Much of K Street is working to shape President Joe Biden’s mammoth infrastructure proposal, which lobbyists say could be one of the most heavily lobbied bills in history. But one lobbyist is focused on something he believes will be even bigger. “The Disclosure event is coming and it's the biggest event in human history,” said Steve Bassett, a lobbyist for the Paradigm Research Group. “It’s almost impossible to measure it.”
— Bassett is referring to the expected release next month of a report on unidentified aerial phenomena — more commonly known as UFOs. Congress included a provision in December’s Covid relief bill directing intelligence agencies to compile such a report within six months. Bassett hopes that once the report is released, Congress will hold hearings that eventually lead the federal government to disclose that we are not alone — something for which he’s been lobbying for the past 25 years.
— Bassett is Washington’s only registered lobbyist pressing the federal government to acknowledge “an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race,” as his disclosure filing puts it. He came to Washington in the 1990s but soon realized that it wasn’t easy to persuade lawmakers or even congressional staffers to take meetings to discuss UFOs. So Bassett embraced a strategy that more conventional lobbyists have also adopted over the past decade or two. “I said, I’m not going to spend time talking to some intern in some office on the Hill,” Bassett said. “I’m going to lobby the media.”
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