[@JesseMichels] Every UFO Truth Revealed In Spielberg’s Disclosure Day

Link: https://youtu.be/ScE9FaDy-mE

Duration: 60 min

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Short Summary

Hosted by Jesse Michaels on the podcast 'American Alchemy,' this episode explores Steven Spielberg's new alien film 'Disclosure Day' alongside decades of UFO lore, government secrecy, and Hollywood intersections. The host weaves together Spielberg's filmmaking history, real-world programs like AATIP and Majestic 12, and recent New Jersey drone sightings to argue that disclosure may be imminent. Spielberg declined an interview but his body of work is framed as a guide for weathering the ontological shock of contact.

Key Quotes

1. "With great curiosity, I watched the documentary you sent over and found it compelling. Personally, I would like to think we are not alone. And even though I have devoted a generous percentage of my movies to extraterrestrial related themes, I for one have never seen a UFO." (00:02:05)
2. "I only know what you know. I have no access to special information." (00:04:14)
3. "And there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true." (00:05:47)
4. "What if they're not from an advanced civilization 300 million lighty years from here? But what if it's us 500,000 years into the future and they know something that we don't quite know." (00:12:35)
5. "I've been at Homestead Air Force Base, and I've seen the bodies of some aliens from outer space. It's top secret. Only a few people know, but the president arranged for me to be escorted in there and see them." (00:48:52)

Detailed Summary

Episode Overview: Spielberg, Disclosure Day, and the UFO Underworld

Hosted by Jesse Michaels on the show American Alchemy, this episode uses Steven Spielberg's new alien film Disclosure Day as a lens to explore decades of UFO lore, intelligence community secrecy, and connections between Hollywood and Washington. The host weaves Spielberg's filmmaking history, real-world programs like AATIP and Majestic 12, and recent New Jersey drone sightings into an argument that disclosure may be imminent.

Spielberg's Alien Filmography

Spielberg's UFO-themed body of work stretches back to his teenage years and includes direct collaboration with real researchers and intelligence figures.

• Spielberg made Firelight at age 17 for $500, about scientists investigating abductions in a small Arizona town — a clear precursor to his later UFO work.
• For Close Encounters of the Third Kind, he cast J. Allen Hynek, chief astronomer of the Air Force's Project Blue Book, and cast François Truffaut as French UFO researcher Jacques Vallée.
• Close Encounters includes crates labeled Lockheed and TRW, and features Richard Dreyfuss's character receiving UV sunburn from a UFO encounter — predating public discussion of electromagnetic effects.
• The Devil's Tower contact tones were inspired by the 1970s musical duo Ethership, which pioneered sonic xenolinguistics and coordinated with Vallée's Nixon-era seiotics research.
• Night Skies, which Spielberg produced, was based on a Kentucky case where a family found an alien on their farm; its autistic-child subplot carried over into ET.
• In a letter about James Fox's 2009 documentary I Know What I Saw, Spielberg wrote that he would like to think we are not alone but that he has never personally seen a UFO.

Disclosure Day Inspirations

The host traces the film's DNA to specific 2010s UFO developments and to Spielberg's private views on the nature of non-human intelligence.

• Leslie Kean's 2017 New York Times article about the 2004 Nimitz incident involving Commander David Fravor and a tic-tac UFO off San Diego partly inspired the film.
• Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid's UFO program AATIP, which ran from 2007 to 2012, also influenced the story.
• At South by Southwest, when asked if we are alone, Spielberg replied: "I only know what you know. I have no access to special information."
• Spielberg has privately told associates (including Deadpool creator Robert Leefield and Steven Colbert) that aliens might be humans 500,000 years in the future rather than beings from a civilization 300 million light years away.

Naval Intelligence and the White House

The episode claims that elements of the U.S. national security apparatus shaped Spielberg's alien films and used them to signal truths to insiders.

• Director Toby Hooper claimed that after Jaws, people he described as "from Naval Intelligence" approached Spielberg with a deal and access to case files used in Close Encounters and ET.
• During a White House screening of ET, President Ronald Reagan reportedly told high-level national security personnel, "there are a number of people in this room who know that everything on that screen is absolutely true," delivered without smiling.

Back to the Future and Townsend Brown

The host argues that the Back to the Future franchise is a coded tribute to a real-life inventor who worked on gravity manipulation and Navy radar.

• Back to the Future producer Spielberg also oversaw Robert Zemeckis's Contact.
• Doc Brown's character (Emmett Brown) shares initials with Townsend Brown, the obscure inventor behind the 1940s Philadelphia Experiment and gravity manipulation research using high voltage capacitors.
• An FBI document reportedly states Townsend Brown was deeper than anyone in the Navy on radar.
• The Back to the Future time machine is a flux capacitor, the house is in Pasadena where Brown lived and kept his original lab, and Doc Brown travels from 1985 (the year Brown died) to 1955 (when he proved his experiments).
• Brown's daughter confirmed to the host that Doc Brown is based on her father.

CIA's Hollywood Liaison

The episode documents a formal, decade-long channel between the CIA and the entertainment industry, including a family connection to a Spielberg-produced UFO comedy.

• Chase Brandon served as the CIA's official Hollywood liaison for roughly a decade starting in 1996, trained at the Farm, and assisted on films including The Recruit, The Sum of All Fears, Meet the Parents, and The Bourne Identity.
• Brandon is cousins with Men in Black co-star Tommy Lee Jones; Men in Black was produced by Spielberg's Amblin Entertainment.

Majestic 12 and Government Secrecy

The host lays out the timeline and alleged personnel of the rumored secret UFO committee, and claims that much of its documentary trail is a counterintelligence operation.

• The Majestic 12 committee was rumored to have been appointed by President Truman as an elite group of scientists, military, and intelligence officials advising the president on UFOs.
• The Forrestal memo is dated September 24, 1947, from Truman to Defense Secretary James Forrestal, authorizing Forrestal and Vannevar Bush to proceed with creating MJ-12.
• Stanton Friedman noted the first National Security Council meeting was September 26, 1947 — two days after the memo — involving Truman, Forrestal, Souers, and Hillenkoetter.
• The host alleges longtime CIA counterintelligence agent James Jesus Angleton created many MJ-12 documents anonymously dropped with UFO researchers in the 1980s and 1990s, primarily to catch Soviet spies.

Other Intelligence Figures

A web of alleged insiders links MJ-12 to Area 51, DARPA's founding, exotic-propulsion contractors, and a 2008 transfer of UFO material that was reportedly blocked by the CIA.

• Harold Malmgren, a White House adviser, claimed MJ-12 was tracking him personally and that he held pieces of a UFO given directly to him by Lawrence Preston G., head of the Albuquerque branch of the Atomic Energy Commission and eventual founder of DARPA — who was Jeff Bezos's maternal grandfather.
• Malmgren's mentor Richard Bissell founded Area 51 and served as deputy director of the CIA.
• Science Applications and Integrations Technology (SIC), headquartered in Reston, Northern Virginia, has openly studied exotic propulsion, anti-gravity, and directed energy, and reportedly works with the CIA's Stargate psychic spy program.
• Former NSA director Bobby Ray Inman served on SIC's board; AARO head Sean Kirkpatrick previously worked at SIC.
• Journalist George Knapp testified to Congress that CIA director of science and technology Glenn Gaffney blocked the transfer of UFO materials from Lockheed Martin to Bigelow Aerospace in 2008.

Diana Pasulka and Tim Taylor

The episode claims that a NASA mission controller's autobiography contains coded references to a secret time-travel group connected to anti-gravity research.

• Diana Pasulka's book American Cosmic relies in part on NASA mission controller and NRO operative Tim Taylor, who claimed his job involved adjusting timelines as part of a secret space program.
• Tim Taylor told UFO experiencer Chris Bledsoe and his son Ryan he was part of a secret time travel group headed by mid-century anti-gravity inventor Thomas Towns and Brown.
• Taylor's autobiography Launch Fever was written roughly 15 years before American Cosmic and contains an Amazon review from Towns and Brown's daughter.

The Jackie Gleason–Nixon Legend

The host sifts one documented fact from a much larger unverifiable story about a comedian, a president, and allegedly preserved alien bodies.

• On February 19, 1973, Nixon met Jackie Gleason on the 18th green of a Florida golf course — the only documented fact in the legend.
• Gleason allegedly went to Homestead Air Force Base that evening, where he described seeing four embalmed alien bodies about 2 feet long with small bald heads and big ears in glass-topped freezers.
• His wife Beverly (later McKittrick) told the National Enquirer in 1983 that Gleason came home around 11:30 p.m. white-faced, saying he had seen alien bodies at Homestead AFB.
• By 1973, Gleason had built a UFO-shaped house in Peekskill, New York, called "the mother ship," containing a UFO library of roughly 700 books.

Eric Walker and Kecksburg

The episode ties a former Penn State president and alleged MJ-12 member to a 1965 Pennsylvania crash site through proximity and Navy research ties.

• Dr. Eric Walker, alleged MJ-12 member and president of Penn State, told UFO researcher Bill Steinman he had known about MJ-12 for decades.
• Walker ran an ordnance research lab at Penn State doing Navy underwater acoustics work in the 1960s; Penn State was about a 2.5-hour drive from the 1965 Kecksburg crash site.

Holographic Principle and Disclosure Day Production

The host connects whistleblower testimony about higher-dimensional origins to the film's production site in New Jersey and to a recent wave of unexplained sightings.

• Whistleblower David Grusch suggested UFOs may originate from a higher-dimensional physical space co-located with our reality, referencing the holographic principle.
• The Disclosure Day trailer contained the line "7 billion people have the right to know the truth," later changed — prompting speculation that roughly 1 billion people may be non-human alien hybrids.
• Production began in February 2025 in Morris County, New Jersey, roughly a half-hour drive from Picatinny Arsenal.
• NewsNation reporter Rob Jones theorized that a Lockheed Martin UFO slated for transfer to Bigelow Aerospace in 2008 was blocked by the CIA and ultimately ended up at Picatinny Arsenal, held by a New Jersey company called Peritin, whose subsidiary Heritage Labs has offices there.
• The host notes the New Jersey drone/UFO flap occurred just months before filming and may have been triggered by movement of UFO material.
• Spielberg declined an interview request from American Alchemy.

Conclusion

The host frames the film's core message as: in a fragmented world of miscommunication, listening and being receptive is what will allow humanity to weather the ontological shock of disclosure.