By Kenneth Tiven
Star Trek— a TV series and movies—frequently went to other galaxies, introducing its mostly human characters to extraterrestrial creatures from far-flung planets with entirely different approaches to “life”. It suggested that if Earth is incredibly diverse, other galaxies surely have varied and alien life forms.
Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs) were a big deal 70 years ago in the news media and formed a sub-genre of science fiction movies. However, this hearing caused hardly a ripple, more like a giggle, among the American public. The surprise was discovering bipartisan support for more information, yet for opposing political reasons. Republicans want to demonstrate that the government lies to the American people while Democrats want to clarify that government makes what it thinks are prudent decisions based on avoiding public hysteria. Remember ex-president Donald Trump, who initially assured Americans that the Covid virus would just disappear, then disagreed with expert advice as the death toll contradicted him?
Let me beam you into this story. A strange event near Washington back in 1952 kicked-started the UFO issue. A scientific investigation wrote off about 90% of the evidence as visually flawed or imagined. That left 10% unexplained, creating a staple of science fiction books and movies. Witness the global success of the Star Trek series. “Beam me up, Scotty,” as Captain Kirk (actor William Shatner) said in nearly every episode. These days researchers prefer the term UAPs for “unexplained anomalous phenomena”.
The star witness at the hearing was David Grusch, a former intelligence official who led the analysis of UAP within a US Department of Defense agency until earlier this year. He said credible people told him that “non-human biologics” were found at alleged crash sites. Asked to go into detail, Grusch said he “can’t get into the specifics,” adding, “as I’ve stated publicly already in my News Nation interview, biologics came with some of these recoveries.” He further claimed to have been denied access to secret government UFO programmes, saying he has faced “very brutal” retaliation due to his allegations.
His reference to an interview on NewsNation raised doubts in some quarters about his testimony because that channel is considered a quasi-news channel, wedded to supporting the conspiracy theories of the MAGA Republicans who want Donald Trump back in the White House. Its Indian equivalent would be Republic TV, dominated by Arnab Goswami. The legitimization of UFO discussion has been partly propelled by claims from US military pilots of UFO encounters, along with leaked military videos showing inexplicable happenings in the sky. A Pentagon report in 2021 found more than 140 instances of UAP encounters that went unexplained.
Senate Democratic majority leader Chuck Schumer rushed into the story with an email, saying, “Friends, the truth is out there—and it’s time we learned exactly what our government knows about UFOs.” Political antagonism is everywhere these days. Schumer recognizes that UFO secrecy started when Republican Dwight Eisenhower was president. Joe Biden has no involvement because he was a ten-year-old grade school student at the time. Schumer’s email concludes, “We couldn’t be more serious. The more we find out about UFOs, the more it seems that federal bureaucrats have been concealing information from the public. The American people have a right to know the truth.”
Schumer is pushing a new bipartisan bill to require the government to disclose as much classified information about UFOs as possible to accelerate research and ensure the answers to some of the Universe’s most significant questions are public, not hidden. Citing US Navy videos of unexplainable aircraft, Schumer wrote, “There’s no shortage of questions—and it’s time we got answers.” Let me translate Schumer’s intent: This bipartisan agreement isn’t much, but a start to legislating about real-world problems. He seems to ignore contemporary Republican ideology trying to revert to the attitudes and rules of the 1960s before Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society amped up Roosevelt’s New Deal. Sure, this UFO thing can be bipartisan, but it pales in comparison to the issues that have been ignored by a political party more interested in punishment than policy.
The Pentagon has denied Grusch’s claims of a cover-up. A defense department spokesperson said investigators have not discovered “any verifiable information to substantiate claims that any programmes regarding the possession or reverse-engineering of extraterrestrial materials have existed in the past or exist currently.” A carefully worded statement that never addresses the existence of UFOs. Social network and the man-on-the-street reaction was swift if muted. “Are the alleged aliens gonna stop inflation? Are they going to lower the prices of gas, rent? If not, I suggest the government wrap the shenanigans up,” was typical. Against the current news cycle of climate issues, wars, and political conflicts, this reaction surprises no one. This reporter believes UFOs are doing flybys of planet Earth for a straightforward reason. Other beings are just as curious about earthlings as we are about the Universe. It is a matter of extreme hubris (arrogance, conceit) to think we are the only intelligent beings anywhere. Ideology is in the way, just as it is for managing climate change and political change.
Our small planet is a microdot within a giant system of galaxies with suns and orbiting planets. We don’t know how many other stars have orbiting planetary systems similar to Earth. Carl Sagan, the astronomer, and theoretician, addressed this nearly 50 years ago in his TV series and book called Cosmos: “The Earth is a very small stage in a vast cosmic arena. Our posturing, our imagined self-importance, and the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
Gene Roddenberry, the Star Trek creator, believed other inhabited planets existed when he created the TV show. The crews of the various iterations of Star Trek boldly went where no one had gone before—almost always meeting alien species. Star Trek has gifted us with unforgettable species after species as the first mission turned into five decades of first contact.
—The writer has worked in senior positions at The Washington Post, NBC, ABC and CNN and also consults for several Indian channels