo Astronaut Edgar Mitchell

  Edgar Mitchell was the lunar module pilot of Apollo 14, and the sixth man to walk on the moon. In February 1971, he spent a full nine hours walking on the lunar surface in the Fra Mauro Highlands region.

  Mitchell also happened to grow up in Roswell, New Mexico. After his NASA missions, he returned there. During the 1970s, before the story leaked to UFO investigators, many people who had kept the story to themselves for years sought him out—seeing him as a national figure who could help tell their story. They told him that what happened in 1947 was the crash and recovery of an extraterrestrial craft, complete with alien bodies.

  In the 1990s, Mitchell began to test the waters with his beliefs that we were not alone in the universe. On July 23, 2008, however, he told presenter Nick Margerrison of the Kerrang! radio show, that he happened to be “privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real. It has been covered up by governments for some time now.12

  The statement was picked up around the world and, at the very least, did manage to surmount the first obstacle to UFO coverage by the media.

  This qualified it to go to the second level, where it was ridiculed and marginalized. CNN coverage included the usual raised eyebrow from the anchor while introducing the material, the videotaped package included the musical theme from The X-Files and cartoon images of little green men. At the end, the anchorwoman smiled and went to commercial.

  In another piece of coverage on the same network, Mitchell’s comments were played back, and a statement from NASA read, “NASA does not track UFOs. NASA is not involved in any sort of cover-up about alien life on this planet or anywhere in the universe.” The anchorwoman in this coverage also smiled in disbelief, shook her head, and passed off to Wolf Blitzer who managed to say, “Okay, we’ll watch this story with you.”