Above: Lewes resident Jim Semivan, a former CIA senior official, has become a leading voice in the conversation about Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Photo by Tiffany Caldwell Photography.
By Roger Hillis
UFOs are all the rage, and there is no more proof of that than the success of last year’s streaming hit The Age of Disclosure. The film has become Prime Video’s highest-grossing documentary to date — and a Lewes, Delaware man with a pedigree appears on screen within the first two minutes with some startling words about what is now referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon (UAP).
“I spent 25 years as a senior official with the CIA,” Jim Semivan says. “UAPs are here, they are real, and they’re not human.”
Later in the film he declares that America’s military leadership has known since 1947 that it can’t compete with the level of technology exhibited by these unknown visitors — which prompted a decades-long coverup.
“If they can’t protect the public, they’re not going to [allow that fact to] scare anybody,” Semivan says. He added that the government went so far as to create “a tradition of disbelief” to label people who believe in the phenomenon as “crackpots.”
It was in 1947 that the military claimed to have recovered a crashed disc in Roswell, New Mexico, before quickly backtracking and stating it was merely a weather balloon.
Just a few years later, a not-quite-as-famous incident occurred in Washington, D.C. — which also had a connection to Delaware. On July 19, 1952, air traffic controllers spotted multiple objects on radar that flew into restricted air space and eventually over the White House. A pair of USAF F-94 Starfire jets were dispatched from New Castle; by the time they arrived in D.C. to help investigate, the lights were gone. The jets ran low on fuel and departed. Interestingly, the lights made a brief return appearance a few hours later.
The Age of Disclosure has become Prime Video’s top grossing documentary.
The Age of Disclosure focuses on interviews with top-ranking government and military officials who take this subject seriously. Secretary of State Marco Rubio (whose segments were filmed while he was still a senator) appears throughout the entire film.
Semivan himself was not a part of any investigative groups during his CIA tenure, but he had studied subjects such as UFOs and ghosts for decades during his leisure time. His home library is filled with books numbering in the hundreds. Through the years, he heard a growing number of convincing stories that he felt deserved to be made public.
“The whole planet has lived throughout history with one generally accepted version of reality,” he says. “Our consensus reality.”
Flying Tic-tacs Help Push the Needle
Semivan retired in 2007, and he his wife moved to Lewes in 2017 — a year which also found him involved in a sea change moment in UAP history. That is when he and several friends leaked the now-famous jet pilot gun-camera videos to journalist Leslie Kean for a New York Times article. The video of the small white craft resembling the shape of a Tic Tac candy had been filmed by Navy pilots from the USS Nimitz off the West Coast in November 2004.
“We all knew Leslie’s reputation as an intrepid reporter, and that she’d do everything in her power to get the videos released and the story out, which she did,” Semivan says. “However, we had no idea the story would make the front page of The New York Times. I think we were all pleasantly surprised at the outcome.”
In August of 2021, CBS’ 60 Minutes aired an interview with the USS Nimitz’ top gun pilots Cmdr. David Fravor and Lt. Cmdr. Alex Dietrich, who had chased and filmed the “tic tac.”
A recent CBS News poll finds more than half of Americans believing in life elsewhere — but there is a long way to go before the subject hits critical mass.
“The president is the only person who can truly disclose the secret of UAP,” Semivan says. “I hope it can be done responsibly and have measures in place to control the narrative a bit. UAP is not ‘in your face’ for most people. It is truly a niche topic and certainly not one of the top 10 or even top 50 concerns of the average American.”
UFOs in Hollywood
Semivan is now the vice president of the production company To The Stars, Inc., which finds him paired with a high-profile business partner — its president is rock star Tom DeLong from the group Blink-182. It has evolved from a research group into a multimedia firm responsible for everything from television shows to clothing to guitars. The new Tubi animated series Breaking Bear has a voiceover cast which includes Brendan Fraser, Sarah Michelle Gellar and Elizabeth Hurley.
Emily Blunt in Steven Spielberg’s newest sci-fi film Disclosure Day. Photo by Niko Tavernise / Universal Pictures.
Last month the UFO / UAP craze received another boost via Steven Spielberg’s latest sci-fi blockbuster, Disclosure Day, in which he used his Hollywood lens for a hypothetical look at ways in which full disclosure could occur. Meanwhile, the White House has released three batches of declassified information so far in 2026.
Semivan says he still has mixed feelings about disclosure after all these years.
“There is such a thing as ontological shock, and once it’s disclosed officially, UAP will be the mother of all ontological shocks,” Semivan says. “We may no longer be alone and at the top of the food chain, as it were. That is what I mean when I’ve said the truth may be indigestible. Some people may not be able to cope with a new reality, and I’ll leave it at that.”
Are his fellow Delawareans surprised to find an expert in this field living among them?
“Yes and no,” Semivan says. “Most of my friends and neighbors in Lewes know about my interest in UAP, but only a few have a genuine interest in the subject. So, I rarely bring it up in conversations and I only comment when I’m asked to.
“The topic itself, while fascinating, is actually quite complex once you study it closely. Understandably, not many people have the time or inclination to do so.”
