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Disclosure


ProphetofOccam

Paranormal Adept
I posted a question in the DeLonge thread, but it may not have been in keeping with the primary topic of discussion.

The essence of what I'd like to hear from some of the people on the forum who believe the government is hiding information about UFO's, extraterrestrials, and/or any paranormal phenomena, has three parts (all of which are open to scrutiny). I'm genuinely curious about how some of the people here perceive these concepts and how these concepts fit together in each individual's mind to form their subjective belief.

A. Why might a government go to the expense, economically and in regard to time/man power, to hide this type of information from the public, in your view?

B. If one believes the concepts we collectively refer to as "paranormal" are comprised of phenomena truly outside the bounds of accepted science (i.e., extraterrestrials have been to Earth and are the progenitors, and pilots, of UFO phenomena), and as an extension of that, also believes that such an understanding is reasonable based on the evidence collected by researchers who are largely untrained (officially or formally, within any legitimized or recognized standard) in any field of science, investigation, or research, doesn't one associatively conclude that evidence for truly paranormal phenomena (including extraterrestrials and UFO spacecraft) is relatively easy to come by and catalog?

To clarify what I mean, most of the "big name" paranormal investigators, across all fields of interest, have absolutely no legitimate or officially recognized training whatsoever in any relevant field that would qualify them as practical or efficient researchers. At least, not more than anyone else in this forum. What qualified them is the motivation to go out and look at things first hand -- and, in a few cases, per their own untestable proclamation, perhaps some outdoorsman experience -- not a specialized understanding of science, investigation, or research protocols (as exists for other research fields). Most of the protocols used by paranormal investigators is entirely made up (sometimes by the individual, sometimes by an individual who heads up a loose organization). This would suggest that anyone, with will and gas money, could easily come across what might amount to subjective "proof" of truly paranormal phenomena if they take the time to examine, first hand, paranormal claims.

C. Given the reported amount of collected evidence that many paranormal/UFO enthusiasts believe to be noteworthy and credible, and the apparent low barrier that exists for qualification and recognition for one to be considered a credible researcher, how would a government cover up such a perceptible and accessible collection of phenomena? Why would they ever think it was possible to try?

And two related but not directly connected questions:

When do you believe the coverups began?

What could a government do to communicate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they aren't hiding any secret information about any of these topics?
 
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A. Why might a government go to the expense, economically and in regard to time/man power, to hide this type of information from the public, in your view?

If there are alien craft entering our airspace from time to time, the defense significance of the data available about these craft would be enormous. Imagine if a hostile nuclear power could use that data to replicate the propulsion system: they could deliver a nuclear warhead to any place on the planet more quickly and evasively than any ICBM. And that’s just one of many considerations.

B …doesn't one associatively conclude that evidence for truly paranormal phenomena (including extraterrestrials and UFO spacecraft) is relatively easy to come by and catalog?

Evidence is pretty readily available. Scientific proof isn’t. Quite a lot of scientists, Neil deGrasse Tyson for example, have stated that they wouldn’t believe in alien visitation unless we gave them an alien body to examine. Obviously that’s an unreasonable evidentiary standard to demand, but that’s what we’re up against.

C. …how would a government cover up such a perceptible and accessible collection of phenomena? Why would they ever think it was possible to try?

The government doesn’t need to hide all of the evidence, only the very rare and scientifically compelling evidence, like the film footage of a ufo landing taken by Gordon Cooper’s camera team at Edwards Air Force Base. We also know about numerous other cases where the military took gun camera footage, and collected radar data and cinetheodolite footage of extraordinary ufos. None of that evidence has been released.

A cover-up doesn’t need to be extensive to be successful. As long as the available evidence fails to meet the scientific burden of proof (which is very high in this case), and sufficient doubt can be sown among the general public via counterintelligence operations and routine denials, the cover-up will be successful.

When do you believe the coverups began?

Possibly at the time of the Cape Girardeau incident in 1941, or earlier.

What could a government do to communicate, beyond a reasonable doubt, that they aren't hiding any secret information about any of these topics?

Releasing all of the evidence that we know they’ve collected and withheld would be a good start.
 
If there are alien craft entering our airspace from time to time, the defense significance of the data available about these craft would be enormous. Imagine if a hostile nuclear power could use that data to replicate the propulsion system: they could deliver a nuclear warhead to any place on the planet more quickly and evasively than any ICBM. And that’s just one of many considerations.

To that end, why would an alien visitor really see one world nation as different or separate from any others? Why would they visit one over another?

I'd think that human politics and behavior would be so far overshadowed by the scope of their own societal evolution as to be more-or-less imperceptible to someone advanced enough to travel through star systems in an efficient enough manner to be worthwhile. For instance, we might be able to tell one group of chimpanzees is more violent than another, but we're not able to discern much detail about why, despite understanding much of how they communicate, and we still physically study them all equally.

There wouldn't really be much of a reason for extraterrestrials to be more interested in one group of talking monkey than another, even if one group had more global political pull (which arguably, the United States and Britain no longer do) than others. That factor would be essentially moot to a set of beings so scientifically powerful.

Evidence is pretty readily available. Scientific proof isn’t. Quite a lot of scientists, Neil deGrasse Tyson for example, have stated that they wouldn’t believe in alien visitation unless we gave them an alien body to examine. Obviously that’s an unreasonable evidentiary standard to demand, but that’s what we’re up against.

It's not that unreasonable, and it's not literal. All he, and others, are saying is, "provide evidence that can't be potentially attributed to other more likely phenomena." In the case of UFOs and extraterrestrials, realistically, that doesn't yet exist. All evidence for UFO's as relates to extraterrestrials can be argued as deriving from more earthly phenomena. A burn mark on the ground is not evidence of a propulsion system, for instance -- it's evidence of heat, and heat can be reasonably attributed to innumerable more likely phenomena. A dead or live alien would be basically impossible to attribute to anything else, and the example is used to illustrate the general concept.

The government doesn’t need to hide all of the evidence, only the very rare and scientifically compelling evidence, like the film footage of a ufo landing taken by Gordon Cooper’s camera team at Edwards Air Force Base.

To be fair, the only evidence one has for the existence of that evidence is Gordon Cooper's proclamation. Anything from test vehicles Cooper knew nothing about to just being plain made up are more likely explanations in this case. Just because someone's former government or an engineer doesn't mean they're always honest or that they always know what they're seeing.

So much information is regularly leaked from top secret government files, these days, that it'd be pretty difficult to hide something of that magnitude. However, if the incident either A) never happened, or B) was just a top secret vehicle, coming across reports of that specific incident on that specific date wouldn't really stand out and draw attention to explain what was or wasn't seen.

Do you believe world governments are sitting on large caches of this type of evidence?

Possibly at the time of the Cape Girardeau incident in 1941, or earlier.

There are reports and second hand reports of UFO and extraterrestrial phenomena, up to and including crashes, happening in the United States and other locations as early as the 1400's. If you believe that the world governments are in contact with alien visitors from other terrestrial locations, do you believe this contact didn't begin until the 40's? Why might this be the case?

Releasing all of the evidence that we know they’ve collected and withheld would be a good start.

Define "know" in this context.

This answer currently reads as "they can't." I want to make sure I understand.
 
To that end, why would an alien visitor really see one world nation as different or separate from any others? Why would they visit one over another?
Who said they do or have? Compelling sighting and radar cases have happened all over the world. There’s no regional preference, as far as I know. You asked about “our government,” presumably meaning the US government, in a thread called “Disclosure,” so my answers reflect that context.

And just to be clear, I’m convinced that the extraterrestrial hypothesis (ETH) is the most likely explanation for the most interesting and rare kind of sightings – but that’s different than being convinced that we’re being visited by alien beings (and/or alien probes): if someone shows me a better explanation or persuasive evidence that favors a different explanation, my opinion could shift dramatically.

For instance, we might be able to tell one group of chimpanzees is more violent than another, but we're not able to discern much detail about why, despite understanding much of how they communicate, and we still physically study them all equally.
I don’t understand why you think sightings favor one region or nation. Reports with similar characteristics appear from all over the world.

It's not that unreasonable, and it's not literal.
Yes it is. Granted, Dr. Tyson and other adversaries of the ETH would probably settle for a functioning piece of alien technology: what they demand is incontrovertible physical proof. But it’s unreasonable to expect an alien being to hand over such a thing, or to conveniently perish in a well-populated area of the Earth so we can conduct an autopsy. If the roles were reversed, we wouldn't leave any advanced technology in the hands of murderous primitives, or leave our dead behind on their planet, so it's not reasonable to expect them to be more accommodating than we'd be.

All he, and others, are saying is, "provide evidence that can't be potentially attributed to other more likely phenomena." In the case of UFOs and extraterrestrials, realistically, that doesn't yet exist. All evidence for UFO's as relates to extraterrestrials can be argued as deriving from more earthly phenomena. A burn mark on the ground is not evidence of a propulsion system, for instance -- it's evidence of heat, and heat can be reasonably attributed to innumerable more likely phenomena. A dead or live alien would be basically impossible to attribute to anything else, and the example is used to illustrate the general concept.

To be fair, the only evidence one has for the existence of that evidence is Gordon Cooper's proclamation. Anything from test vehicles Cooper knew nothing about to just being plain made up are more likely explanations in this case. Just because someone's former government or an engineer doesn't mean they're always honest or that they always know what they're seeing.
Apparently you’ve done no research on this subject, or even listened to The Paracast. Many cases involved multiple credible independent eyewitnesses, photographs and film footage (the best of which is withheld by military and government agencies), radar confirmation of performance characteristics far beyond human technological capabilities featuring apparently instantaneous dramatic accelerations. And in such contexts, trace evidence cases provide significant additional evidence.

It adds up to a persuasive body of evidence. A “:more likely explanation” is purely subjective. For people who have difficulty accepting the idea that intelligent life could be fairly common, if not ubiquitous throughout the cosmos, the evidentiary standard of acceptance is extremely high. For those of us who have no psychologically vested interest in mankind’s cosmic preeminence, the evidence of alien visitation is more or less sufficient because it’s a reasonable expectation that other intelligent beings would also study other worlds, and many such beings would have the technological capability to do it more efficiently than we can at present.

So much information is regularly leaked from top secret government files, these days, that it'd be pretty difficult to hide something of that magnitude. However, if the incident either A) never happened, or B) was just a top secret vehicle, coming across reports of that specific incident on that specific date wouldn't really stand out and draw attention to explain what was or wasn't seen.
Again, you haven’t studied this subject at all. Authentic leaks of defense significance are extremely rare. And the few that occur are all of lower classification.

People working within classified military programs, for example, are well aware of the power and capabilities of the military security edifice, and they’re very frightened by it. Have a look at the interview with Bob Widmer, one of our most accomplished military aircraft designers, in Nick Cook’s Billion Dollar Secret.

Do you believe world governments are sitting on large caches of this type of evidence?
I don’t believe anything. But some governments seem to have accrued a significance body of evidence. It’s probably proportional to land surface area and the prevalence of technological resources like interceptor aircraft with gun cameras and radar stations etc.

There are reports and second hand reports of UFO and extraterrestrial phenomena, up to and including crashes, happening in the United States and other locations as early as the 1400's. If you believe that the world governments are in contact with alien visitors from other terrestrial locations, do you believe this contact didn't begin until the 40's? Why might this be the case?
Who said anything about governments being in contact with alien beings? I’ve seen no compelling evidence of this. I suppose it’s possible, but it seems unlikely. Nearly all reports indicate an elusive quality – “they” appear to want little to do with us, other than observing us occasionally.

Define "know" in this context.
There are multiple cases involving credible witnesses who either took film footage, or saw film footage being taken, or saw film footage after it was taken in an official capacity, who have testified about the existence of such footage. Gordon Cooper is only one example, and I see no reason to either doubt his honesty, or to doubt his evaluation of the footage.

It’s remotely possible that the US military had disc-shaped craft that could hover silently and execute hairpin maneuvers at thousands of mph as early as the 1940s or 50s. But 70 years later we still see zero indication that our military has such capabilities now. Ergo, it strains credulity to think that they had such capabilities back then.

The ETH, on the other hand, doesn’t strain credulity at all. We have every reason to think that intelligent life could be, and probably is, fairly common throughout the universe. 22% of all stars in our Milky Way galaxy (and of course, billions of others) are orbited by an Earth-like planet in their habitable zones, so life, and probably intelligent life, is likely very common throughout the cosmos. And it’s also likely, if not virtually certain, that if intelligent life is prevalent in our galaxy and throughout the cosmos, quite a lot of them would have technological capabilities far beyond our own. And it also seems reasonable to think that such technologically advanced beings would take an interest in a planet that has exploded 2053 nuclear bombs since 1945 (if nothing else, I would think that any technologically sophisticated beings in our galactic vicinity would want to gather intelligence on any neighboring species with nuclear capability):

This answer currently reads as "they can't." I want to make sure I understand.
I’m unclear about what you’re saying here, but I assume that you’re referring to government disclosure.

I think the government has some good reasons to withhold evidence pertaining to alien visitation/technology. I also think there are many bad reasons to do so.

In any case it seems very clear that they won’t.

But fortunately I don't depend upon the US government to tell me what to think. If I did, then I'd have a much bigger problem than simply thinking that we're not alone in the universe.
 
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And we cant discount the possibility that the entitys behind the alleged craft are in total control of the whole show.
That for reasons known only to them they simply dont want us to know much more than we do.

But working with that for arguments sake is in itself interesting.

Lets say they do have the ability to insert and erase memorys (Its been claimed we ourselves are on the verge of being able to do it so its not SciFi)

1 US Air Force, New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21st Century1

Prior to the mid-21st century, there will be a virtual explosion of knowledge in the field of neuroscience. We will have achieved a clear understanding of how the human brain works, how it really controls the various functions of the body, and how it can be manipulated (both positively and negatively). One can envision the development of electromagnetic energy sources, the output of which can be,
  • pulsed, shaped, and focused
  • that can couple with the human body in a fashion that will allow one to prevent voluntary muscular movements
  • control emotions (and thus actions)
  • produce sleep
  • transmit suggestions
  • interfere with both short-term and long-term memory
  • produce an experience set
  • delete an experience set

Mind Control - The Ultimate Brave New World - 1


US Air Force, New World Vistas: Air and Space Power for the 21st Century – Ancillary Volume, Scientific Advisory Board (USAF), Washington, DC, Document #19960618040, 1996, pp. 89-90. EPI402
This document actually talks about an ability to insert memorys in subjects remotely

So assuming the entitys can do this, the possibilitys are.

They can tell us everything.
They can cover everything up and we wouldnt even be talking about it.
They can let slip a small bit of information.

The third option seems to be where we are at now.

If that's whats happening, my question is why the tease ?
 
Who said they do or have? Compelling sighting and radar cases have happened all over the world. There’s no regional preference, as far as I know. You asked about “our government,” presumably meaning the US government, in a thread called “Disclosure,” so my answers reflect that context.

That's fair, but I was also trying to address the individuals who are of the understanding that the United States government, and some other world governments, are sitting on secret information pertaining to extraterrestrials. Do you think every world government has evidence of this kind, including places like North Korea, Iran, and Uganda? Would these governments be able to maintain a coverup, given their general lack of resources (North Korea has trouble keeping any secrets, in general)? If they don't have evidence, why would you think not?

Do only governments with alleged crashes have this type of evidence?

My follow-up question implied, and assumed, that the visitors were dealing with government bodies willingly. That part was my fault.

Yes it is. Granted, Dr. Tyson and other adversaries of the ETH would probably settle for a functioning piece of alien technology: what they demand is incontrovertible physical proof. But it’s unreasonable to expect an alien being to hand over such a thing, or to conveniently perish in a well-populated area of the Earth so we can conduct an autopsy.

Why is that unreasonable?

If we look at most of the anecdotal and less solid evidence that exists for the phenomena (which would be basically all of it), the vast majority takes place in well populated areas of civilized nations. In fact, most of the evidence suggests that, were there to be extraterrestrials piloting UFO's and/or visiting Earth, the phenomena is centered around human civilization, seemingly as the focus of study, abduction, assimilation, and/or education.

With so many sightings taking place in well populated cities, large suburbs, populated towns, and well traveled swathe of wilderness, it seems more likely, to me, that crashes and accidental alien deaths would take place in those types of areas than they would on military bases, in the ocean, and deep within secluded regions -- or at least just as likely. Why do you (seemingly) disagree, given the general trend of sighting and experience evidence?

Again, you haven’t studied this subject at all. Authentic leaks of defense significance are extremely rare. And the few that occur are all of lower classification.

People working within classified military programs, for example, are well aware of the power and capabilities of the military security edifice, and they’re very frightened by it. Have a look at the interview with Bob Widmer, one of our most accomplished military aircraft designers, in Nick Cook’s Billion Dollar Secret.

That's certainly a hasty assumption about what I've read and know about the topic of the paranormal, UFO's, and alleged extraterrestrials.

Regardless, there's a lot of evidence that Snowden, for example, actually did retrieve military intelligence when he was getting the information he ultimately leaked about the NSA. There's also a lot of evidence that he didn't. Fair enough.

All the same, it's also a pretty big assumption that alien visitation would immediately be considered an exclusively military situation, and wouldn't include several more relevant departments of government, including the CIA, FBI, NSA, NASA, EPA, Department of Interiors, local police, local fire departments, etc. That being the case, this type of information, if hidden, would exist in several locations containing relevant information to the respective departments and organizations.

That's just how everything works.

Almost every department of government have protocols that cover extraterrestrial visitation. It's not just a military issue, and never would be if such an event occurred. The military doesn't step into a situation and kick everyone else out. Not unless they want to spectacularly fumble the ball in regard to intelligence, research, and national safety (both in regard to human life and the environment). That's just how movies are written.

Airplanes crashing into buildings during a secretly conspired attack is certainly a military issue, but dozens of departments and organizations were involved in the response, the resulting investigation, and the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The military is a very particular branch of government, they aren't equipt to handle every aspect of every situation, including UFO crashes or extraterrestrial visitation -- there's no reason for them to be.

But some governments seem to have accrued a significance body of evidence.

They seem to based on word of mouth? What specific instances are you referencing? That's not a challenge, I'm just not sure how you mean that.

Who said anything about governments being in contact with alien beings? I’ve seen no compelling evidence of this. I suppose it’s possible, but it seems unlikely. Nearly all reports indicate an elusive quality – “they” appear to want little to do with us, other than observing us occasionally.

What evidence suggests they're uninterested? Isn't there evidence because they're constantly hanging out where people are?

What else might they be doing?

There are multiple cases involving credible witnesses who either took film footage, or saw film footage being taken, or saw film footage after it was taken in an official capacity, who have testified about the existence of such footage. Gordon Cooper is only one example, and I see no reason to either doubt his honesty, or to doubt his evaluation of the footage.

The main reason is the lack of any other evidence to support his claim. But I understand your position.

It’s remotely possible that the US military had disc-shaped craft that could hover silently and execute hairpin maneuvers at thousands of mph as early as the 1940s or 50s. But 70 years later we still see zero indication that our military has such capabilities now. Ergo, it strains credulity to think that they had such capabilities back then.

Per the question, "who said anything about governments being in contact. . .," if a spacecraft landed in an airfare base -- which many people claim they've personally witnessed, filmed, or video recorded -- isn't that an indication that the inhabitants of the craft probably have contact with the people in those bases? There are as many reports of crafts in hangars as there are crafts landing or taking off from military bases. Wouldn't this indicate some kind of relationship?

And it also seems reasonable to think that such technologically advanced beings would take an interest in a planet that has exploded 2053 nuclear bombs since 1945

Why, specifically?

Why would one extremely archaic piece of technology be more interesting to a civilization that would have to be tens to hundreds of thousands of years more advanced than our own? What would make atom splitting special?

This seems to be a chronocentric view, to me. That just happens to be the most advanced technology we currently have in regard to energy and destruction. In two thousand years, we'll likely have something way more interesting, and two thousand years after that. What would make atomic energy specifically interesting to civilizations that likely left that technology behind countless millennia ago?

Again, nothing I say is meant as a challenge of your beliefs or understanding. I'm trying to completely understand how your thinking on the subjects works.
 
And we cant discount the possibility that the entitys behind the alleged craft are in total control of the whole show.
That for reasons known only to them they simply dont want us to know much more than we do.

If there were extraterrestrials visiting this planet, they almost certainly wouldn't really care what we've seen or what we know. Why would it matter?

We're not at any risk of suddenly jumping ten to one-hundred thousand years ahead in our technological advancement. Even pretending that a human person would even begin to fathom the technology of such a race would be like assuming an Neanderthal could reverse engineer an airplane because they understand how an arrowhead works. There would be so many steps of technological advancement, that we've not even reached, between the human understanding and a piece of interstellar craft that it's unthinkably absurd to consider that anything aliens would bring here could ever potentially be used, let alone reverse engineered. We'd be lucky to find the door, if it had doors.

So, extraterrestrials likely wouldn't have a ton of worry over that idea.

From there, it's the matter of what are the people on this planet even going to do with the information that alien visitors do come to the planet? Exactly nothing interesting to anyone or anything who'd have any reason to care.

We couldn't do anything with their tech. We couldn't really do anything with the information that they're here. Most of the time, we wouldn't even be able to properly identify or quantify what we saw. We could't do anything about or with anything. Outside of just studying the bullshit we're up to, as well as all the other creatures on the planet, interstellar extraterrestrials just wouldn't be bothered to care about what we know.

We have drones the size of baseballs, and we've had a worthwhile civilization for about 6,000 years. Why would extraterrestrials ever even need to get close enough to the planet to be seen?

Unless we're literally the only other species of sapient or sentient life that these dudes have encountered in their cosmic travels, what possible reason would they ever have to make actual contact or get close enough to be seen?

If the extraterrestrial hypothesis is accurate, I'd say they just don't care about what we know or see.
 
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That's fair, but I was also trying to address the individuals who are of the understanding that the United States government, and some other world governments, are sitting on secret information pertaining to extraterrestrials. Do you think every world government has evidence of this kind, including places like North Korea, Iran, and Uganda? Would these governments be able to maintain a coverup, given their general lack of resources (North Korea has trouble keeping any secrets, in general)? If they don't have evidence, why would you think not?

Do only governments with alleged crashes have this type of evidence?
I have no idea. And I’m not being dismissive, that’s just the truth. Many of the members here at the forums are very well-informed on the intricacies of ufology, and I’m just not one of them. I’ve seen enough to conclude, at least tentatively, that extraterrestrial devices sometimes appear in our airspace. And the primary if not sole focus of my interest is to understand the physical propulsion principle that makes them go.

Why is that unreasonable? [re: demanding proof in the form of a working alien device or dead alien body before accepting the ETH]
As I explained, we wouldn’t leave our technology or our dead among a far less advanced alien species, for a host of reasons. So I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect an advanced alien species to do any differently here.

If we look at most of the anecdotal and less solid evidence that exists for the phenomena (which would be basically all of it), the vast majority takes place in well populated areas of civilized nations. In fact, most of the evidence suggests that, were there to be extraterrestrials piloting UFO's and/or visiting Earth, the phenomena is centered around human civilization, seemingly as the focus of study, abduction, assimilation, and/or education.

With so many sightings taking place in well populated cities, large suburbs, populated towns, and well traveled swathe of wilderness, it seems more likely, to me, that crashes and accidental alien deaths would take place in those types of areas than they would on military bases, in the ocean, and deep within secluded regions -- or at least just as likely. Why do you (seemingly) disagree, given the general trend of sighting and experience evidence?
I assume that sightings are reported over populated areas because there’s nobody to report them in the unpopulated areas. Incidents over densely populated areas, like the Phoenix Lights case, appear to be the exception (and may be a simple case of misperception – I haven’t delved in deeply enough to that case to make an informed determination).

I don’t know what to make of abduction cases. There are some interesting anecdotal reports, but unlike ufo sighting reports, I’ve never heard of any credible radar confirmations or trace evidence, or multiple independent eyewitness confirmations. So it’s in my grey box, no pun intended.

Regardless, there's a lot of evidence that Snowden, for example, actually did retrieve military intelligence when he was getting the information he ultimately leaked about the NSA. There's also a lot of evidence that he didn't. Fair enough.

All the same, it's also a pretty big assumption that alien visitation would immediately be considered an exclusively military situation, and wouldn't include several more relevant departments of government, including the CIA, FBI, NSA, NASA, EPA, Department of Interiors, local police, local fire departments, etc. That being the case, this type of information, if hidden, would exist in several locations containing relevant information to the respective departments and organizations.

That's just how everything works.
No, that’s not how it works. The low-level classified leaks that we’ve seen are one thing, special compartmentalized intelligence is another beast altogether. I can’t think of a single leak of special access program (SAP) intelligence, can you? That data only exists on government servers, which are carefully isolated and protected (until someone like Hillary Clinton decides to transfer a bunch of it to her private basement server that's not even encrypted).

And then there’s unacknowledged special access program (USAP) intelligence – those programs aren’t even allowed to keep records of their activities, so there’s nothing to leak.

Almost every department of government have protocols that cover extraterrestrial visitation. It's not just a military issue, and never would be if such an event occurred. The military doesn't step into a situation and kick everyone else out.
People who are intimately familiar with this issue have found differently. John Greenwald (The Black Vault) discovered, in the course of his FOIA research, that all ufo reports get funneled to a single defense intelligence agency, which denies the existence of the data they collect (it’s policy to deny the existence of classified data, and when it can be cited explicitly, the policy is to claim that it’s been destroyed). But he found that our agency had an agreement with a Canadian agency assigned with the same responsibility to collect such reports, and they were more forthcoming, which is how he got some of his best documents released to the public.

Airplanes crashing into buildings during a secretly conspired attack is certainly a military issue, but dozens of departments and organizations were involved in the response, the resulting investigation, and the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. The military is a very particular branch of government, they aren't equipt to handle every aspect of every situation, including UFO crashes or extraterrestrial visitation -- there's no reason for them to be.
Yes, there is – a single agency handling all of the relevant data is the best way to secure that data. Ergo, the “compartmentalized” in “special compartmentalized intelligence.” Sure, occasionally some confidential or secret documents get leaked. But highly classified data is another matter altogether. At levels like SAP intelligence and above, for example, the interest of national security (as deemed by the PTB) takes precedence over all other considerations, including your life. That kind of data doesn’t get leaked. Consider the atomic bomb, for example – we’ve had that data for over 70 years, but the key secrets for the production of nuclear warheads have never leaked. Pieces have been stolen occasionally by hostile foreign actors and their minions, but it’s never been leaked to the public. Some researchers say that the ufo subject is even more highly classified than that. I can’t confirm that, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Here's why:

Imagine the peril that the world would be in if Russia learned, as one possibility, that the US was about to replicate the field propulsion mechanism employed by the most interesting high-performance ufos. They’d have a terrible choice to make: strike now, before we acquire the capability to defeat all of their air defenses and deliver nuclear payloads over every city and military installation in a matter of seconds, or allow the US to totally dominate the globe militarily (which is apparently our favorite national past time). The stakes would be global human extinction. Data that potentially sensitive doesn’t leak.

What specific instances are you referencing? That's not a challenge, I'm just not sure how you mean that.
Just look at the recent release of ufo-related documents in the UK, and what Nick Cook has to say (and not say) about them, in recent interviews. They have a lot of evidence. And not all of it is released, because some unknown percentage of it is still classified. France has also collected data and published studies about ufos – and they’ve concluded that some sightings are extraterrestrial in nature. Canada is a similar example, and they’re one of the most forthcoming nations on the subject (which apparently explains the public acceptance of ufos in Canadian culture – people who report sightings in Canada aren’t mocked, ridiculed and demoted for reporting their sightings…must be nice).

What evidence suggests they're uninterested? Isn't there evidence because they're constantly hanging out where people are?
I said elusive, not uninterested. Obviously they’d have to be interested to some extent, to send craft to our planet.

And as I said before, we can only get reports from people, so it only looks as if ufos appear over inhabited areas: we wouldn’t hear about them otherwise. But we almost never hear about a sighting over a major city.

What else might they be doing?
How should I know? Apparently our position is similar to an aboriginal pygmy observing a stealth bomber flying overhead. What is it, where is it going, and why? A human observing another human just one hundred years in the future, going about their routine daily activities, would be utterly perplexed by much of that activity. Inferring the motives of an alien species that may be 100,000 or millions of years more advanced than we are, is a hopelessly insoluble problem.

The main reason is the lack of any other evidence to support his claim. But I understand your position.
Well, we know that he worked there on that date, and that he was in the position to see the footage, as he stated. I don’t know what other supporting facts we can expect to get. But sure, to some extent it comes down to trust.

To be a hardened skeptic on this subject, one would have to conclude that every single eyewitness (including professional military aircraft designers and the like), without exception, is either a liar, or they can’t describe their sighting with any accuracy or reliability. And we’d have to extend that postulate to every independent witness who reported the exact same physical and behavioral characteristics of the same sighting from an entirely different position and viewing angle.

If one can do that, and brush aside all of the radar confirmation cases, and trace evidence cases as well, then one can enjoy a content level of self-assurance that the universe is basically devoid of intelligent life, and none of it, if it exists, is more advanced than we are, and therefore we’ve never been visited by any advanced and elusive species of alien being.

But I can’t bring myself to be that much of an asshole. People I’ve known and loved have confided very compelling reports to me with complete sincerity. Some of our finest American heroes have reported their own sightings earnestly and with consummate clarity (Kenneth Arnold timed the objects that he observed as they passed over one mountain to another one - 102 seconds - so he could calculate the speed later when he got the exact distance between those mountains). Radar confirmation has supported a slew of such accounts with high precision. Trace evidence cases have been documented and studied. And I’ve personally seen a pair of objects execute astonishing zig-zag maneuvers in perfect formation at thousands of mph with five of my neighbors on a bright cloudless summer afternoon. So I don’t have the luxury of dismissing all of this as nonsense.


Per the question, "who said anything about governments being in contact. . .," if a spacecraft landed in an airfare base -- which many people claim they've personally witnessed, filmed, or video recorded -- isn't that an indication that the inhabitants of the craft probably have contact with the people in those bases? There are as many reports of crafts in hangars as there are crafts landing or taking off from military bases. Wouldn't this indicate some kind of relationship?
Oh sure, if that stuff actually happened. But I tend to assume that such instances involve experimental human technology, and like I said, I’m not a ufologist so I don’t study specific cases anymore, and I never ran across a compelling case like that back when I did research this subject (as well as I could at my local library, anyway).

Why [would they take an interest in humans detonating over 2000 nuclear warheads upon our planet], specifically?
When you ask questions like this I feel like you’re being intentionally obtuse.

The short answer: because if we detected on-going nuclear detonations on a nearby exosolar planet, and we had the capability to investigate, we would. Any civilization would be remiss to ignore the development of other intelligent species in their galactic vicinity. And undoubtedly, the advent of the nuclear era on any world is a landmark moment.

Perhaps they know that the time span between the first nuclear detonations and the capability of rapid interstellar spacecraft is typically only a couple of hundred years. Perhaps they know some other statistical fact that we don’t, like “half of the species that detonate nuclear warheads in an act of war destroy themselves within X number of years.” So perhaps they’d like to collect some record of such a species before it goes extinct. Or perhaps they want to see if we’re likely to self-annihilate, so they can populate the Earth with their own people, or simply plunder our natural resources once the radiation dies down. Who knows? What seems irrational and illogical is the notion that a nearby advanced species would *ignore* nuclear detonations on a neighboring planet.

Again, nothing I say is meant as a challenge of your beliefs or understanding. I'm trying to completely understand how your thinking on the subjects works.
I don’t have any beliefs, and I enjoy challenges to my understanding, so don’t sweat it. I place a lot of confidence in repeatable and well-vetted scientific observations, but nearly everything else is contingent on the breadth of my data set.

I think the ETH is internally consistent and supported by many lines of evidence and reasoning, so I favor it as an explanation for the types of sightings that most interest me. But I have no emotional or psychological investment in it. If the Air Force releases declassified footage of an experimental aircraft from the 1950s that can levitate and make extreme and virtually instantaneous accelerations at thousands of miles per hour, then I’ll probably throw the ETH out the window without a moment’s hesitation.

We have drones the size of baseballs, and we've had a worthwhile civilization for about 6,000 years. Why would extraterrestrials ever even need to get close enough to the planet to be seen?
I’ve given this a lot of thought because of my own sighting.

A sighting *is* contact: visual contact, specifically. If they can travel between stars with ease, then they can probably get all of the information they’d want from a distance, or by using invisibility-cloaked stealth vehicles (we’re already making progress in this direction via metamaterials).

So why appear to us, shining bright lights in many cases, and performing very exotic aerial maneuvers far beyond our own capability?

I’ve only been able to come up with one reasonable hypothesis: to make contact. They want us to know that they exist, and/or they want to provoke us to discover the amazing field propulsion mechanism that they utilize. My sighting definitely appeared to be a deliberate aerial demonstration of that propulsion mechanism. Usual Suspect had a similar experience, in that its maneuvers seemed intentionally exotic - like a signature: "Hi there, I'm not from around here, and here's the proof .../executes bewildering maneuvers while emitting bright light."

Honestly I marvel at the subtlety and sophistication of this approach, if it was indeed intentional. In less than a minute, I got the message loud and clear that we’re not alone, and was also inspired to attempt an understanding of the gravitational field propulsion principle that these craft utilized. And I’m grateful for both of these enormous revelations. Plus, it was all done in a manner that didn’t frighten or confuse me. Frankly, that’s the kind of elegant and very effective contact strategy that I’d expect from a highly advanced form of spacefaring intelligent species.

It only takes a few moments of consideration to understand why an advanced species wouldn’t land on the White House lawn and announce their presence officially that way, as some people demand. It would be an enormous shock to the whole world, with potentially catastrophic consequences. The fact that they haven’t done that, demonstrates a level of responsibility that I find very assuring. And if they were, instead, completely apathetic about us, I don’t think they’d reveal themselves at all, and they certainly wouldn’t defy inertia with their maneuvers, which is a clear indication of a vastly superior form of propulsion to anything that we know about in the public.

But by doing both of these things, it’s like waving their hands from a safe distance, which simply says “hi there, you’re not alone in the universe, and hey – try to figure out how our propulsion system works so that one day you too can come explore the universe (and probably solve the global energy crisis as well).”

That’s all speculation of course. But it seems to make sense. And it’s preferable to alternative interpretations like “let’s confuse the crap out of these primitive savages and make them ridiculed outcasts when they tell their neighbors about seeing us zig-zagging through the sky – then we can go blow up some stars for kicks before heading back to our own galaxy for dinner."
 
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Yes, there is – a single agency handling all of the relevant data is the best way to secure that data. Ergo, the “compartmentalized” in “special compartmentalized intelligence.”

So, from your angle of thinking, the military is probably equipped with internalized copies of all the other specialized departments in government?

To be a hardened skeptic on this subject, one would have to conclude that every single eyewitness, without exception, is either a liar, or they can’t describe their sighting with any accuracy or reliability.

If one can do that, and brush aside all of the radar confirmation cases, and trace evidence cases as well, then one can enjoy a content level of self-assurance that the universe is basically devoid of intelligent life, and none of it, if it exists, is more advanced than we are, and therefore we’ve never been visited by an advanced and elusive species of alien being.

Well, existing and visiting Earth aren't interdependent states. They can be exclusive to one another. No assholery required, thankfully.

There is likely extrastellar, extraterrestrial life. It's not as likely, to some, that it's ever been to Earth.

People can make mistakes -- infact, a lot of information on the subject suggests people more mistakes than they don't, especially in the areas of perceptual judgement and memory. Other people, even very official type people, can be and are liars. It's just a fact. Right now, the most official person in the United States has no issue with lying. Being an engineer, and a good guy, doesn't restrict someone from being flawed or being capable of deception for what they believe to be a greater good. Vocal testimony, in science, just isn't worth a whole lot, regardless of the standing of the speaker -- that's an appeal to authority fallacy.

One doesn't have to be an asshole to understand this, either. Radar hits, trace items, and testimony aren't very compelling, because they can reasonably be attributed to other, more likely phenomena, or in the case of testimony, can't be tested or verified concretely.

These things are evidence that something may have taken place. But, they're not strong enough evidence to reach a conclusion as to what, how, why, or even, realistically, if, in most cases.

The short answer: because if we detected on-going nuclear detonations on a nearby exosolar planet, and we had the capability to investigate, we would.

I'm not being obtuse. I think it's chronocentric and ethnocentric (cosmically speaking). I just don't see why an thousands of years advanced civilization would find atomic bombs any more interesting than we find fire.

The scenario you're describing would only be interesting to us because nuclear technology is meaningful to us, as it's relatively new. To us, it's advanced. To our perception, in this stage of our development, that'd be a big deal.

To someone using gravity or stars for power, and potentially bending space to travel, it'd be about as impressive as any other dead, archaic technology from thousands and thousands of years ago.

If anything, if alien beings do come here, or have come here, it's because life must be exceedingly rare. Rarer still must be intelligent life. Especially if what draws them to a planet is some super ancient, dead tech. If we were exploring the universe, and we hadn't encountered anything approaching intelligent life, we'd probably be pretty impressed by anything, too. Thousands of years old technology, in terms of our development, might be neat to see, given the lack of anything else. Some dudes with fire and sharp rocks would be extremely compelling.

If I were to accept extraterrestrials on Earth as a reality, I'd be on board with the nuclear thing as an idea, but only with the understanding that it definitely implies that there aren't very many intelligent forms of life in the accessible universe.


I’ve only been able to come up with one reasonable hypothesis: they want us to know that they exist, and/or they want to provoke us to discover the amazing field propulsion mechanism that they utilize. My sighting definitely appeared to be a deliberate aerial demonstration of that propulsion mechanism. Usual Suspect had a similar experience, in that its maneuvers seemed intentionally exotic - like a signature: "Hi there, I'm not from around here, and here's the proof .../executes bewildering maneuvers while emitting bright light."

Well, now I'm a little confused.

They wouldn't leave technology laying around, because they wouldn't want us to get our hands on it (even though it's comical to think we'd know anymore what to do with, let alone how to rebuild, technology from thousands of years in our future than a fisherman from the first years of fertile crescent would know what to do with, or how to rebuild, an aircraft carrier), but they'll show us concepts we've already made up for science fiction movies in hopes of speeding the time in which we'll get our hands on it.

That seems like two mutually exclusive modes of thinking.

I'm teasing a little, but I do think those two ideas are mutually exclusive notions. Explain to me your view on it, if you'd like.
 
If there were extraterrestrials visiting this planet, they almost certainly wouldn't really care what we've seen or what we know. Why would it matter?
I can think of no reasonable scenario for aliens to come here for no reason. I supposed we could suggest that they actually had no reason and wound up here by accident. But even in that unlikely scenario, they'd still have reasons to monitor the goings on in the environment, and that would include us.
 
If there were extraterrestrials visiting this planet, they almost certainly wouldn't really care what we've seen or what we know. Why would it matter?

In the standard model perhaps.

But ive always given consideration to the post biological model.

ET is post biological - Google Search

In that scenario they may well care.
If our biological existence is simply a transitory phase, a "hatchery" of consciousness then our "infancy" phase might be something to preserve.

Or

We may simply be the factory workers in a construction project.

For example and of course hypothetically speaking.

An alien race creates artificial intelligence, This synthetic consciousness outlives its biological progenitors who like all biological species eventually die out.

It gets lonely.

It could just copy itself, but that's just playing chess in the mirror.

So it replicates its own creation process.

It seeks out or seeds biological life on a planet somewhere. It coaxes and teases that bioform to technological proficiency. It lets them create synthetic intelligence (SI) in "their own image"

Voilà it has a new brother, Unique and created in the same fashion as it was.

"I think it very likely – in fact inevitable – that biological intelligence is only a transitory phenomenon, a fleeting phase in the evolution of the universe," Davies writes in The Eerie Silence. "If we ever encounter extraterrestrial intelligence, I believe it is overwhelmingly likely to be post-biological in nature."

"Biological Intelligence is a Fleeting Phase in the Evolution of the Universe" (Holiday Weekend Feature)

In that scenario it would care, it would want to coax the target biologicals to its ends, but not outright contaminate the process.
 
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A more illuminating approach would be to conceive of the aliens, not as our distant descendants, but as our future intellectual progeny. This suggests that they won’t be biological at all. E.T. won’t be protoplasm.


The argument derives its power not from any detailed analysis but simply on the basis of time scales drawn from our own experience. Consider how quickly we might transition from a technical society to one where the most advanced intelligence is designed, rather than born.

They're Not Meat | HuffPost

In the current search for advanced extraterrestrial life SETI experts say the odds favor detecting alien AI rather than biological life because the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence would be brief.

“If we build a machine with the intellectual capability of one human, then within 5 years, its successor is more intelligent than all humanity combined,” says Seth Shostak, SETI chief astronomer. “Once any society invents the technology that could put them in touch with the cosmos, they are at most only a few hundred years away from changing their own paradigm of sentience to artificial intelligence,” he says.

ET machines would be infinitely more intelligent and durable than the biological intelligence that created them. Intelligent machines would be immortal, and would not need to exist in the carbon-friendly “Goldilocks Zones” current SETI searches focus on. An AI could self-direct its own evolution, each "upgrade" would be created with the sum total of its predecessor’s knowledge preloaded.

"I think we could spend at least a few percent of our time... looking in the directions that are maybe not the most attractive in terms of biological intelligence but maybe where sentient machines are hanging out." Shostak thinks SETI ought to consider expanding its search to the energy- and matter-rich neighborhoods of hot stars, black holes and neutron stars.
 
Once again, all this speaks to the issue of disclosure, and here we are debating why the aliens would do this or that, as if some reasonable answer would justify belief in them, when the situation is that alien visitation is real and we ( the ones who know ) don't need the PTB to tell us that. So this sort of argument gets us nowhere. What's more of a challenge is in figuring out what to do next. However it seems to me that there really isn't anything we can do. So what if we get a great series of videos that captures images of some sort of seemingly alien craft. Woo hoo, we can throw it in the face of the skeptics and have our 15 or 20 minutes of fame. Then what? We need people who are looking beyond disclosure in a way that doesn't depend on it happening. Ideas?
 
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That is both the nature and the great challenge of the ET debate.

We as Biological planet bound entities, must by necessity and circumstance view the question via the limited framework of our direct experience.

The reality is almost certainly by necessity and circumstances completely "alien" to that experience.
 
alien visitation is real and we ( the ones who know ) don't need the PTB to tell us that. So this sort of argument gets us nowhere.

To the first you know i agree, to the second im not so sure.

For example lets say they are as many are now suggesting post biological in nature.

Many of our great minds are already trash talking AI. Hawking, musk.......

We might be ready as a biological species to meet another biological species.

But what if they are synthetic intelligence ?

Might we not need to come to terms with that concept ourselves, before we meet one created somewhere else.

A kid with a pathological fear of dogs can often be cured by simply getting him/her a puppy. Letting them experience for themselves the experience of interacting with a canine entity.

It may be that a human version of SI is the interface we require to talk to an ET SI
 
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We as Biological planet bound entities, must by necessity and circumstance view the question via the limited framework of our direct experience.

The reality is almost certainly by necessity and circumstances completely "alien" to that experience.


The argument derives its power not from any detailed analysis but simply on the basis of time scales drawn from our own experience. Consider how quickly we might transition from a technical society to one where the most advanced intelligence is designed, rather than born.
 
Not sure how ?

By thinking "outside the box" of our current experience.

But.... the gap is closing of that i am sure.

Our experience and the reality are slowly coming together.

And if i am correct its not by accident or natural progression. But by orchestrated design.
 
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There is likely extrastellar, extraterrestrial life. It's not as likely, to some, that it's ever been to Earth.
That’s only because of ideological inertia, imo. Most people haven’t caught up with the scientific data.

We’ve only very recently learned in the past few years that warm Earth-like worlds orbit roughly 22% of all of the stars in the observable universe. At the very minimum, that means that there are over 20 billion planetary candidates well-situated to undergo similar planetary and biological processes to our own, here in the Milky Way alone. If only one in a million such planets follow an evolutionary pattern similar to our own, then there are over 20,000 intelligent technological species in our galaxy right now. But even more recent observations indicate that the number of candidate Earth-like worlds is likely more than twice that number.

Vocal testimony, in science, just isn't worth a whole lot, regardless of the standing of the speaker -- that's an appeal to authority fallacy.
Vocal testimony might not mean much to science (although I would argue that’s been the starting point for a slew of successful scientific investigations throughout history), but then again, the science community has chosen not to investigate the sighting phenomenon. There is no “science of ufology” collecting scientific data and publishing peer-reviewed papers in the Journal of Ufology. So verbal testimony and incidental radar confirmation cases and trace evidence cases that are very rarely studied in any genuine scientific manner, are all we have to work with.

And I’m not appealing to authority. I’m simply observing that while many liars and fools do in fact exist, dismissing *all ufo witnesses* as liars and fools, is BS. The depth of cynicism required to dismiss every last witness who describes a compelling sighting incident, and especially dismissing multiple independent eyewitnesses describing the same observations in the same way from a different location, strikes me as a fairly severe psychological disorder. I’m grateful that I don’t think so little of so many upstanding and accomplished fellow citizens, and frankly I pity and distrust anyone who does.

Anyway, looking at the credibility of each witness is a rational thing to do, which is why it matters in a court of law, for example. Assessing if Mrs. Smith is regarded by her friends and neighbors and her employer of 30 years, as an honest and trustworthy person with a clear head and a good reputation, is not an appeal to authority; it’s simply common sense. We have less faith in the testimony of convicted frauds and pathological liars for good reason.

Well, now I'm a little confused.

They wouldn't leave technology laying around, because they wouldn't want us to get our hands on it (even though it's comical to think we'd know anymore what to do with, let alone how to rebuild, technology from thousands of years in our future than a fisherman from the first years of fertile crescent would know what to do with, or how to rebuild, an aircraft carrier), but they'll show us concepts we've already made up for science fiction movies in hopes of speeding the time in which we'll get our hands on it.

That seems like two mutually exclusive modes of thinking.

I'm teasing a little, but I do think those two ideas are mutually exclusive notions. Explain to me your view on it, if you'd like.
They’re not mutually exclusive notions, they’re two ends of the same spectrum. Granted, as Usual Suspect pointed out, speculating about the motives of alien beings is a fruitless debate, but I find it interesting to consider.

The most important advantage to proceed toward any objective in physics, is observing that it happens in reality. That simple data point eliminates the question of “if” something can happen, and transforms it into the question of “how” something can happen. And the history of science illustrates that everything that we observe happening, becomes absorbed by our growing scientific knowledge and technological capabilities, and is ultimately harnessed for our objectives. How long did it take, for example, to progress from the question of how nuclear fusion occurs, to then technological exploit the process to make the hydrogen bomb – just a few years.

And right now we already have a specific equation written in the mathematics of general relativity, and which is consistent with the theory’s precepts, for a gravitational field propulsion principle that, in theory anyway, can propel a craft to superluminal speeds by distorting spacetime ahead of and behind the craft. It’s only a first step, but so far that kind of first step has always led to real, tangible, physical technology.

And whereas a careful scientific study of an advanced alien technology would radically accelerate the physical and material sciences by giving us a tangible sample to study that produces quantifiable experimental results, and which would thereby yield a turbulent growth curve for human technological advancement (that we’re probably not prepared to experience since our first application of new physics is still usually to wage war with it), simply demonstrating that a gravitational field propulsion system is achievable is just like any other observation that we make of nature. Observing a ufo in flight isn’t entirely dissimilar to observing the flight of a rare kind of elusive bird - the only significant difference in this scenario is that, in this case, we're observing the flight of a bird that was created by intelligent beings more technologically advanced than ourselves. We can strive to understand it and one day replicate the effect at our own natural pace, or we can choose to not pursue it.

I choose to pursue it. Because to me, that data point is a priceless gift, and if we achieve rapid interstellar spaceflight a little bit sooner because we’ve seen that it can be achieved technologically, then that’s something to be grateful for, because that’s going to transform the experience and the long-term survival outlook of human life.
 
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I can think of no reasonable scenario for aliens to come here for no reason. I supposed we could suggest that they actually had no reason and wound up here by accident. But even in that unlikely scenario, they'd still have reasons to monitor the goings on in the environment, and that would include us.

I was saying they wouldn't care if we've seen them or if we know about them, being that they're apparently exceptionally terrible at hiding, and our seeing and knowing has absolutely no apparent bearing on anything.

If there were aliens here, they'd probably be observing. We're not super careful not to be seen when we study ants for similar reasons.
 
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