George Knapp: Yeah. So, you know, it’s an amazing time, is it not all this stuff, popping?
Richard Dolan: I’ve been studying this now for about 25 years, and I am astonished. I have to be honest and say I’m shocked that the UFO subject has made such an appearance in the last year and a half, two years — two years, really — in what we would call mainstream media news. It’s not that the stories themselves that have come out are unique. I mean, the “Tic Tac” incident is quite interesting. The incidents reported by the Navy from 2014-2015. That’s interesting. But those aren’t really unique in the long history of what we know about military encounters with UFOs. What is unique is how the media, the large media, is covering this. This is almost mind-blowing to those of us who’ve been looking into this for so long. We’ve expected the New York Times to dismiss and to debunk, and suddenly they’re not doing that. Suddenly the other major media outlets are not doing that. And it really has someone like myself wondering what has changed. What’s different? And I don’t have a full answer to that. But my hunch and from talking to a few people here and there, I really believe that someone has or some group has realized, this is a secret that cannot be contained anymore. Someone’s authorized a green light and I want to find out who it is. But people are allowed to say things that would not have been allowed three, four years ago.

The Interview
- Historian ‘shocked’ at media’s new attitude toward UFOs
- UFO briefings, ‘Unidentified,’ and soft disclosure: Historian analyzes information flow
- ‘UFO leak of the century’ contained in 15-page document, historian says
Richard Dolan is the author of “UFOs and the National Security State,” a two volume book covering the UFO phenomenon from the 1940s to present day.
Knapp: One thing different about Tic Tac and Gimbal is the videos exist, and they were released by the Pentagon. I mean, that’s pretty astonishing by itself.
Dolan: It’s extraordinary. This is the first gun camera footage that’s been released. And you know, we’re getting these statements, particularly from the Navy, that are unprecedented, at least in the last … maybe since the 1940s or ’50s, where they’re saying, you know, we are tracking these UAP and we are issuing new guidelines and so forth. So there’s this acknowledgement that they are studying UFOs That’s incredible.
SEE: Richard Dolan’s website and his YouTube channel
Knapp: To The Stars. You know, they take a lot of lumps. Lue Elizondo, Tom DeLonge, they have moved the ball down the field. I mean, they were the ones that lobbied the New York Times, that worked them. Chris Mellon, to get that story on. New York Times does the story and then it’s okay for other media to do it.
Dolan: Yeah. Yeah, that’s right. Lots of criticisms and a few mistakes, too, when they did their rollout of some of their information. There’s no question. However, it’s undeniable. We’re having conversations here out in the open in the mainstream, as it were, that would have been impossible had To The Stars not existed. And it’s true. The December 2017, New York Times coverage. Not one, but two articles. Politico. None of that would have happened without To The Stars, and all of the subsequent — through 2018 and 2019 — it’s very obvious that much, most of this really, was generated by the momentum of To The Stars Academy.
NEXT STORY: UFO briefings, ‘Unidentified,’ and soft disclosure: Historian analyzes information flow