These two books are about aliens – intelligent beings who may or may not have visited our planet. Jonathan Caplan is a distinguished lawyer and believer; David Lavelle is a journalist and sceptic.

Aliens have always been with us. For at least 4,000 years there have been reports of strange visitations assumed to come from heaven, hell or simply the universe. Angels and demons were commonplace, but they were eventually replaced by technology-based visions, most often flying saucers. These could be quietly ignored until 1947, when postwar alien fever was sparked in Roswell, New Mexico. Metal and rubber debris were found which the US army initially claimed were parts of a ‘flying disc’. The story raced round the world, but the official explanation was rapidly retracted and the disc was reidentified as a weather balloon. This made matters worse. Clearly, said the true believers, this was a blatant cover-up and, over the ensuing decades, worldwide, though primarily in America, alien freaks kept the Roswell flame burning.

The release of millions of pages confirming the reality of aliens has been banned by the US government

Not for Disclosure offers the most persuasive defence yet of the cover-up theory. For Caplan, the aliens are definitely out there. ‘The collective force of the evidence contained in these pages will be a shock to most,’ he writes. That’s not what one might expect from an internationally respected lawyer, a King’s Counsel. But he has done the work: ‘This book is the product of five decades of personal research and it provides access to some of the vast body of material, much of it not readily available.’

Caplan comes up with some startling claims. There may be 40 different alien species, the most commonly reported being ‘about 4ft tall with large, teardrop-shaped heads, wraparound black eyes, no nose or ear protuberances and a straight line for the mouth’. He also suggests a persuasive reason for the official cover-ups: the Earth-bound superpowers wish to seize alien anti-gravity methods, free energy and all the other systems available to short humanoids.

He finds these things credible because the American government has been banning the release of millions of pages of documents confirming the reality of alien visitors. Some senior politicians have given the game away. A tweet from Barack Obama as he left office revealed that his ‘biggest failure of 2014’ was once again not securing the disclosure of the UFO files. And none other than J.D. Vance considers aliens to be demons: ‘I have not been able to spend enough time on this, but I am going to. Trust me, I’m obsessed with this.’

Caplan goes into lengthy detail about the systematic suppression of UFO material, notably by Majestic 12, a group set up by President Truman to collect sensitive documents and keep them away from prying eyes, notably those of Congress. He writes: ‘It was a secret that was higher than even the atom bomb and, if necessary, people were to be killed to preserve it.’

The book as a whole is thorough and relentless. It is not just about uncovering the work of Majestic 12 and others; it is also about enlightening humanity, making us ‘more informed and more open to reviewing the confines of the physical world’.

So, should we believe that the universe is full of creatures with advanced technologies and a lively interest in the behaviour of humans? Lavelle takes this on with the wit and scepticism of a true journalist. Having been amazed by the evidence coming from believers, and crucially from the US government, he found himself ‘retrieving little green men from the bullshit box, dusting them off and inspecting them more closely’.

What follows is as funny as it is strange. He comes upon Russo and Rudy from New Jersey. They seemed respectable and serious, and they had taken pictures of ‘five bright lights drifting in formation’ in 2009. This sparked media excitement and many more reports of similar phenomena. The police said they were flares, but reputable people insisted they weren’t and they were believed. The police were right: they were flares and Russo and Rudy had perpetrated ‘the great UFO hoax of 2009’.

Lavelle is not put off. He ploughs on, not least because the theory of an establishment cover-up had become ever more likely. This increased further when Obama appeared on The Late Late Show in 2021 to say that there were objects in the skies that the government simply couldn’t explain. The word was out that ever since Roswell the US government was concealing overwhelming evidence of alien visitations and contacts.

Lavelle amusingly and doggedly pursues the story, but gradually scepticism takes over. He concludes with a moving farewell to us and the aliens:

We are the universe. We are the universe’s eyes and ears, its consciousness; and if we are alone, truly alone, we are the only chance the universe has to understand itself. So look after each other – we’re all we have.

Full disclosure. I did once see a UFO, a brilliantly illuminated disc behind some trees in Norfolk. I was under hypnosis at the time, an aspect of my research for a book entitled Aliens: Why They Are Here (2005). I was (and still am) a non-believer, concluding that aliens are here because many, perhaps most, humans want and need them to be.