Bigelow's expectation of a UFO announcement (1998)
From the UAP Encyclopedia, the open encyclopedia of UFO and UAP history · 🗓️ Event
Contents 8
| Date | 11 January 1998 |
|---|---|
| Recorded in | Jacques Vallée, Forbidden Science: Volume Four, p. 402 |
| Person | Robert Bigelow, founder of the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) |
| Expectation | A dramatic development, either a spectacular display or a government announcement, "soon" |
| Proposed studies | Social effects of announcing (1) a major asteroid impact and (2) UFOs as extraterrestrial craft |
| Outcome | No announcement; NIDS Roper poll on reactions to contact (1999) |
| Topics | Remote viewing & psi (topic) |
| People | Robert Bigelow, Jacques Vallée |
| Testimony | Shellenberger testimony, p. 131 |
| Year | 1998 in UFO history |
| Timeline | 1998 on the UAP Timeline |
| Sources | 7 |
According to Jacques Vallée's journals, on 11 January 1998 the businessman Robert Bigelow telephoned Vallée. Vallée sensed in him an "inner certainty" that a dramatic development would happen "soon", either a spectacular display by the phenomenon or a striking announcement by the government.[1] In the same call Bigelow proposed that his National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS) sponsor studies of how society would react to such news.[1] No announcement came. The episode is one of several in Vallée's diaries showing how firmly people around NIDS in the late 1990s expected official disclosure of UFOs.[1][3]
The call
Bigelow called to brief Vallée on the part of a NIDS Science Advisory Board meeting that Vallée had missed.[1] He proposed sponsoring two new studies, on the social effect of announcing:[1]
- a major asteroid impact
- that UFOs were extraterrestrial craft
He asked what the "consciousness aspects" would be in each case, a question Vallée thought reasonable enough.[1] But Vallée wrote that Bigelow had a "deeper agenda": his inner certainty that a dramatic development would happen soon.[1]
"The Day After"
The idea had run through NIDS meetings for two years, according to Vallée's journals:[1]
- August 1996. Bigelow asked the board what would happen if the government announced alien intrusions, whether the knowledge was "digestible", and whether people would bother to go to work the next day.
- 10 January 1997. The futurist John Petersen presented "day after" scenarios and other "wild cards".
- 12 January 1997. Vallée noted that Petersen was "still certain that a major announcement is imminent". Vallée himself joked that his own plan for the Day After was to kneel in the dust and pray, just in case.
- March 1997. Bigelow was funding Petersen's scenarios through NIDS.
The theme continued after the 1998 call. On 9 January 1999 Bigelow went over the history of these efforts before the full board, and argued for a NIDS contingency plan in case humans were found to be "cohabiting on the Earth with non-human entities that controlled our destiny".[1]
Context
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Other wealthy patrons were also pressing for disclosure in the 1990s. In 1993 Laurance Rockefeller, with his niece Anne Bartley, launched a UFO disclosure initiative aimed at the Clinton White House. They asked for all government UFO information, including that held by the CIA and Air Force, to be declassified, with the Roswell incident as the first test case.[6] In September 1994 the Air Force categorically denied that Roswell involved a UFO. Rockefeller briefed Clinton on his initiative in 1995. Clinton's 1994 executive order on declassifying records did not specifically cover UFO files.[6] Vallée's fourth volume of journals records closed sessions of the Rockefeller effort alongside NIDS board meetings and meetings with congressmen and intelligence officials.[3]
Vallée himself remained skeptical of imminent disclosure. His dry response to Petersen's certainty contrasts with Bigelow's conviction.[1] Reviewers have noted that the diaries are intimate portraits of the people involved in UFO research as much as of the phenomena themselves.[2][4][5]
Outcome
No announcement followed. Instead, in 1999 NIDS commissioned a Roper poll of 1,971 Americans on how people would react to proof of extraterrestrial visitors, compared it with an online survey, and published a paper on forecasting reactions to contact. It also posted a 1994 survey of how religious bodies would react.[1] In the Roper poll, one in four Americans thought most people would "totally freak out and panic" at undeniable proof.[1] Bigelow's conviction endured. In 2017 The New York Times reported that he was "absolutely convinced" that extraterrestrials exist and have visited Earth.[7]
People and topics
- Robert Bigelow — Businessman who founded NIDS and Bigelow Aerospace and ran the AAWSAP contract.
- Jacques Vallée — Computer scientist and astronomer, author of the Forbidden Science journals and a central figure in UFO research.
- Unidentified anomalous phenomena — The U.S. government's current term for unidentified objects in the air, in space and underwater.
- NIDS — Robert Bigelow's research institute (1995–2004) that studied UFOs and other anomalies.
- Unidentified flying object — An object in the sky that can't be identified; the older term for UAP.
- Skinwalker Ranch — A Utah ranch known for reports of strange events, studied by NIDS and AAWSAP.
- Bigelow Aerospace — Robert Bigelow's space habitat company.
- AAWSAP — The Defense Intelligence Agency's UAP research program of 2008–2010, carried out by Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies.
On the Timeline
- James Cox antigravity classification (1998) (January 1998) — An antigravity newsletter proposes seven possible types of antigravity devices.
- University of South Carolina gravity generator (1 March 1998) — University of South Carolina scientists say they are developing a 'gravity generator'.
See every 1998 event on the UAP Timeline →
Further reading
- AATIP / AAWSAP — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Robert Bigelow — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
- Jacques Vallée — Wikipedia · en.wikipedia.org · archived copy
References
- Keith Basterfield, "NIDS and the 'Day After' scenarios", UFOs – scientific research (Dec 2019) · ufos-scientificresearch.blogspot.com · archived copy
- Forbidden Science — the journals of Jacques Vallée (Anomaly Archives) · anomalyarchives.org · archived copy
- Forbidden Science series — Anomalist Books · anomalistbooks.com · archived copy
- Review of Forbidden Science 6 — SFCrowsnest · sfcrowsnest.info · archived copy
- Forbidden Science Dispatches — Tanner Boyle (journal summaries) · tannerfboyle.substack.com · archived copy
- Laurance Rockefeller · en.wikipedia.org
- Robert Bigelow · en.wikipedia.org
Facts in this article are drawn in part from the Wikipedia articles “Laurance Rockefeller”, “Robert Bigelow”, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
This page was last edited on 29 October 2026. Articles are written in our own words from the sources listed under References; disputed claims are attributed to the people who made them.
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