Oh, What a Tangled Web They Weave
Capitol Disclosure By Stephen Bassett
June 2025
On March 5 of this year, I received a referral from Ron James, a filmmaker and the Director of Media Relations for MUFON. Ron had received this request, below, from Wall Street Journal national security reporter, Joel Schectman:
Greetings, I'm Joel Schectman from the Wall Street Journal. I was hoping you might have a good way to reach Robert Salas. I wanted to discuss his important UAP account for an article I'm working on. Please let me know the best way to reach him.
Ron was aware I had been working closely with Capt. Robert Salas (USAF ret.) for many years in support of his efforts to testify under oath - along with other Air Force officers - before a congressional committee. The subject of this testimony would be firsthand accounts of the shutting down of American ICBM missiles while a large, glowing UAP hovered directly above the launch control center.
I immediately reached out to Joel Schectman and provided to him Robert Salas' contact information. I provided links to relevant information related to the subject matter and to Capt. Salas’ experience. These included a copy of witness statements and affidavits regarding UAP nuclear tampering events I had recently delivered to the offices of the House Oversight National Security Subcommittee and the Senate Intelligence Committee. Also provided to Schectman were links to the testimony of Capt. Salas and Capt. David Schindele at the Citizen Hearing on Disclosure - a mock congressional hearing we conducted at the National Press Club in 2013.
Following these submissions earlier this year, I met with Mr. Schectman in person at the Wall Street Journal’s Washington, D.C., office. During a lengthy discussion, I provided to him even more information about the ICBM shutdown events and other related matters.
Next, a great deal happened regarding the Disclosure process during the subsequent three months between that initial meeting I had with Schectman and his resulting, and controversial article, which ran on June 6: The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology.
I had forgotten about this meeting. Then the investigative article he co-authored with national security reporter Aruna Viswanatha dropped. My reaction? WOW!
Only Mr. Schectman and Ms. Viswanatha can provide a detailed account of the writing of this article, and I hope they do. Until then, however, allow me to provide my take:
First, I have no reason to think Mr. Schectman and Ms. Viswanatha are partnered with the Department of Defense to create disinformation, which is ironic, as you will soon learn. They are national security reporters who were asked to write an article about the ongoing Disclosure process. If that were the case, it would be at the level of the WSJ ‘s Managing Editor or even Publisher.
According to the article, over the course of three months, the authors spoke with two dozen current and former U.S. officials, scientists and military contractors, and reviewed thousands of provided documents. However, other than Capt. Salas and myself, it is not known if they spoke with anyone else in the UAP citizen research/activist community.
There is a long list of relevant topics the article could have addressed. But when the dust settled, there were two that really stood out to me:
First, much, if not all, of the UAP accounts reported, studied and archived over decades that appeared in the article have been the result of a massive government disinformation campaign to help shield advanced technology research and testing by the government. (Note: This June 6 story may have been the first time the DOD admitted to UAP-related disinformation on a large scale.)
Second, while this robust revelation could easily have taken up the entire article, it appears the two dozen officials, scientists and military contractors interviewed elected to take advantage of the opportunity to counter what is perhaps the greatest threat to the waning defense of the Truth Embargo - testimony under oath to a congressional committee, live streamed to the world, of firsthand witnesses to the shutdown of American ICBMs, while UAP hung over the security fences of these military sites.
Mr. Schectman and Ms. Viswanatha offered to provide to their readers the official explanation for these shutdowns. According to them, it was us! The American Military!
I am not going to argue the merits of the assertions in this article. Counter articles have been and are being published. Capt. Salas, himself, provided a rebuttal to the writers of that article, calling their conclusions, “A Fantasy.”
And, of course, the article is being savaged on the Internet. There are two aspects of the article I do want to mention, however, that nicely convey the degree of desperation within the national security structures that are currently taking place regarding the slow and steady collapse of the nearly 80-year-long Truth Embargo.
The first half of the WSJ article makes the case that the Department of Defense has been creating massive amounts of disinformation (lies) for decades for national security reasons. The second half of the articles has the government insiders providing a full prosaic explanation for the entire history of nuclear missile shutdown events, and asking their readers to believe it at face value.
Thus, the irony. Want more irony?
That June 6 Wall Street Journal article: The Pentagon Disinformation That Fueled America’s UFO Mythology has finally done what decades of the efforts of many – including myself - had not done. It placed Capt. Robert Salas on the national stage (and, perhaps, hopefully, soon, the international stage) by exploding into the cultural zeitgeist the awareness of the fact that several, UAP-related nuclear shutdown incidents really did occur during the recent past.
This WSJ article all but guarantees that Capt. Salas and other witnesses will finally be allowed the opportunity to testify, live, and under oath, before Congress.
In the words of the character Aeron the Elemental (Judi Dench) at the end of the film The Chronicles of Riddick – “Now, who would have thought of that?"
Stephen Bassett is the Founder of the Paradigm Research Group and the Executive Director of The Hollywood Disclosure Alliance
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