Coulthart is an Australian investigative reporter with a legitimate journalism career — organized crime, war crimes, corporate fraud — and he came to the UFO subject as a skeptic. The book works through the documented material rather than the folklore: The Navy videos and the pilots who went on the record about them, the 2021 government report, the Nimitz encounters, the history of official denial, and the people inside agencies who’ve started talking. He’s straight about where evidence runs out and where he thinks he’s being played. In the years since, he’s gone further and further out on the limb, and many longtime UFO watchers argue his skepticism is kaput. I’m inclined to agree with them, but this book is from the beforetimes.
In Plain Sight