"UFOs and the National Security State, 1973-1991, the Cover-Up Exposed" by Richard Dolan

I FINALLY finished reading this long book, after a few months. It was very slow going mostly because I read it at bedtime, and would get sleepy after a few pages.

It's a good compilation of the UFO/ET field from 1973-1991, and he synthesizes a lot of material. I liked that he brought in abductions and crop circles, apart from UFO sightings and interactions. Overall, there is little more important in our world than understanding the nature of UFOs and ETs. But of course, there is a massive cover-up at many levels of our society.

Here are the key points from the conclusion section at the end of the book:

1. the evidence is conclusive for an intelligent UFO phenomenon beyond the control of our civilization visiting and probably also living on earth
2. just from 1973-1991 there were hundreds of well-documented military encounters 
3.  regardless of where the UFOs came from, they triggered a response from world military agencies, that indicated the UFOs were foreign threats
4. beyond the military encounters, even more ordinary people encountered UFOs-- either via sightings or actual abductions.
5. ordinary people could not get anyone official to take their story seriously, despite the incredible trauma some of these people had undergone; they had trouble coping with the aftermath.
6. seems odd that so many major society institutions ignored investigating UFOs and seeking the truth but further on consideration, not so odd, given the massive disruption to society (technology, industry, energy, banking, military) that disclosure of the UFO/ET reality would bring (similar to 9/11-- Spooked).
7. much of UFO secrecy/control moved away from government control to private organizations/companies, in order to better maintain secrecy from public.
8. the farther and deeper the secrecy goes, the harder it is to disclose by anyone, as more time goes by
9. special relationships set up within government and academia and media to maintain secrecy
10. virtually unlimited govt black budgets can be used to maintain secrecy. (advanced technology can also be marketed piecemeal to fund more secret organizations-- Spooked)
11. pretty clear the US military was able to obtain UFO/ET artifacts and reverse engineer them and build their own vehicles
12. secrecy does not have to continue though; humans are reaching a breaking point with population growth and the earth's natural resources (clean air and water, wildlife)
13. the PTB may be forced to disclose at the "11th hour" of planetary crisis in order to save us (my guess is this disclosure could be masked as some sort of religious event-- Spooked)
14. the exact nature of the relationship between human elites and ETs, and how much ETs control or interfere with humanity is unclear.
15. seems as though ETs want to maintain secrecy of their presence.

UPDATE:

Some of the interesting UFO cases discussed in the book very thoroughly are:

The Gulf Breeze, Florida UFO incidents -- a much more complicated tale than it is typically presented as (of course), and (of course) it is typically written off as a hoax.

The Hudson Valley UFOs-- which I'd never even heard of before, but it's clear something major happened there involving UFOs. Interestingly, related UFOs were also spotted in Newtown, CT. 

One neat thing the book does is correlate UFO sightings with world events, such as the breakup of the Soviet Union and the Iran hostage crisis.