Q. and A. With Richard Dolan

By Sean Casteel and John Weigle

“UFO” Contributing Editor Sean Casteel recently sat down, accompanied by Ventura, California, newspaper copy editor John Weigle, Casteel’s faithful companion at many a UFO conference, to speak to researcher and author Richard Dolan. The interview was conducted on Halloween Sunday 2004 at the National UFO Conference, held at the upscale Renaissance Hotel in Hollywood, where Dolan was one of the featured speakers.

Dolan’s book, “UFOs and the National Security State” (Hampton Road Publishing Co, 2002)) was the starting point for a wide-ranging discussion of UFOs, politics, and conspiracy theory. Along with his dark ruminations on the emergence of a totalitarian form of government, born after World War II and nursed along by nearly 60 years of UFO secrecy, Dolan offers moments of hope, even humor, with his stand in opposition to what he views as the withering of America’s freedoms on a vine of warfare and deception.

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Casteel: Please explain the title of your book, “UFOs and the National Security State.” Your intention is to say what our current form of government is evolving toward?

Dolan: I chose “National Security State” as the subtitle of my book because it’s my own opinion that the UFO phenomenon has interacted with the American military and intelligence community for a long time now. And that that community has itself helped the government to undergo a major change. I guess the best way to put it is that this interaction, over 50-plus years, has resulted in so much secrecy and so much unaccounted-for-activity, that we have essentially a government that’s a state within a state. And I call it a “national security state.”

Casteel: Are you talking about something like right wing fascism? Is that one label you’d put on the national security state?

Dolan: I suppose. I look at our government as a form of authoritarianism. And how you can distinguish, is it fascist or is it something else, is hard for me to say. But I think that we’ve developed a new form of government over an extended period of time. America started out as this wonderful republic, and I think through a series of wars, most importantly the Second World War, that republic went through various transformations, which involved the creation of an increasingly autonomous military complex—again, something that I like to call the national security state. There’s a quote that I’m fond of, by Machiavelli. Essentially, he says, if you want to have a revolution from above, then what you really need to do is make sure you retain a semblance to the old forms of government, because that’s all people notice. You can have tremendous changes going on underneath, but if you keep the outer clothing as it is, then you’ll be fine. I would add, though, that at a certain point those changes become so profound that it’s probably impossible to hide the new form of government.

It is my belief that, especially since 9-11-2001, we’re witnessing the unveiling of this new state.

Casteel: So this national security state you’re talking about, is that a response to UFOs, or is it evolving along with a response to UFOs?

Dolan: I think it evolves along with the UFO phenomenon. I think it would be overstating the case that the reality of UFOs and of that secrecy is solely responsible for creating a kind of runaway military government. But I do think that it’s certainly contributed to it. Let’s say Roswell happened, as many think it did, which was the retrieval of a nonhuman type of technology that was very advanced. So what would happen? You would theoretically give it to a group of ultra-reliable scientists with top-level security clearances and you’d say, “Well, figure this out.” And after a certain period of time, maybe some scientist came up with a bright idea and said, “Oh, here’s what we can invent on the basis of this.” And you have this culture, then, of unaccountable secrecy that develops after years and generations. The secrecy is so pronounced now that it seems to be very hard to get away from that.

So I think the UFO phenomenon has contributed tremendously to this, but it’s hard to know exactly because in figuring this problem out, I feel like we’re this little kid pressing our nose against the darkened window with the curtains almost totally drawn, and all you can see is a little bit of activity going on and surmise what you can. So how big is the UFO phenomenon within the classified world? Well, I suspect it’s quite big.

Casteel: But it’s not the sole motivation?

Dolan: I don’t think it is, no.

Casteel: What other motivations are there? What would lead our supposedly straight politicians to begin this sort of downward spiral?

Dolan: I think power and money. Power, power, power. It’s no different from Rome. You have the development of an empire, and an inability for the traditional form of government to run that empire, because it’s not designed to run an empire. And America has succeeded so greatly because of its wealth and power that now it’s at a point where, when you have to manage an international empire, there is no way that you can maintain an adherence to your traditional republican heritage.

Casteel: So it’s a matter of expediency, the better to manage our empire? The more politically corrupt and totalitarian we become?

Dolan: Yes, absolutely. If you want to manage an international empire, you can only do it by coercion. And that’s a corrupting process. So, back to the UFO connection. I think that the UFO secrecy is a contributor to the political problems we have today. I wouldn’t say that it’s the only contributor, though.

Casteel: What about the people who say that our government and other world governments are conspiring directly with the alien UFO occupants?

Dolan: That’s hard for me to say. I always try to distinguish between what I know and what I don’t know. I know that there is unexplained technology traversing our skies and oceans—I know that. I know that elements of our military are extremely interested in that. I don’t know about the allegations of collusion on an international scale. I believe, though, that, let’s call it at a “transnational level,” I think even beyond government, frankly, that there are very powerful individuals or interest groups who probably coordinate this. Look, I don’t believe, and I don’t think most people believe, that the U.S. president is the actual person who makes all the decisions regarding American national security. I think most people understand that any president or any high elected official works for others who are probably even more powerful and influential, the people who put him into power. So I think that happens internationally. Highly moneyed interests are most likely those people who have access to this knowledge as well.

Casteel: Do you have a question at this point, John?

Weigle: Is it a conscious working for, or is it just the influence of these people because they’re the ones who see the president for various reasons? They have the money, so they have the access? Does whoever the president is at the time consciously know he’s working for this group?

Dolan: I don’t know. I would think that a president would be able figure it out. He would understand that there are forces more powerful than he who are behind certain things. There’s been no president who has written down in any memoirs, who has said, “There’s this working group, see, and I have to answer to them.” So all one can do is speculate.

Casteel: Colin Bennett of England has a similar theory about how all this is starting to fuse together. He doesn’t call it the national security state. He calls it the entertainment state, like being fascistically oppressed by the television, the music, the media.

Dolan: I agree with that. The “entertainment state” is a phrase I kind of like. But of course they’re not unrelated concepts, clearly. You turn on your TV and that’s the most mind-numbing, brain-sucking entity that’s out there. I tell people, don’t watch TV. Don’t watch TV news especially. The TV shows are absolutely a cancer to your brain.

Casteel: Do you think there are subliminal messages being transmitted? Or even overt messages?

Dolan: Well, I think there’s a tremendous amount of propaganda going through mainstream media. And we know that there has historically been close collaboration between top-level media people and government people and finance people. They all live in the same world. And it’s a lot easier to control the media, by the way, if there are only five major media corporations as opposed to a hundred. And so the continued consolidation of media ownership only helps those who rule and makes it a lot easier to get your message out. So is there an intent on the part of the media to kind of dumb people down and make them servants of the state? I think at times that there is, yes.

Casteel: Okay, suppose that nobody’s able to throw any kind of monkey wrench into this at all. Suppose they succeed in their aims. What would that be like for the average person out there?

Dolan: It’s a terrifying thought, because basically normal citizens would be at the mercy of these elites. What does the future have planned for us? Embedded microchips in the population where you’re constantly tracked?

Casteel: So you were about to enumerate more on the corrupt leadership.

Dolan: Some people are incredulous thinking, why would this elite want any more than what they have? How could Bill Gates want more than he’s already got? Let me answer that first, because it’s important. How could someone be that greedy? That’s really the basic question. And I just keep thinking back. Pretend that you’re an Egyptian farmer from 5000 years ago, and you’ve got your nice little mud hut and you work the Nile and you’ve got a good family. And then there’s the Pharaoh, who’s got this palace, and he’s got literally rooms filled with gold, and all of these great things. And why would Pharaoh want more? Well, one reason Pharaoh might want more is because Pharaoh entertains foreign dignitaries from Babylon and other places, and he’s got to impress them with his might. And I believe that the same principle applies to the elites of our society—that they want the money, they want the power. It’s an endless quest for power, because power is the drug that they’re addicted to. And the money is the means to achieving that power, so it’s an endless quest. No amount is too much for these people.

And so the continual plundering of people, the plundering of resources, I think that’s what these people are all about.

Casteel: So George Bush is only in it for the money?

Dolan: Why do people run for the presidency? I don’t know. It’s a big hassle of a job. Ego? I’m sure there’s always tremendous ego. But maybe it’s part of the family business. You know, the Kennedys always have a political branch in the government, the Bushes have their political people in there. Think of the world as a room of 100 people. And if the total amount of money in that world is $100, then if this were a perfect communist state, everyone would have a dollar and we’d all be holding hands. But of course in our world, one of those people probably owns close to 40 of those dollars, and then the next 19 wealthiest people own another 40, 45 of those dollars. And then the last 80 people share $15. That’s our room, that’s our world today. And so that room has a political system, it’s got a legal system, it’s got all these things that make it go. Clearly, the guy with the $40, who we can call the owner class of the society, is going to have people in the right positions in society running things his way. And any society, any system, whether it’s the United States today or the Soviet Union of thirty years ago, or Nazi Germany, they all exist as a stratified structure of power. And there are always going to be people who seek to manipulate that structure.

Casteel: Okay, again, hypothetically, assuming that they succeed in their aims, and achieve exactly what they want in terms of totalitarianism, what’s going to happen eventually to that system? Is it going to collapse of its own weight? Surely it’s not going to endure forever.

Dolan: No. Rather than say, what happens if they succeed, I think that they have succeeded. And I think that their program has been very successful, and I think it’s an ongoing kind of thing. It’s an ongoing tweaking. I mean, look, is it fascism if no one recognizes it as such? I was at the park a couple of weeks ago with my kids, watching them play, and everyone was having a great time. They had no sense of oppression. There are adults like this, who have no sense of oppression. Does that mean that we’re not in an authoritarian society? I think we are, and people aren’t necessarily going to have that fact announced to them.

Some of us, like Americans in this society right now, are along for a pretty good ride, even if we’re not in the elite, just because we’re in a country where we have all these things. Now, what can bring it down? A lot of things can bring it down. At least, a lot of things can bring much of our infrastructure down. I look at energy supply interruptions as a real possibility, certainly war is a possibility.

Figuring all of this out and then working the UFO part into the equation is very tricky for me. But here’s what I can say: I believe that there are these elites who have access to this very, very advanced technology. That doesn’t mean that they’re all flying off-planet in black triangles to the moon, but it might mean that when there is a secret breakthrough in understanding a new aspect of that technology, that those people are the ground-floor investors. That’s just a theory. I mean, there’s a lot of incentive. If you’ve got this technology, what’s your motivation for sharing it with the rest of the world? As long as you can parcel it out while making the maximum amount of money from it.

Weigle: One of the big arguments on that though is that if we have that technology, why aren’t we using it more obviously in wars, for instance.

Dolan: There are people who have argued that the U.S. had used black-mat triangular aircraft in the Gulf War. The TR3 Black Manta, which according to rumor is a reconnaissance platform that accompanied the F-117 Nighthawk, the Stealth Fighter. This is the argument. I can’t confirm that, but I know this is what some aerospace people believe. So in fact maybe we have been using it. But when you think about the abysmal quality of reportage in the Gulf War, and how these reporters were herded like cattle, by the military—there was almost no independent reporting during that war. And what about now? What independent reporting in the Iraq War are Americans getting? Basically none.

So it could well be that weapons are being used that are much more sophisticated than we suspect. But we just don’t know. We can’t assume that our news media is able or willing to give us accurate information on the status of our military. Now, if they do have these hyper-advanced objects that can stop on a dime and instantly accelerate, if they can duplicate UFO technology—there doesn’t seem to be evidence that they’ve used it. That’s true. Why would they be holding it back? I don’t know. One argument that I’ve been given by an alleged insider is that they do use it, but they use it to go off-world. Bases elsewhere.

I’m not presenting this as something that is factually true. Part of the problem with this topic is you have a huge jigsaw puzzle with 5,000 pieces. Some jerk has taken out 3,000 of those pieces, and then they put some fake pieces in. You’re trying to put this together and meanwhile someone is screaming over your shoulder, “You’re doing it all wrong!” That’s the situation we’re in. So you have to put the puzzle together as best you can and see, what does this picture look like? And fill in the blanks where you have to.

Casteel: So you were saying earlier that the machinery is already in place. It’s simply a matter of getting it more firmly entrenched.

Dolan: Yes, absolutely. Huey Long, the governor of Louisiana in the 1930s, said, “If fascism ever comes here, it will be wrapped in an American flag.” Okay, so I think the machinery is in place. I think the machinery is hard at work. We’re not at the end product, but we’re moving right along. If Patriot Act II gets passed, we’re going to be moving very far along.

Casteel: Do you have any ideas about a timetable for all that?

Dolan: Well, no. I don’t have that gift. I think that really bad things can happen certainly within five years. We’re at a position now where most people in this country are able, no matter how depressing things may seem, to go through their ordinary lives and raise their kids and do their thing. But I think it’s entirely possible that even in as little as five years, our social, political and economic situation could be totally different. I hope not.

Casteel: We’re conducting this interview two days before Election Day. Do you think this will be true no matter who wins the election?

Dolan: I do think so. On a personal basis, I’m not voting for either of those candidates. I think Bush—I look at him as essentially not more than a gangster who has lied repeatedly to the world and to Americans about his motivations for the war. And I don’t see how anyone in their right mind could trust this man. Having said that, Kerry has not impressed me particularly with desiring peace any more than the president. The fact that this man says we can win the war in Iraq astonishes me, that he thinks such a thing is possible. That war was lost the day the Abu Ghraib pictures came out. The war cannot be won. And so to argue that we’re going to win this and get other nations onboard, to me, that’s insanity. The problem with this whole attitude of preemptive warfare is that first of all it’s in violation of international law. Secondly, though, it’s just stupid. You can concoct any kind of crazy argument. What if the next Ayatollah finds Superman’s underpants and gets superhuman strength and decides to attack? Well, we have to stop that. That’s facetious, but really what you have is a bunch of these policy-makers coming up with all these worst-case scenarios and then devising a policy on the basis of that. And that’s nuts. The nuclear genie is out of the bottle. The weapons of mass destruction genie is out of the bottle. And by the way, America had a big part in letting it out. And to now police the world and stop everyone from pursuing a policy of what they often feel is self-defense, frankly, against American aggression, and to start wars on the basis of that fear, that is a prescription for unending warfare for the rest of your life and mine.

Weigle: I’m wondering, because I read the first edition of your book some time ago, have your views progressed and changed since you started that? The book primarily seems to concentrate on UFOs and their effect on the national security state. You seem to have broadened out now into some other things.

Dolan: Well, you have to remember that I backed into UFOs through the study of history and politics to begin with, and I have a lifelong interest in philosophy and literature. So I’ve always had very broad historical interests. I feel that when I wrote my book, that I approached it in a fairly broad way even then. I felt that there really weren’t too many other UFO writers who were trying to write about this as though it were part of mainstream history. So I felt that I had a very broad approach to begin with. In fact, that was always an important aspect of my writing that I always tried to cultivate.

But I would say that my attitudes have evolved a little bit since I started that book. As depressing as the theme is to write when I was working on volume one, it’s worse now. I just feel that we’ve moved—maybe the events of September 11, 2001, are really the things that have catalyzed it, and then watching all the destructive changes going on in American society. Maybe that’s caused it. But a few people have remarked to me that they’re getting a little concerned about the status of my emotional temperament. Sometimes I seem like I get a little too distraught or angry over things. Bitter. I don’t really know if that’s true. I actually have a nice happy family life, and I have a lot of fun in my life. But when I look at the state of the world, yeah, I just feel it’s crazier every year I look at it.

Casteel: You were talking about [Truman Defense Secretary] James V. Forrestal’s suicide during your lecture. You wonder what he knew that drove him to that, if he had some kind of vision of how the country was going to change.

Dolan: I believe Forrestal was murdered, and I didn’t really get into the details as to why in my lecture, but the book lays it out. There are a couple of things very odd. First of all, Forrestal, as I mentioned, really lost his grip on reality throughout a lot of 1948. There are conventional reasons you can ascribe to it. He had a real problem administratively managing the Joint Chiefs of Staff and trying to help Truman balance the budget, which was an impossible task. So there was a lot of stress, unrelated to UFOs. On the other hand, the UFO problem was there. It was a big problem. Forrestal was involved in dealing with this problem. He had to be, as Secretary of Defense. And the man was losing his grip. There are many multiple connections to him and the MJ-12 group with Vannevar Bush and Truman. I think that that’s probably true, that such a group existed and that he was in it.

So then you have to wonder, you know. Truman fires him, really because of political disloyalty by Forrestal. And now what? So now what happens is, during his farewell speech, in March of 1949, Stuart Symington [Secretary of the Air Force from 1947 to 1950], his most vehement political enemy, meets with him privately in the limo ride back to Forrestal’s office. When Forrestal emerged from this limo, he was absolutely shaken, and was not seen until someone came into his office. He was sitting at the desk in his office, ramrod straight, staring at a blank wall, repeating one sentence: “You are a loyal fellow.” I mean, he had lost it. So then he was taken to Florida. The National Security crowd basically had him. And then they within days took him to Bethesda in Maryland, the naval hospital, which is where he died six weeks later by falling out of a tall window.

I think he was murdered. The guard on shift when Forrestal died was a new guy, a new guard that Forrestal had never seen. Some coincidence. An hour and a half into this guy’s shift, the first time, Forrestal goes out. We only have that guard’s testimony as to what happened. The guard said, “At 1:30, I checked in on the Secretary and he was up writing something and he didn’t want to take a sedative.” So the guard says, “Well, I left to go check with another doctor and when we returned, the Secretary was gone.” Well, Forrestal was in his 50s. His health wasn’t the greatest. He wasn’t a physically strong man. How’s he going to compete with a mid-20s Marine/Navy corpsman? Clearly, it’s suspicious. And yet, this is 14 years before the Kennedy assassination and so no one was going to question it.

Casteel: I always get the feeling that something utterly humiliating, something devastatingly humiliating, was said to him in the limo ride that you mentioned that could have been related to the way the aliens presented themselves to the government. There could be some kind of knowledge there that simply drove some people over the edge.

Dolan: That could be. And perhaps Symington was issuing some kind of not-so-veiled threat like, “You talk and you’re done for, so be a loyal fellow.” Something like that.

Weigle: When do you think your second book will be ready?

Dolan: I am working on volume two. I’m spending all the time that I’m able to spend working on it. Actually, I’m at the point right now where I have more research done for volume two than I did when I started writing volume one. So I have a lot, but I’m not done. Volume two probably won’t be done for about a year and a half, realistically.

Casteel: You were about to talk about Patriot Act II at some point. Give us your feelings on that.

Dolan: Patriot Act II is nothing short of an abomination of American rights. It has not been passed. It’s a bill. And you can read the bill at a variety of websites, including the dreaded ACLU, which has the complete Patriot Act II bill on their website. One of the provisions of Patriot Act II that has gotten a lot of people’s attention is the provision stating that if you are deemed to be supporting a terrorist organization—and what is support and what is terrorist? But if you have been deemed to support a terrorist organization, you are liable to be stripped of your American citizenship, even if you’re a native-born American citizen. And therefore, once you’re stripped of citizenship, anything can happen to you. You can be held in indefinite detention or deported. And, as others have pointed out, that could certainly include countries where they do torture. So it’s a pretty bad thing. Patriot Act II is a step beyond even the draconian measures of Patriot Act I, which allows the government to spy on you without knowing about it. They don’t need a court warrant to tap your phone or to enter your house and take things and to analyze things. They do not need court orders for that. It’s very likely that they were doing this all along, but it was not technically legal. Now that it’s legal and aboveboard, you can expect that they’ll employ it even more than they used to.

But Patriot Act II is a thing that really scares a lot of people. It just seems to be so anti-American that it would effectively be the end of the Bill of Rights as we know it.

Casteel: Where does the UFO community fit in that overall picture?

Dolan: Well, the UFO community has political beliefs that span the entire conventional spectrum. There are UFO researchers who are very politically conservative, in the fact that they support the current policies, say, of George Bush. And you have UFO researchers who are very, very left wing in their outlook, who are internationalists or even socialists and so on. And you get a whole bunch of people in between. I myself am really neither. I increasingly tell people I’m a libertarian. I don’t know if that’s exactly right either, but I’m not a socialist and I’m not a conservative. What’s a conservative? Bush is not a conservative. I grew up with a conservative father and household. The conservatism I grew up with told me that you should not trust big, centralized government. This is a president who is in love with the state. He is in love with a bloated, obese state that gets in your face, that picks your pocket and gets in your bedroom. So that’s not conservatism.

The UFO research community, in terms of their politics, they’re all over the map.

Casteel: Will the UFO community ever be judged, en masse, as a terrorist group? Are we a threat to this emerging totalitarian system?

Dolan: Well, the fact is we are a threat. Of course we’re a threat. We’re some of the only people who are really willing to peek under this rug and see all the dirt and stuff that is there. UFO researchers are some of the most astute political analysts that we have in this country. They actually understand the nature of the black world better than a number of Washington insiders do. So are we a threat in reality? The answer is yes. So should UFO researchers fear the implications of, say, Patriot Act II? Yeah.

Weigle: There’s no doubt that CSI [Civilian Saucer Intelligence of Los Angeles] and APRO [The Aerial Phenomenon Research Organization] were being watched carefully, and NICAP [the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena] was maybe infiltrated, although that’s disputed still.

Dolan: Well, I think NICAP was infiltrated. Certainly it’s indisputable that APRO and CSI were, and this is back in the 1950s, were being monitored by government agents. And this is clearly a direct result of the Robertson Panel guidelines and recommendations. The fact is that NICAP, from its early inception, had high-level members of the CIA’s psychological warfare staff onboard from the get go. The fact is that Keyhoe was ousted by such members, and after Keyhoe was ousted, they were run by one ex-CIA guy after another. If that’s not proof, then fine. Check your brain at the door and just say, “I don’t know.” But I think it looks pretty clear that NICAP was absolutely managed by the CIA. And they’re not the only organizations. There are all kinds of people who’ve said the same things about CUFOS [the J. Allen Hynek Center For UFO Studies], MUFON [the Mutual UFO Network] and the rest. Those are allegations. I should be careful where I go here. But certainly I’m not the first to say it.

Casteel: Is there anything you wish to add? Some kind of question we haven’t asked or some kind of final comment you’d care to make?

Dolan: Well, I think it’s important for the people reading this interview to come away from it with a renewed sense that they need to be committed to learning everything that they can about the state of this society that we’re in right now, because it’s necessary more now than ever to defend the cause of freedom. If this is something that you actually believe in, rather than just a convenient cliché to toss around every now and then, then it’s imperative to realize that you need to step outside what’s called the mainstream and recognize it for what it is, which is an illusory structure of beliefs that are there to keep you in your place.

Casteel: Is there any way that opposing believers, such as yourself, people who understand what’s going on and are willing to stand against it, can affect this thing? Or is it an inevitable tightening of the vise?

Dolan: I have a faith in the value of truth. I really do. I know that sounds idealistic and silly, but often it’s the only thing that I have to hold on to that keeps me going and doing this. I believe in this thing called truth, and I believe that it has a value of its own, independent of anything else. So it is worthy of my efforts, and it’s worthy of everyone’s efforts. We have to realize that no matter how bad things look, we can’t predict the outcome of things.

Casteel: So you allow for the possibility of positive change?

Dolan: I do. I think that if you don’t work toward positive change, it will never happen. If you work toward positive change, you have a shot. So people have to become aware of the need to dedicate themselves to truth. We’re in a culture—I mean you and I are sitting here in Hollywood, which is the entertainment capital, the fantasy capital, of the world, but illusion is one thing and truth and reality are another. And people have to learn to distinguish them from each other.

Casteel: But it’s possible that enough people could see into the situation and react against it?

Dolan: It could happen. If you have a big sledgehammer and you keep hammering away, something can happen, and there can always be a catalyst. When I was writing my book, I had this idealistic hope that maybe my book could be such a catalyst. I thought if I could simply lay out the argument for the reality of UFOs and the UFO cover-up, as clearly as I could, that that might be able to help crack this open. Well, my book has generated a lot of positive feedback, but it certainly hasn’t had that kind of effect yet. But you never know. You’ve got to keep trying. I’m doing what I can do, and other people are doing what they can do. As long as we keep communicating with each other, and keep working at this the best we can, we have a shot.

THE END