"So what is the thesis? Basically this: It’s all a conspiracy. The entire governmental security apparatus, from the founding of the CIA to compartmentalized information is a result of the government trying to keep a lid on the UFO issue. It’s not that we've never heard that, it’s just that Dolan has taken this issue to a new level of detail. He’s even more detailed than Timothy Good. Dolan is strictly a nuts & bolts guy and does not consider alternative hypotheses in the field. Sociological and psychological issues are beside the point to him. "
So, if there are no psychological and/or sociological issues for him, we should better forget the FACT that 96 % of all the UFO sightings are produced by natural phenomena or man made artifacts. Consequently, we must recognize that the whole cover up is justified only by a 4 % of cases that remain unidentified. Also, delusions and hoaxes must also remain in the backyard. This statistic in itself refutes the theory of the massive cover-up.
" So what is the problem? The problem is that Dolan appears to take all evidence at face value. He will quote Morris K. Jessup on an equal basis with Jacques Vallee. He will talk of Gray Barker on the same level as J. Allen Hynek. He puts Philip Corso at the same level as Jerome Clark. In other words, he does not seem to discriminate between sources. He considers them all valid. Rather than sifting through vast amounts of disinformation for the Truth, it’s more like he’s amassing a mound of evidence without regard to its veracity or corroboration. He doesn't even allude to the possibility that there might be some problems with some of this evidence. The clowns are thrown in with the professors. "
The hypothesis becomes more and more unreliable if we consider that Dolan "doesn't discriminate between sources" The clowns of the Ufological subculture are thrown in with the Professors. If this is so, lack of evidences are not an issue for our self-proclaimed expert.
"Dolan also comes to some dubious conclusions. It’s quite clear he believes James Forrestal was killed for his knowledge that he might spill the beans. And what about Ruppelt’s early death? No one dies of a heart attack at age 37. Hmmm. And James McDonald. Did he commit suicide, really, or was he murdered because he was getting too close to the secrets? This stuff is not corroborated at all. His standards of proof are way too low. This would not be allowed in academia. You wouldn’t be able to get away with this and be considered seriously."
In other words, facts become factoids, and are manipulated in the service of a dubious, unsubstantiated hypothesis. The whole UFO mythology can only be kept alive if we add the inevitable conspiracy theory, and this is nothing but the same unreliable stuff.