Key excerpts from a transcript of the UFO video special Alien Encounters From New Tomorrowland. All quotes were spoken by host/narrator Robert Urich unless otherwise noted. Remember, Disney CEO Michael Eisner and program narrator Robert Urich delivered these quotes with straight, matter-of-fact, totally serious cadence and inflection, as you can see in the video we’ve posted at the link above.
Robert Urich [Intro sequence over various UFO photos and film]: This is not swamp gas. It is not a flock of birds. This is an actual spacecraft from another world, piloted by alien intelligence – one sighting from tens of thousands made over the last fifty years on virtually every continent on the globe. Intelligent life from distant galaxies is now attempting to make open contact with the human race. And tonight, we’ll show you the evidence.
Disney CEO Michael Eisner [standing in front of what looks like a military hangar, guarded by armed troops]: Tonight we celebrate the New Tomorrowland at Walt Disney World in Florida with a television special that’s out of this world. Hello, I’m Michael Eisner, head of the Walt Disney Company.
At a top secret military installation somewhere in the United States, there are those who believe that the government is hiding the remains of an alien spacecraft that mysteriously crashed to earth. With more and more scientific evidence of alien encounters and UFO sightings, the idea of creatures from another planet might not be as far-fetched as we once thought. In fact, one of you out there could have the next alien encounter. Enjoy tonight’s special. I’m going to walk over and see if I can sneak a peak. [soldiers raise weapons] Maybe not!
Robert Urich: Scientific verification of extraterrestrial life forms routinely arriving on earth; top secret reports from ongoing military investigations; compelling home videos of alien craft captured within the last few months; world figures who have gone public with their own extraterrestrial experiences; the shocking history of government misinformation programs designed to prevent widespread panic; and personal accounts of those who have been abducted and studied against their will.
From beyond the boundaries of our perceptions, intelligent beings are beckoning mankind to join the galactic community. It’s an invitation which is both wondrous and terrifying. This is the nature of alien encounters.
Mankind has the unique ability to ignore the obvious, especially when the facts reveal a disturbing truth. We once believed the sun revolved around the Earth. When Galileo demonstrated the reverse is true in 1634, he was charged with heresy and placed under house arrest for the last eight years of his life. The charges were later dropped – 342 years later.
Now as we approach the new millennium, mankind is in the midst of the most profound event in history – actual contact with intelligent life from other planets. For nearly 50 years, officials have been documenting routine alien encounters here on earth, and thousands of people have seen or experienced this alien presence.
Yet many others still refuse to acknowledge the obvious evidence all around them. What is it like to be confronted by a creature whose intelligence and skill is far beyond the comprehension of mankind? Would it be enlightening? Would it be an exercise in terror? Or perhaps both?
Here in the New Tomorrowland at the Walt Disney World resort near Orlando, Florida, these concepts are brought to life as guests experience their own alien encounter, a sensory thriller from Disney and George Lukas. We’ll give you a sneak preview later in the show. But first, we must prepare you for the future with some shocking insights from the recent past.
Alien ships seem to arrive in waves, and if the last few years are any indication, planet Earth is experiencing a tsunami of sightings. For the last few months of 1994 and lately in 1995, Gulf Breeze, Florida has been ground zero for alien encounters. Especially during the day, extraterrestrial craft have become common ornaments in the uneasy skies. You would think these alien sightings would be front-page news. So why have they received almost no national attention? The answer is simple. For governments determined to maintain their authority, extraterrestrial contact is pure dynamite.
Capt. Kevin Randle (retired air force intelligence officer): There’s beings from another planet. We don’t know where they come from. We don’t know what they’re doing here. There’s nothing we can do about it. Any time a technologically superior civilization comes in contact with a technologically inferior civilization, the technologically inferior civilization ceases to exist – not necessarily through conquest, not necessarily through invasion, but because the technology changes the underlying social structures of that civilization, and it disintegrates.
Urich: Those fears are reflected in a 1960 federally funded study by the Brookings Institution, which warned that public knowledge of alien life could cause civilization to collapse.
Why have aliens chosen to visit our small blue planet, hidden on the distant fringes of an insignificant star cluster? Well, we invited them here.
There have been reports of alien encounters throughout recorded history. But since the end of World War II, alien encounters have adopted a darker, more menacing demeanor. No longer just spirited lights dancing in the sky, UFOs turned more brazen, announcing themselves with surprising ferocity.
Most alien activity on earth in this century seems to have been sparked by the single most profound technological achievement in human history. The atomic bomb did more than blow away every conventional notion of combat. It also saddled mankind with the awesome responsibility of life and death for the entire planet.
But what the world didn’t know in 1945 was that the atomic bomb’s brilliant burst of energy would also be mankind’s cosmic calling card, announcing to the universe that a technological society had evolved on a small blue planet in the backwaters of the stars. So as the world celebrated the war’s end in 1945, aliens who heard man’s atomic trumpet were already charting their course toward earth, responding to our open invitation.
As early as 1947, the large alien ships began to arrive, navigated by living creatures. Their advanced physics allowed them to traverse the galaxy and pierce earth’s atmosphere with amazing speed. The U.S. military immediately went on the alert against the unknown menace. Sightings were perceived as threats to the security of an America still reeling from the edgy consciousness of war. And the sightings were taking place all across the country.
More than one alien craft crashed and was recovered for secret U.S. military research. The most famous case took place in July of 1947 just outside the community of Roswell, New Mexico – famous, because local officials openly admitted they had retrieved an alien ship before their commanders instructed them to keep the story confidential. What you can’t explain, they reasoned, you must deny.
This is the actual site where the Roswell saucer was discovered, along with the bodies of three extraterrestrial missionaries who didn’t survive the collision. The debris and the dead were impounded and taken away for top secret study, while a classified investigative committee called the Majestic Twelve was organized by President Truman, and a government cover-up was initiated with a calculated disinformation campaign.
But while the Pentagon refused to publicly admit aliens had arrived on earth, their top secret internal memos told a different story, even detailing the various ships and the creatures they had autopsied.
By the early 1960s, UFOs were having a chilling effect on our defense operations. Their tremendous speed often caused them to be misidentified as incoming intercontinental ballistic missiles, putting American air bases on red alert. There needed to be some way for the U.S. and the Soviets to distinguish between nuclear attack and alien visitors.
Clifford Stone [retired army officer]: The Hot Line between Moscow and Washington was set up so that they could go ahead and make last-minute pleas, that “We’re not attacking you, and you’re not attacking us.” The purpose of this was to insure that a nuclear war would not be touched off by a UFO appearing on the scopes and being mistaken for enemy aircraft.
Urich: The Hot Line eased some international tensions, but it didn’t halt the interaction between the military and the aliens, which continues to this day.
Stone: [In] November of 1975, essentially every SAC [Strategic Air Command] base in the United States was visited by UFOs. We have reason to believe that the UFOs went ahead and had some effect on changing the codes within the missiles, within the launch control facility, to change where the missiles would hit.
1976, September, Iran, two F-4s try to intercept a UFO and shoot at one of the UFOs. The weapons systems of the planes go dead, the communications systems go dead. These are just two examples of cases which sound like they came out of science fiction, but in reality, they’re from government documentation, documents released by the State Department.
Urich: Indications are that government, military and scientific leaders will soon release nearly a half-century of official documentation of ongoing alien encounters on earth. Perhaps they feel it would be too embarrassing not to reveal the truth, before the truth reveals itself. But these FBI files acquired through the Freedom of Information Act outline nearly fifty years of UFO reports investigated by federal agents all across America, overwhelming evidence that something sinister is at work.
This particular report from October of 1969 was filled out by Jimmy Carter. He was still Governor of Georgia at the time he witnessed a luminous object suspended in the twilight sky. Later, when he assumed the office of President of the United States, his staff attempted to explore the availability of official investigations into alien contact. As this internal government memo illustrates, there are some security secrets outside the jurisdiction of the White House.
Planet earth has always been a laboratory for alien life forms which can drop in from space or slowly mutate into bizarre fleshy organisms at our feet [holding a large mushroom]. Understanding the nature of these strange creatures from above, and below, is the greatest challenge of our age. We now know that our future, indeed the future of earth itself, rests in the balance of the solid and the ethereal, of common sense and the irrational, in our relationship with alien life as grotesque as a fungus, or as glorious as the heavens.