Podesta asks for UFO files, but just what would they say?

I will assert that the government knows more about the UFO phenomena than it is telling us.

How much more is subject to speculation...and often exaggeration.

Such speculation got kicked up a bit more in the past few days due to a tweet from John Podesta, former White House Chief of Staff to President Clinton and a senior adviser to President Obama. The tweet stated as follows:

"Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: Once again not securing the #disclosure of the UFO files. #thetruthisstilloutthere."

That statement from such a high-ranking Washington insider has brought great din from the UFO camp, arguing that this is more evidence a government cover-up. While it's almost a foregone conclusion that the powers-that-be of the nation and the world know more about UFOs than they are letting on, I question the exact magnitude of their knowledge.

The federal government and the United States military have had a longstanding interest in UFO sightings. This dates back to, among other things, Project Sign. This was an official research study conducted by the U.S. government in 1948 into the nature of UFO phenomena. While the study was inconclusive as to just what UFOs are, the report asserted that the phenomenon is real and that the craft sighted are most likely of extraterrestrial origin. This hypothesis was, of course, rejected. But Project Sign did make one important contribution that seems to have stuck in official policy and that is the recommendation that strict control should be kept over the investigation of sightings.

Much later came the Condon Report. It was a report from the University of Colorado under the direction of physicist Edward Condon and funded by the Air Force. The upshot of the report stated that serious study of UFOs was unlikely to yield anything of scientific value. There was consternation surrounding the report due to a memo written by Robert Low, a member of the committee. The memo was to academics at the University of Colorado and its intent was to assure them that the study would conclude that UFOs had no basis in reality. This irked many in the UFO committee and Condon would later argue that the memo demonstrated Low's ignorance of the project. But the memo, once again, did contribute something that seemed to stick.

Low wrote that the Condon report would emphasize "the sociology and psychology" of those who report UFO sightings. In other words, focus attention on the witnesses, not the phenomenon itself. To me, this suggests the beginning of a modus operandi for an official line on UFO sightings. Namely, that one should always discredit discredit discredit. This m.o. seemed to already be in full force before the report at the time of the Betty and Barney Hill case.

The Hills were the first thoroughly documented abduction case. Among the more ludicrous and limp-wristed attempts at explaining their encounter? That the experience was a hallucination brought on by the stress of being an interracial couple in the 1960s. I am all for finding terrestrial, even mundane explanations for events deemed Ufological, but there are times when skepticism turns into the mental gymnastics of "denial at all costs." While I don't exactly throw my support behind the alien hypothesis for the Hill case, I have yet to read a worthwhile debunking.

Discredit discredit discredit.

So what exactly is the government hiding and why are they hiding it? If you ask the more paranoid corners of the Internet about the latter, its denizens might allege that it all has to do with Project Blue Beam. This is an alleged plot involving UFOs where the New World Order would fake an alien invasion to bring about a totalitarian, one-world state. Click the link and you'll see how there's a nifty tie-in to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. Crazy? Probably. Still, when that weird spiral appeared over Norway in 2009, I had to wonder if it was hologram and the beginning of the Blue Beam scenario.

Of course it wasn't.

Once more I circle back to the question. What is our government hiding? To my thinking, I don't believe they know that much. They are concretely aware that UFOs, at least in a few cases, are real and represent something weird and perhaps outside of human comprehension. They don't know much more beyond that. There is no thaumaturge or cabal of shadowy minds that know all about what's in our skies or what to do about it should action be needed.

That, more than anything, is probably why they keep it under wraps.






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