Not For Disclosure: UFOs: The World’s Best-Kept Secret by Jonathan Caplan (book review).

This latest book on UAPs has former King’s Counsel Jonathan Caplan as its author, which gives it a certain degree of credibility. For me, however, that isn’t enough in itself. There have been other high-profile writers on the subject in the past.

If Not For Disclosure: UFOs: The World’s Best-Kept Secret falls short anywhere, it is in the lack of photographs, although I suspect copyright and expense may be factors. There are some, including one on page 54 showing a grounded UAP with several wooden chairs facing it.

Caplan has, however, interviewed many people who have seen UAPs and who have military backgrounds. Given the number of times military aircraft around the world are said to have encountered or been buzzed by these craft, it is perhaps more surprising that the subject has remained quiet for so long.

The number of alien species is put at around 40 at one point, which sounds like enough to fill a United Nations of their own, especially if they all have separate agendas and bases. Elsewhere, the numbers vary from five to 27. You would think someone would have encountered some of these beings, but if these extraterrestrial visitors really can make people forget what happened, then who knows?

Many of the chapters examine Majestic 12 and historic cases, but they don’t really offer much that I didn’t already know. Some cases concern people who were supposedly in the know but were discreetly executed should they reveal anything.

That raises a few questions. How did Majestic 12 recruit replacements as its members grew older and, more importantly, what replaced the organisation itself? Considering the alleged number of downed UAPs and recovered alien bodies, you would have thought information would have emerged from at least some countries rather than everyone keeping it quiet.

There is certainly a great deal of misinformation and ridicule surrounding the subject, both of which can work effectively as distractions. The old belief that people would descend into mass panic following confirmation of alien contact doesn’t seem particularly convincing any more. UFO and UAP encounters now appear more likely to generate public interest than outright hysteria.

Like many books of this kind, there is little suggestion of what these beings might actually be doing here or what happens after any crashes. If anything, their vehicles seem capable of having as many problems as our own.

Whether this is because security agencies are hiding information or not, surprisingly few accounts examine modern incidents or attempt to establish whether they match the historical cases. Caplan does offer some observations in the later chapters, but nothing that many of us could not have considered ourselves. There is still a large blank space where the motives of these supposed visitors should be, along with the question of what the various security agencies might actually be keeping hidden.

Even if governments turned around tomorrow and showed us any alien bodies they possess, I think I would still want to see post-mortems carried out by recognised experts before accepting that they were not hoaxes.

I would like to see more books covering up-to-date events involving sightings, encounters and abductions rather than repeatedly returning to older cases with which many of us are already familiar. If nothing else, that would help establish whether these events are still taking place.

If recent cases are not being revealed, then we are left wondering how much information is being withheld. Don’t forget that even the Nimitz incident happened a long time ago now.

If more recent events are being kept under security restrictions, then presumably there is still something to hide or investigate. Even so, the original assumption that populations would descend into wild panic at the prospect of alien bases existing on Earth now seems increasingly doubtful.

Whether the aliens themselves actually want to communicate with us is an entirely different matter.

GF Willmetts

August 2026

(pub: Century/Penguin, 2026. 274-page illustrated and indexed hardback. Price: (UK). ISBN: 978-1-529-97996-1)

Check out website: www.penguin.co.uk/books/477763/not-for-disclosure-by-caplan-jonathan/9781529979961