What Did My Father Know - Part One
Hollywood P.O.V. By Dan Harary
July 2025
I’ve been dreaming about my late father a lot lately. Not sure why. He passed over eight years ago now. But the more thought I’ve given to him recently, the more I’ve come to realize that the reason I’m so deeply entrenched within the DISCLOSURE MOVEMENT today is because it’s allowed me a path by which to honor his memory. And possibly to give him a “voice” after his death.
Read on, my dear friends, and you’ll come to understand what I just wrote:
One sunny afternoon in March 1970, my father, Jack Robert Harary, picked me up after school one day in his car -- it must have been around 3 pm. We were driving through West Deal, a cozy suburban New Jersey town, on Dwight Drive, the street my family lived on from 1963 until 1978. As we turned onto Dwight Drive from the adjacent Logan Road, I saw through the windshield an enormous silver “Flying V” shaped UFO craft very, very slowly hovering directly above our car.
I saw this marvel through the windshield, and started shouting: “Dad, Stop the car! Stop the car! There’s a UFO! Dad STOP THE CAR!” My dad pulled his vehicle off to the side of the road -- I flew out of the passenger seat. Together, as we stood in front of the car, we watched this giant craft hovering directly above us – silently -- perhaps 300 feet in the sky. It made no sound, had no wings or propellors, and emitted no smoke. It was just a brilliantly shiny silver V, gleaming in the sunlight.
I was hyper-ventilating, jumping up and down in amazement. “Dad this is so cool! A UFO! Dad, we saw a UFO! It’s STAR TREK! Dad, it’s STAR TREK!”
My father said nothing. As though the sighting was commonplace, he was completely and totally nonplussed by the entire experience. Bored, he looked like he was inspecting a head of lettuce at the supermarket. After maybe two minutes of us just staring at this eighth wonder of the world, my dad then said, “Come on, kid, let’s go home.”
Upon returning home, I ran into the kitchen and picked up the family’s (rotary) phone to call The Asbury Park Press -- our local area newspaper. I remember distinctly the conversation. A woman answered. I said, “Hi, my name is Danny Harary. I live on Dwight Drive in West Deal. I want to report a UFO! My dad and I just saw a big silver UFO flying over our street!” The woman, sounding somewhat frantic, said, “Sonny, we’re getting A LOT of phone calls about this right now. Sorry, but I don’t have time to talk to you now. I have to go.” She hung up. I searched that newspaper the next day and beyond and was greatly disappointed to see no mention of this encounter anywhere. No story ever ran.
My father and I never, ever discussed that event. In fact, we didn’t tell my mother or my two younger brothers either. It was as though that remarkable sighting we had was of absolutely no consequence to my dad whatsoever.
I COMPLETELY FORGOT ABOUT THIS EVENT FOR 47 YEARS!!
My dad died on April 17, 2017, in Florida. Three days later, I was sitting alone in a famous (now defunct) West Los Angeles deli called Junior’s, where I’d gone to get a pastrami sandwich in his memory. I ordered my sandwich, watched the waiter walk away, and then sat there in silence, realizing I’d never see my beloved dad again.
The following is an absolutely TRUE STORY:
Suddenly, a powerful bolt of “light” or “energy” or “something” beamed into my brain from above. It smacked into the right side of my head, hard – as though someone had made a fist and knocked me in the head with their knuckles.
Suddenly, this power source thrust information into my brain, which was then projected through my eyes into the air, like a hologram. An incredibly vivid, color, 3-D, hi-definition home movie with audio, within a perfectly rectangular-shaped “screen” in the air, that I can only describe as a digital download. What was now “playing” maybe eight inches in front of my face was a “recording” of the 1970, silver V, UFO sighting I’d had with my father – an event I’d completely forgotten about for 47 years! (Does this prove the Akashic Records are real?)
This home movie made me gasp. My heart started beating fast and my hands were shaking. I instantly recalled that incredible UFO sighting from so long ago.
Watching this “home movie,” I saw my dad and I standing in front of his car. I was pointing to the sky and jumping up and down with excitement. This was NOT a memory – I was actually IN the movie MYSELF! The “footage” appeared to me as though God himself had been the “cameraman” filming this event while standing just a few feet west of – and adjacent to - the car.
I also watched in amazement as my dad, standing right next to me, appeared completely nonplussed and seemingly bored by the extraordinary sight. As I continued to watch this home movie for perhaps one minute, I then saw that my dad had winked at me, right before he said to me, “Come on, kid, let’s go home.” We returned back inside the car in silence.
At this point, the home movie stopped. The image dissipated into a million pixels and vanished.
I then HEARD in my right ear, a disembodied male voice: “GET A PEN! GET A PEN! YOU NEED A PEN! GET A PEN!” While still waiting for my sandwich to arrive, I asked my waiter for a pen. On the paper placemat before me, my right hand began to perform what’s called “automatic writing.” My hand recorded these three phrases: “Write a book about benevolent Aliens.” Then, “Lead character’s father knew about UFOs.” And finally, my hand wrote down the capital letters “A”, “T” and “C.” My hand stopped moving, and I stared at what I’d just written.
At first, I had no idea what ATC meant. A few minutes later, it dawned on me -- the universe had just given me the title of a new science fiction book I was destined to write: After They Came. I finally got my pastrami sandwich, inhaled it, raced home, and began writing that book, which would eclipse almost all of my time from April 2017 to April 2018.
While concurrently mourning the loss of my father and working on my book, I reviewed dozens of my family’s old scrapbooks. Much to my surprise, inside one of them, I discovered a newsletter from my father’s workplace that profiled him in 1985. The document was one that my dad had given me decades previous – an orange sheet of paper I’d never previously read.
Here’s what I learned: “Jack Harary worked as a Civilian Electronics Engineer and Physicist for the U.S. Army from 1951 -1996 at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey, within the Radar Branch of the Camp Evans Signal Laboratory Installation.” My father had worked on a variety of airborne electronics systems for air navigation, position location, missile guidance and drone control. He supervised the Surveillance Drone Data Base Program which expanded the base of unmanned aerial surveillance and target acquisition. He also directed the Remotely Piloted Aerial Observer System program, which resulted in the first successful laser designation of a tank target from a mini-Remotely-Piloted-Vehicle (RPV), resulting in a direct hit by a laser-guided artillery round at White Sands Missile Range in 1975.
According to this newsletter, over the years, my dad also received many awards, commendations, and certificates. I never knew my dad won any awards at all! That’s how secretive he was about his work!
All my mom, two younger brothers and I ever knew about “dad’s work” was that he designed, invented and tested guided missile and radar systems. He had top secret security clearance; gave talks at the Pentagon quite often; and, according to my mom, “went to White Sands Testing Range all the time.”
As I was reviewing those scrapbooks, I suddenly remembered two other things: When I was about 10, my dad came home from work one day, looked at me, and said, “Hey Danny, I invented drones,” to which I likely replied, “that’s great, dad, can we go outside and play catch?” The other thing I remembered was that once when I was quite young, my dad was driving me in his car and said, “President Kennedy just read one of my reports.”
Days later, I next remembered another story my dad told me. When I was perhaps 11, he told me that he’d invented a drone that looked like a flying garbage can. This drone shot film – rolls of actual film (this was during the pre-digital age, obviously) – while photographing the ground below from the skies above North Vietnam. After the rolls of film had been exposed, they were then parachuted to the ground, while emitting electronic beeping signals. In this manner, our troops could find them and retrieve them for development and review.
And finally, each and every time I ever asked my old man, “Hey, dad, what do you for a living?” he would always (and only) reply, “I helped America win the Cold War.”
While writing After They Came, I happened to be reading Richard Dolan’s 2002 book, UFOs and the National Security State, and was thrilled to discover, toward the back of that book, Richard’s chronological “Table of Military UFO Encounters.” Listed there were two entries that blew my mind: The first on September 10, 1951, being a radar and visually confirmed sighting of a metallic, disc-shaped object flying at 900 mph over the skies of Fort Monmouth, New Jersey. My Dad had begun working at that site as a Civilian Electronics Engineer just a few months earlier!
Another UFO sighting over Fort Monmouth is also listed in Dolan’s book: July 1, 1952. On that date, Dolan notes that radar and visual contact occurred of two unidentified flying objects which hovered over the base, then sped away.
I am convinced that even if my dad had not physically seen these two UFOs with his own eyes, HE HAD TO HAVE HEARD ABOUT THEM, given that he worked in the RADAR BRACH of that Army base!
Also, as I was writing After They Came, I phoned my mother, Joan, (my dad’s first wife, 83 at the time and today about to turn 91), to ask her if my father had ever spoken to her about UFOs. She told me a story I’d never heard before: “Very early on in your father’s career at Fort Monmouth, in the early 1960’s, they took him down deep into the vaults at the base and showed him something down there that they said was highly top secret. He was not to ever share what he saw down there with anyone. I remember he was really frightened when he came home. In fact, he was pale and shaky and very nervous. Actually, your father was scared shitless. When I asked him what was wrong that evening, he said, ‘I saw something today down in the vaults that’s above top secret. I can never tell you, or anyone, about it, as long as I live.’ Danny, your father was never the same after that day.”
My father never did reveal what he saw that day. Not to anyone. Ever.
So at this point (in mid-2017) I began to realize there was more to my father’s career than I’d ever previously been made aware of.
A lot more.
And that the time had come for me to next do something I’d never done before his passing. I needed to research the Army base WHERE MY FATHER WORKED FOR 45 YEARS!
Next Month, in Part Two of this Column, I will present the story behind my dad’s remarkable workplace, Fort Monmouth Army Base, New Jersey. Specifically, the information I have come to learn about Camp ECOM-Evans, the Fort Monmouth headquarters of its team of brilliant genius scientists, who were charged with inventing cutting-edge technologies to aid soldiers in combat. Many of their inventions would come to change the world. Were military, man-made UFO’s among them?
Dan Harary is the Chairman of The Hollywood Disclosure Alliance
and Author of the Sci-Fi Novel AFTER THEY CAME
To Contact Dan Harary: