The Age of Disclosure Is Not New. It Started Quietly in 1998.

The new documentary The Age of Disclosure presents the idea that the world has entered a new period of openness about UFOs. It brings together former military, intelligence and government personnel who say the United States has spent decades recovering and studying technology it cannot explain. The film treats the last few years as the moment when people inside the system finally began speaking more openly. The film presents this period as something unique, but an earlier disclosure effort was already taking shape in 1998.

The documentary presents its claims clearly, but none of them are new. An earlier disclosure effort took shape in 1998. It was smaller, quieter and ignored, yet it followed the same pattern now being presented as new. Concerns about secrecy, talk of classified programs and calls for congressional involvement were already part of the discussion long before the Pentagon confirmed anything publicly.

To understand why this was happening in 1998, it helps to look at the environment of the time. The Cold War had ended less than a decade earlier, and debates about government secrecy were growing. FOIA requests were increasing across multiple subjects. The internet was beginning to give researchers and whistleblowers a way to share information without going through traditional media. Late-night radio, especially Art Bell’s program, had become one of the few places where insiders could speak anonymously and test how much they could say. It created a pressure point that didn’t exist earlier.

By 1998, the early disclosure effort had more structure than is usually remembered. There was a lobbyist trying to get congressional attention, a respected journalist pushing for accountability inside Washington, groups collecting testimony from military personnel and early attempts to brief members of Congress privately. These briefings were informal and rarely documented, but they happened. Staffers listened, then stepped back. The political risk was higher than any potential benefit, and no member of Congress wanted to attach their name to a subject guaranteed to draw ridicule.

Witness accounts were being organised, retaliation was being discussed and guests were appearing on multiple radio programs to keep the subject alive. The approach had a foundation, but the support was not there.

Stephen Bassett was one of the people driving that early effort. He approached the UFO subject as a political problem rather than a fringe topic. His view was that reports and military incidents were going nowhere because the conversation stayed outside the institutions capable of acting on them. To change that, he founded Paradigm Research Group in 1996 and became the first registered lobbyist in the United States focused solely on UFO disclosure.

Bassett argued in the late 1990s that classified programs dealing with unexplained technology existed, that access to them was tightly controlled and that witnesses inside government wanted to speak but faced career consequences. He said the issue was not a lack of evidence, but a lack of political pressure. Without hearings or oversight, nothing would move. He used radio appearances in 1998 to outline these points because no mainstream outlet was willing to treat the subject seriously.

Those broadcasts show how familiar today’s UAP discussions already were. Bassett talked about compartmentalised programs, restrictions on communication and whistleblowers who feared retaliation. He called for public hearings and argued that witness testimony was essential. The structure of the conversation has remained the same. The difference in 1998 was that almost nobody in the wider political world was paying attention.

Sarah McClendon added a different form of pressure. She was a long-serving White House correspondent known for confronting federal agencies on issues of secrecy. McClendon had built her career challenging administrations on veterans’ care, intelligence oversight and other situations where government information was being withheld. When she turned her attention to UFO secrecy, she approached it the same way she approached every other accountability issue.

By the late 1990s she had taken a serious interest in the UFO subject. She spoke with disclosure advocates, supported the push for hearings and criticised the culture of ridicule that stopped government personnel from speaking openly. Her concern was the lack of transparency surrounding the reports, not the nature of the objects themselves.

She became more vocal as she heard from people inside government who said the reports were not being handled honestly. McClendon argued that too many credible accounts were coming from technical and military personnel to dismiss the subject entirely. Her involvement did not shift policy, but it showed that the topic had a foothold inside Washington long before mainstream newsrooms gave it attention.

Both Bassett and McClendon were responding to the same underlying problem: credible witnesses existed, but there was no safe or acceptable way for them to speak. Military personnel risked harming their careers. Technicians and intelligence employees risked losing their clearances. Pilots who reported objects often found the incident removed from documentation. In 1998, whistleblower protections did not exist for this subject, and there was no reporting structure to support anyone who came forward. Bassett tried to create political cover. McClendon tried to create journalistic cover. Neither had enough institutional support for their efforts to take hold.

Several obstacles explain why the 1998 effort stalled. There were no legal channels for witness testimony, no declassified videos to force public attention, no supportive senators and no budget line acknowledging the existence of a UAP program. Mainstream newsrooms saw the subject as too risky to cover seriously. Without public evidence, official data or political backing, the early disclosure push could not reach beyond a limited audience.

Many of the challenges faced in 1998 mirror what is still visible today, only now at a different scale. Early whistleblowers described retaliation, career pressure and restricted access. Today, witnesses describe the same issues, but now within a formal reporting system created because the old problems never went away. Claims about compartmentalised programs appeared in the 1990s and now appear in congressional hearings almost word-for-word. Discussions of recovered materials, restricted labs and reverse-engineering efforts were present privately in the late 1990s and now appear publicly in testimony and documentaries.

The idea that elected officials were being bypassed was part of the early discussion. Members of Congress now state openly that they are being blocked from information or briefings. Media hesitation also has a clear parallel. In 1998, major outlets avoided the subject entirely. Today, outlets cover it, but cautiously, focusing on safe and limited angles. The reluctance remains, even if the presentation has changed.

The same two-track system exists in both eras: a public conversation and a separate, private one behind closed doors. In the 1990s the public track was limited to radio shows and small conferences, while the private track involved informal briefings and quiet witness accounts. Today, the public track includes hearings and official reports, but the private track still contains restricted briefings, classified annexes and siloed programs.

This is where the film and the events of 1998 overlap. The documentary presents the current moment as a significant break from the past, but nearly every theme in it reflects what was already being said in the late 1990s. Secrecy, restricted programs, retaliation concerns, suppressed testimony and congressional inaction were already central to the discussion. The documentary brings these points to a wider audience, but the foundation behind them has been in place for decades.

The modern disclosure era did not begin when the cameras finally turned toward the subject. It began when people inside the system were already trying to speak, even when almost no one was listening. The subject didn’t change. The environment finally d