World Disclosure Day - The Essay
Capitol Disclosure By Stephen Bassett
July 2025
The idea for World UFO Day, just celebrated on July 2, started being tossed around at the turn of the 21st Century. June 24 was proposed as the date relating to the Kenneth Arnold sighting. Eventually this idea was formalized in 2010 by the World Disclosure Day Organization likely based in the Netherlands. The day selected was associated with the UAP crash near Roswell, NM - July 2.
While it does not appear extant websites for either the day or the organization are active, World UFO Day has received consistent media coverage for 15 years. It became an important asset for the Disclosure activist movement, already underway for 20 years.
Media coverage is the mother's milk of activism, particularly when challenging entrenched government policy. All governments know this and work diligently to suppress such coverage. Paraphrasing Shakespeare, "The first thing we do, let's neutralize all the journalists."
Paradigm Research Group first became aware of a World UFO Day in June of 2011, and had a "why didn't I think of that" moment. Also needed was a World Disclosure Day, an idea initially put forward by Steve Beckow and Geoffrey West in 2010. PRG created a website and began promoting it. The date selected was the day General Roger Ramey held a hastily-arranged press conference at the Fort Worth Army Air Field "confirming" the event previously announced earlier that day – the Roswell “crash” - was a retrieved weather balloon - July 8.
One might suggest July 8, 1947, was Day One of the Truth Embargo.
The World Disclosure Day website remains active 14 years later, but promoting the concept was neither easy nor successful. As of 2011, UFOs had been present, if not ubiquitous, for over six decades. The concept of Disclosure as the confirmation event by government of the technologically advanced, non-human (ET) presence had been around for one decade. Plus, you couldn't film or photograph a process and send it to your local newspaper.
Eight years after the New York Times articles of December 2017, Disclosure and the Disclosure activist process had finally become established and recognized by the media. Perhaps it's time for World Disclosure Day to have its moment, and here is why.
World UFO Day functions to draw attention to UFOs. And the term UFOs is not meant still photos of birds in flight when their shape mimics a saucer, party balloons, satellites you don't have a chart for, smoke rings, strange clouds or whatever odd thing that turns up in a selfie you can't label. What is meant are objects such as those seen and reported by professional pilots, tracked on military radar and captured on the gun cameras of fighter jets.
Herein lies the problem. The matter at hand is no longer about "unidentified" flying objects, it's about "identified" flying objects. The defense/intelligence complex of the United States has known exactly what they are since no later than 1947. They are not unidentified, but the Department of Defense would be more than pleased if the public and the media continued to use that adjective for the rest of this century.
World Disclosure Day was not put forward by PRG to encourage the U.S. Government to study the phenomenon, but to confirm its non-human origin. World UFO Day marks the beginning of the modern age of the phenomenon. World Disclosure Day intends to mark the end of the Truth Embargo. July 8 is just a stand-in for the eventual date and will be changed accordingly.
Here it must be added, World Disclosure Day was promoted by PRG with a second purpose to draw attention to those who have pursued the truth of this matter for almost eighty years. Some, like Major Donald Keyhoe, knew early on the phenomenon was of non-human origin. Others, not as certain, set out to investigate and prove the nature of the phenomenon given it was increasingly clear the Government's research was not in good faith. They believed if they proved it, which they did, the government would yield. It did not.
This was to be an extraordinary citizen research, journalism and activist campaign. There was little or no money. Remuneration came in the form of ridicule. Activists’ own government spent millions if not billions, of dollars to ensure they would not succeed. Those who focused strictly on research may not have thought of themselves as activists, but there could be no activism without their efforts.
Fortunately, compared to the other major activist movements of the 20th Century, there was not much danger or violence. What made the research/activist movement extraordinary is this: the government denied the focus of the movement existed. It was fantasy to be dismissed and rebuked.
There would be no awards, no acknowledgement from the "mainstream" institutions, no commencement speeches at alma maters. So, it was important to acknowledge each other. This was a primary reason for PRG's X-Conferences from 2005 to 2010. There's nothing like a conference banquet for giving out awards, and PRG gave out many. Lack of funding prevented X-Conferences after 2010, but an effort is underway for one next year.
Then there is the matter of recognition of those who have passed. On this note, PRG created an "In Memoriam" section on its website. It is by no means complete. Feel free to suggest additions. Along with their devotion to the truth, all those shown have this in common: they did not live to see Disclosure. With that in mind, I remind you there are persons within agencies and departments of the U.S. Government who believe none of us will live to see Disclosure.
World UFO Day has helped advance the truth process, but it is about the past.
World Disclosure Day is about the future and those who have helped and are helping to make that future a reality.
Stephen Bassett is the Founder of the Paradigm Research Group and the Executive Director of The Hollywood Disclosure Alliance
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