Elizabeth Licata: Are you ready for the disclosure? Local UFO researchers believe it might be coming soon
Stigma has not stopped either military or civilian observers from observing and recording Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAPs) for decades. Finally, those observations are acquiring respectable official status.
UFOs. At one time, anyone who even brought them up risked being called a crackpot. Not anymore.
The official term is Unidentified Aerial Phenomena now, and they’re the subject of serious congressional hearings. There’s even a body under the U.S. Department of Defense, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), established to investigate UAP cases and issue reports.
Stigma has not stopped either military or civilian observers from observing and recording UAPs for decades. Finally, those observations are acquiring respectable status.
Ryan Graves, Americans for Safe Aerospace Executive Director, from left, U.S. Air Force (Ret.) Maj. David Grusch, and U.S. Navy (Ret.) Cmdr. David Fravor,
testify Wednesday before a House Oversight and Accountability subcommittee hearing on UFOs. Nathan Howard, Associated Press
As reported in Roll Call, at the outset of the 2022 congressional hearings – the first such high-profile proceedings since 1970, when Project Blue Book was under discussion – then-House Intelligence Chairman Adam B. Schiff, D-Calif., remarked, “UAP reports have been around for decades, and yet we haven’t had an orderly way for them to be reported – without stigma – and to be investigated. That needs to change.”
Schiff’s hearings occurred during the Joe Biden presidency, but unlike other Biden initiatives, investigating UAPs did not get dropped like a hot potato when President Trump assumed power. Quite the opposite. Trump has pledged to release U.S. government records about UAPs and, according to Pentagon spokesperson Sue Gough, the “AARO has been examining over 2,000 UAP cases.”
And let’s not leave former President Barack Obama out – he suggested on a recent podcast that aliens are real (though he hadn’t seen any). Was he really joking?
It must also be noted that, prior to the 2022 hearings, the U.S. Department of Defense had been quietly collecting data on military – and other – UAP sightings through the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (2007-12) and the UAP Task Force (2017-21).
Many longtime UAP researchers think we may have entered the era of disclosure. Not that anything has been disclosed yet.
It would be possible to spend a lifetime studying UAPs and everything that comes with them. I don’t mean the rest of my lifetime, either; it would need to be the full lifetime of my youngest relative, 6-month-old great-nephew Walker. Good luck, Walker.
As it happens, though, I do have a close relationship with a longtime UAP devotee, my husband, Alan Bigelow. Alan, like thousands of others, is a member of MUFON, the Mutual UFO Network. MUFON was founded on May 31, 1969, as the Midwest UFO Network, but grew to include other states and other countries. The name was changed to Mutual UFO Network when it became worldwide, so that it could keep its acronym.
As a civilian volunteer organization that researches, investigates and discusses UAPs, MUFON publishes a quarterly journal, holds an annual convention and maintains a huge library of digitized UAP data – Project Aquarius – that goes back to the 19th century. Membership includes access to all these resources and more.
Over the years, MUFON has developed a science-based investigative methodology in which a field investigator is assigned to a case where someone reports a sighting or experience. These reports are not accepted as possible UAPs until interviews, images and collaborating evidence are collected. In addition, anything else that may explain the phenomena – astronomical events, commercial air traffic, drone activity, military exercises, Coast Guard flares, weather balloon launches, public/private celebrations – has to be ascertained and taken into account.
Alan, a one-time MUFON investigator, can affirm that field investigators also have to pass a fairly rigorous written test.
John Lombardo, New York State director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), thinks it's only a matter of time before full disclosure is offered by the government.
Derek Gee, Buffalo News
New York State has its own MUFON chapter and luckily for my purposes, its director, John Lombardo, a retired law enforcement officer, lives in Western New York. Lombardo, who’s 74, has been involved in MUFON for 40 years and took on the directorship last year.
“Back in the day, people were seeing things in the sky,” Lombardo says. “They were seeing things over their homes. They were seeing things out in the fields. We had no idea what we were dealing with, but a lot of people had opinions and ideas as to what was going on. I was attracted to that, and that's what started it, I guess, just questioning what was happening.”
John Lombardo, the New York State director of the Mutual UFO Network (MUFON), holds the award for Chapter of the Year which he was awarded in 2024.
Derek Gee/Buffalo News
When Lombardo started paying attention, he was a member of the Aerial Phenomena Research Organization, but like APRO’s Walt Andrus, who co-founded MUFON, Lombardo transitioned to the newly expanding MUFON. The New York chapter has about 100 members and 20 field investigators.
“It comes in waves,” Lombardo says. “You know, if there's something on television or on the radio about a UFO sighting, all of a sudden, interest picks up, and next thing you know, we've got 50 people wanting to be field investigators.”
Denise Mantione, MUFON New York chief investigator.
Provided image
The New York chapter’s chief investigator, Denise Mantione, lives in Rochester. She joined MUFON when she retired from her career as a speech pathologist about four years ago. Mantione was eager to become involved because at the age of 14, while bicycling to her home in Greece, a Rochester suburb, she saw “a very large craft rise from behind the trees.” Mantione describes the sighting of cigar-shaped craft fully on YouTube in a video easily found by searching Denise 1973.
Apparently, the craft was as large as a football field and Mantione could make out what looked like windows. It may also be that she "lost time" for a few minutes while observing. That's a commonly noted – and scary-sounding – experience.
As chief investigator, Mantione assigns cases to field investigators and maintains a database. She says that there have been 1,048 cases in New York in the last five years and 200 were determined to be unknown, either UAP or other unknown.
Denise Mantione describes her encounter for a YouTube video.
That’s a more precise positive rate than MUFON New York assistant director Tom Nesser gave me. Nesser, who also lives in Rochester, estimates, “I would probably say that 90% of them are misidentifications. Nowadays, we get a lot of calls about the Starlink flying by.” Starlink is a SpaceX satellite that apparently looks like a string of pearls. I’ve never seen it. In fact, I’ve never noticed any unusual phenomena in the sky.
Neither has MUFON New York director Lombardo, who says, “For me, it's not a matter of belief or faith. It's a matter of doing the research, seeing the evidence, and seeing what people have to show as evidence. I mean, even the military now is showing the evidence, showing the videos of craft, of craft that defy all explanation. Things like that keep me interested.”
Nesser hasn’t had any personal experience either but says, “I have spoken to pilots. I have spoken to ex-military guys. I have spoken to so many people who I hold in the highest esteem, who have told me things.”
Nesser does think he may have seen the aftermath of a visitation. In 1991, Nesser and Lombardo investigated a crop circle in Medina, where the flattened sheaves of corn, when sent to a Wisconsin lab, demonstrated changed molecular structures similar to those found in Wiltshire, England, crop circles.
Clearly, you don’t have to have had a close encounter to be a UAP believer. And the number of believers is growing. According to a recent YouGov poll, the number of people who believe UFO sightings offer likely proof of alien life increased from 20% in 1996 to 34% in 2022. This is not to say that UAPs are always equated with extraterrestrials: some researchers believe some of the sightings can be attributed to secret U.S. crafts. Some 24% of Americans say they’ve seen a UFO.
What happens when and if – a big if! – U.S. military and other sources come clean as promised and release all their information to the public? When the disclosure actually happens? Will organizations like MUFON even be needed?
Mantione says, “That's a very good question. I'd like to see it survive. Our purpose, I think, would have to be redefined, because we're looking for verification, right? And we would have it.”
Right now, Mantione is overseeing a case in Depew, involving a woman who has been having frequent visitations since 2022, and is sending cellphone video that he says the woman wouldn’t even know how to manipulate. “It’s mostly orbs but there could be a solid object,” Mantione says. “Very interesting.”
Lombardo also thinks that the mission is evolving: “It’s no longer whether these things exist, whether there are aliens or nonhuman intelligence interacting with us in this world. Our questions today are, ‘Who are they? Why are they here, and what do they want?’”
Seen anything? Report it to NYMufon.com.