First reaction: What’s the catch? It can’t possibly be this simple. It’s been 50 years since the closure of the U.S. Air Force “Project Blue Book” sham. Fifty years of official avoidance, denial, ridicule and stigma. More than 70 years since researchers with the original government analysis of UFOs, Project Sign, reportedly came back with the theory that the problem was “interplanetary.” And those conclusions – allegedly summarized in a document called “Estimate of the Situation” – were promptly rejected and buried by USAF Chief of Staff Hoyt Vandenberg. At least, that’s the way it’s been framed since before most of us were born.

It is impossible to overstate the magnitude of this heretofore unthinkable directive issued by the Senate last week. It sounds almost, what, too normal, too pro forma, as if the most radical fishing expedition of our lifetime is simply a matter of good bureaucratic housekeeping. Yet, here we are, in a place no one could have predicted even a year ago.

The “how” of why we’re here is the easiest part to figure. Without To The Stars Academy – which has been lambasted in small but obstreperous corners as the propaganda arm of some hidden hand – there is no “Advanced Aerial Threats” mandate in the Senate package. Period. For all of its flaws during and after its 2017 rollout, TTSA, guided most credibly by Luis Elizondo and Chris Mellon, has accomplished the impossible. Can we all at least agree on that?

Already, De Void has heard grumblings about the timing of the Senate’s move, coming just weeks before the second season of History’s “Unidentified: Inside America’s UFO Investigation.” Some critics charge the series, which premieres on July 11, couldn’t have gotten a better marketing boost than a Senate inquiry. Which is true. And so what? If this is brainwashing, bring it on. What theory are “they” promoting? What do “they” want us to believe? Who are “they”? Game on.

The more relevant question is, do 100 elected public officials, with limited demonstrable knowledge of this persistent mystery, have the long view on what they’ve gotten themselves into?

Ostensibly, the Senate’s primary objective is to determine whether or not Uncle Sam is facing a technology gap created by “adversarial foreign governments.” The Senate also wants to include an FBI review of data collected on incidents over “restricted United States airspace” – not a bad idea to bring a civilian agency into the mix. But at what point will this push for interagency cooperation clash with their perceived proprietary interests?

Consider the briefly famous Stephenville incident from January 2008, which suggested more about the military’s knowledge of tactical UFO behavior than about the UFO itself. Radar records retrieved from the FAA and National Weather Service (the Air Force would provide no records of its own) indicated there were no military interceptors in the air at all when the no-fly zone over President Bush’s “Texas White House” was apparently being challenged by an object without a transponder.

We know, for instance, that on at least three prior occasions during the Bush administration, Air Force warplanes swarmed and forced down private pilots who were either lost or stunting as they violated the security perimeter above Bush’s place. We also know, thanks to the civilian radar data, that F-16s from Carswell Air Force Base came to within a mile of the same object(s) when it emerged some 65 miles to the northwest, an hour or so earlier. That’s when the intruder initially popped up over Stephenville, leaving a handful of eyewitnesses at separate locations in cattle country to report a massive and brazenly slow-moving flying machine cruising low over the plains.

Were there no jet fighters in the vicinity of the Bush residence that evening because pilots had been waved off? Have there been briefings about potentially catastrophic UFO countermeasures? Because it wasn’t as if the USAF had lost interest in the event. A FOIA-assisted reconstruction of that event assembled by Robert Powell and Glen Schulze implied the entire incident was being monitored by another plane, possibly an AWACS surveillance craft, circling high above at 41,000 feet. Wonder what those pilots would have to say?

“The Air Force should be in the hot seat because they’re in charge of patrolling our skies,” says UFO historian Jan Aldrich. “I think they’re enjoying seeing the Navy in the hot seat.”

Founder of Project 1947, which displays primary source documents on UFOs dating back to back to the early nuclear age, Aldrich called the Senate’s move a “bolt from the blue,” nothing he thought he’d see in his lifetime. But is the political system structured to accommodate the complex legacy of this puzzle? Noting how the formal inquiry is directed primarily at the Office of Naval Intelligence, which confirmed the existence of its  Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon Task Force, Aldrich offers a 1952 Look magazine story for perspective. It’s a map based on USAF data showing Cold War era UFO hot spots across the U.S.

“It’s all over our defense installations,” the Army veteran notes of the historical UFO penetrations, “and in more than half a century, nothing has really changed.” Furthermore, says Aldrich, many of “the best” UFO cases, like incidents involving the old Strategic Air Command, never made it into Blue Book. Will lawmakers care about going that deep into history?

And there’s a clause in the “Advanced Aerial Threats” section indicating the need for “an official accountable” for “an interagency process for ensuring timely data collection and centralized analysis of all unidentified aerial phenomena reporting for the Federal Government, regardless of which service or agency acquired the information.” That’s bigger than huge. It’s the key. Who might that person be? Military or civilian? An Edward Condon or a James McDonald? It would be a pleasant surprise to learn that anyone inside the Beltway knows either of those names.

America is facing reckonings on many fronts – science, the economy, race, income inequality, health care, sociology, and issues we haven’t even begun to recognize. And now, finally, apparently, this. Are we capable of getting it right? Are there any honest brokers out there with the integrity to steward a fair and dispassionate accounting of history’s most explosive story? Or is it already too late for that?

De Void isn’t convinced this whole thing isn’t an extended old-school dream sequence, doomed to end on the clatter of teletype or an urgent voice-over from a Movietone newsreel: “Bulletin! Putin Blows Up Capitol Dome, President Not Informed! UFO Senate Report — Delayed!”

Failing that … Christmas is coming. Ready or not.