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CIA releases its own X-Files
Ewen writes "The Daily Telegraph in England reports that the CIA has 'released a secret history of its investigations into UFO sightings, revealing that there was more truth in the popular television series The X-Files than is often believed.' Read the full story at The Telegraph. " Truth, that is, that agents screw up and some believe and some don't. The CIA ultimately concludes that the probability of contact with extra-terrestrial life is slim. But, then again, they would, wouldn't they? /impish grin/
They may be out there.
As a youngster growing up in the city of NY, I was an astronomy enthusiast, skyglow and all. One night I was out with my 60mm refractor, and my friend.
(We were about 10. I had not experimented with marijuana yet, so that's not it.)
I was looking at Jupiter, and he goes....
Larry, put the telescope on that!!!
It was red, kind of saucer shaped, and its flight behavior was not of the earthly type.
It was moving to quickly to get the scope on it.
And it was only a few seconds before it zipped away.
They are out there.
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
Do not click the link in this story. If you do the CIA will know about it, come round and visit you in your sleep and suck your brains out through your bottom. Off to buy 'Catcher in the Rye' now.
Why don't they just give us lay people a chance to fly the cool ships? They are just selfish and want all the fun...
I want a turn to
It is interesting to note that UFO sightings increased significantly when the Close Encounter flicks were out. To most people, UFO sightings are a fashionable "me too" thing. Usually a good litmus test is to see if the "sighter" believes in numerous conspiracy theories.
:-)
If life is out there, it's either much more primitive than us, or much more advanced. SETI hasn't turned up didley, so either life out there (within our reach) hasn't discovered radio waves, or they've moved on to another medium that we haven't discovered yet.
Everything in this world is explainable, you just don't have all the information. (Except for that new Coke flavor thing they created awhile back...why did they do that ?
Tired of being "punished" by the Slashdot $rtbl since 2002. I'm now over at http://soylentnews.org/ .
Maybe the UFO's are avoiding me since I live outside Dayton. That sucks, because I'm a bit skeptical but would definitely believe if there were hard evidence in the sky above me.
Nice coincidence that this story surfaces the week Fox re-runs the "Truth is Finally Here" episodes of the X-Files.
It does worry me that the CIA is now admitting thay were covering this up all along. It makes me wonder what else they are currently covering up-- it boggles the mind. I'm usually an optimist, thinking our gov. is being fairly honest with us. Now I'm less sure.
not to be weird or anything (*but*) couldn't the cia have released this simply in an attempt to cover up the cover up? i'd rather they just tell me that ufo's really are aliens in flying saucers, that way we all know there's no such thing, and we can get onto more important things, like microsoft. *rolls eyes* -adam javanet.com/~user
I mean, think about it. The CIA releases some bogus information toning down their contact with alien visitors.
"Yeah, we thought we had aliens, too. But it turned out to be, well, all explainable by science. And those guys who seemed to be covering things up? They were just bumbling and confusing their words. Sorry. That anal probe must've been from someone else..."
When really, you know that they're just covering up for the mastermind alien overlord, and they're going to make us breeding grounds for aliens, and they're all gonna look like Julia Roberts.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!
Paul
Find a library that has the New York
Times on microfilm. Read the front pages
from June 1947 to August 1947. Get a feel
for the coverage of the UFO "flap" that
lead to the "Roswell Story".
Oh, after July 9th you have to look past the
front page to find the stories. Sorry.
Maybe Windows is an alien attempt to redirect Terran Computer technology from useful things into endless squabbles over which program is more ethically pleasing. *sigh* If they did exist, why in the heck would they _want_ to visit here?
If we can make a fighter jet that is virtually invisible to the naked eye (F-22) and on radar, then I think aliens would have the ingenuity to not let you see them. Plus, if they wanted to be seen and known about, they could just as easily drop onto the lawn of the White House and open their doors and make some "meep-meep" noises. Besides, judging by the amount of radio emmissions we have from TV/Radio/etc. I think if there were another civilization out there with the same amount (or superior) intelligence that they'd be glowing in the radio spectrum. Of course there is always the possibility that the light hasn't reached us, or already reached us, but I doubt it.
If life does exist on other planets, I hope (for their sake) that we never meet them.
--CS Lewis (roughly quoted ;) reflecting on Europe's encounters with indigenous peoples.
2^5
I can think of a couple of reasons.
Elle Macpherson.
Terri Hatcher.
Daisy Fuentes.
Claudia Schiffer.
(Favored in no particular order, I just went with who I thought of first.)
The above post is an editorial, the poster cannot and will not be held responsible for all or in part for it's contents
As you say, "To most people" UFO sightings are a fashionable thing. That doesn't say anything about the people for whom it is not.
;-)
As for life "our there" being either more primative or more advanced than us, why not assume both? As for them using radio waves, maybe they've already learned that radio waves make you something of a beacon and, for reasons we can't yet verify, that may be a bad idea. In any event, they are kinda hard to pick up more than 10 miles out of town where I live.
Everything in the world is expainable in theory. That doesn't preclude other theories nor does it guarantee which, if any, are correct. Or, to put it more personally, just because I can explain away anything -- except new coke -- with a theory that is possible doesn't make me right.
In any event we are out there and we haven't contacted any otherworldly beings yet either. I wonder if they have concluded that we don't exist because of that.
Geeky modern art T-shirts
Why would highly intelligent aliens, travel all these millions of light years just to stick a tube up some old ladies backside???? Aliens are sooooo stupid. Hey...whatever happened to ALF..he rocked.
Never hitch a ride from an alien with fuzzy dice hanging from it's rear view mirror and an anal probe rack in the back window. Just trust me on this one....
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Whether or not UFO's (from another planet) exist, who in their right minds would expect the CIA to tell us if they did! This isn't paranoia, but just basic common sense. The government needs to maintain the appearance of being in control, which would hardly be helped if they admitted (if it were true) that we were being visited by another life form who had technology way beyond anything we do.
If the CIA is convinced there are NOT any UFO's, then perhaps they would write an article like this as a PR exercise, or for some other reason, but if they DID have any proof there are UFO's, they could be expected to write the exact same type of article....
Conclusion: It's meaningless.
If we had the technology to visit other worlds, and we discovered a more primitive life form, what would we do?
Would we abduct some of them as specimins to examine? I'm sure that we would. And we would do what we could to supress their memories of the encounters, because we wouldn't want to disrupt their natural course of evolution too much.
It's exactly what the alledged aliens here are accused of doing.
Now I can't say for sure if it's really happening, I've never encountered anything that made me say "That has to be a UFO". But I think it is certainly possible.
Sure there is a lot of BS out there, but sometimes a given UFO event is much more plausable than the explaination given by skeptics. Example:
"The silver ball flying around the trees was simply the planet Saturn being refracted through ice crystals in the atmosphere. The light that came from the silver ball was caused by ignited swamp gases that drifted from the nearby (10 mile away) swamp. The aliens were a form of mass hallucination, and the 20 foot, perfectly round charred grass were the craft was alleged to have landed was caused by the heat of the swamp gases, and the perfect circle is just a coincidence, case closed!"
While that's not an actual debunker statement, it is similar, and as far fetched as some I've seen. It's easier to believe in UFOs than in that!
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
If the the UFOs that landed, and the inhabitants, worked in a way of non-hierachy, if the CIA would launch warfare against them (in the name of democracy or claim they were making and selling drugs) and set up a fascist government ruling the aliens...then have a US corporation use them for slave labor. This is the greatest thing! They only need to sleep 5 hours a week! Get back to work Gandor!
I'm sure a more advanced would find radio signals a primitive technology.
I don't have a deep understanding of Quantam Mechanics/Physics, but from what I do understand, you can have two particles, separated by distance that "mirror each other" in other words if one starts to spin, the other does as well.
If my understanding is correct, then it seems that you could build transmitters based on this, and these transmitters would not leave tell-tail signals.
I know some Quantum Physicist is going to flame me for my post, but my point is, we have not yet discovered everything. Just because we use radio waves for communication doesn't mean an advanced civilization would.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
I remember reading somewhere last year, that the CIA wanted the appearance of a coverup, including rumors about their secret bases out west as good propaganda against Russia in the cold war. They wanted the Russians to believe we actually had some alien high tech weapons at our disposal. They went as far as planting stories to generate news. Whether the Russians believed it or not, I don't know.
2 years ago I saw a funny fake press release concerning the Mars Probe Pathfinder in which the Martian Airforce spokes-thing denied rumors of a giant ball landing on mars, which then deflated and released a robot, putting it down to delusional concpracy theorists and swamp gas.
Even Aricebo could only just detect the most powerful military RADAR ever built on Earth at a distance of a few tens of lightyears. Not much of a range.
SETI is essentially pointless, as a means to detect alien civilisations, until the square kilometer array is completed and online. Only then will we be capable of detecting moderate-strength signals over any kind of distance. To argue any significance to SETI's not having turned up anything is like arguing that Neptune doesn't really exist because you can't see it with the naked eye.
If you don't have the technology, of course you are going to see nothing!!!
As for aliens & UFOs, I will give you the same set of questions I gave in an unsolved mysteries class I ran:
Is it possible to build a craft that can travel through space?
If not, is it possible for aliens to travel to Earth by any other means?
If aliens don't need to travel through space to get here, would they need to fly craft at all?
If they do need craft, and such craft can be built, do the descriptions of UFOs meet the constraints that would exist for such a craft?
Is there anything such a manned expedition could achieve that could not be done remotely, by radio telescopes?
How would they relay any information back, in any useful or usable time-frame?
I don't know if UFOs exist, but I do believe that any alien civilisation capable of building them would have asked itself similar questions.
If they can't get to where they want, OR can't get any useful data back, OR they can get the data by staying at home, why would they bother going? On the other hand, if it's practical to go, useful data can be collected by that means alone, and the data can be sent back before those funding the expedition die of old age, it would seem an eminently sensible approach.
We can't answer, definitely, those questions, but we can give some fairly reasonable guesses, and that can tell us a lot about how likely UFOs are to be real, or at least how advanced the technology would need to be, compared to our own, for it to be possible.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Do you really believe that there is any agency in the federal government capable of competently carrying out any kind of conspiracy. Every single bureau i've ever seen has been filled with morons that sit at their computer and play solitaire all day long.
As well, who are we to define life as only what we see from ourselves. Biologists define life as a cellular, self-replicating entity (more or less), but couldn't life be anything created with an iterative process? Cellular life uses an incredible iterative process, as molecules iterate over DNA and create proteins. But is that the only iterative process that can create life?
"There is nothing more intimidating than an idiotic smile worn by a manifest non-idiot." --unknown
You should never fall into the "I can't explain it so it must be a UFO" trap. My point was not to try to prove the existance of Alien craft, but rather to say that sometimes the debunkers and skeptics ask you to believe is more far-fetched than what they are trying to debunk.
Of all the comments I've ever posted, this is definately one of them
Of course radio waves travel at the speed of sound. Television waves travel at the speed of light though, right?
We should have new units of speed.
1 AmosnAndy = ~1*10^6 m/h
1 ILoveLucy = ~3*10^8 m/s
That's just the beaureaus you've seen. There have been more. THere was project Blue Book in the 50s. (I think i got that name right) That was shut down because they had no findings to report to congress. However many conspiracy theorists believe that after blue book was shut down a more elite and secret organization called Majestic 12 was formed to investigate these phenomena.
My take on all this though is that the CIA, or perhaps another such organization, is the biggest conspiracy theorist of all, leaking cover stories to feed the paranoia of the masses, and distract people from the truth, whatever that may be. I think the apparent ineptitude is intentional to make it look like they're hiding something. They are, but nobody knows what.
I have no theories as to what is really being covered up, and i doubt i ever will. I believe in aliens, but i doubt they go around mutilating cattle and abducting people. i just don't believe the lies of the governement.
(Jesus, i seem like a crackpot now that it's written down in front of me...)
#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}
F(#define F(x) int main(){printf(#x,10,#x);}%cF(%s))
Everything in this world is explainable, you just don't have all the information. (Except for that new Coke flavor thing they created awhile back...why did they do that ? :-)
Well... The best theory I heard was this. The expensive part of soda is the syrup, not the sugared, carbonated water. If you've had older sodas, you'll notice that there is a much higher syrup to water ratio. Coke and Pepsi have been slowly decreasing the syrup to water ratio over decades to lower costs. New Coke was an attempt to speed up the process. They spent a lot of money on a marketting campagne to convince people that they liked a lower syrup to water ratio. But when people compared Old Coke with New Coke, it was clear that more syrup just tasted better.
A lot like Micros~1 spending lots of money convincing people that they like Windows 2000 a lot more than whatever else they had, but when you've tried Linux, you know what a real operating system runs like.
-Ted
Along with two other friends we were driving in a van back from a flea market at around 5pm in the evening -- which in September is still broad daylight. This was right after I had moved to Cincinnati, so I was new to the area.
We stopped at a gas station whereby one went in to buy gas and get a drink while the other went to the bathroom. I stepped out to smoke a butt (I was a smoker then), and walked away from the van to look around. The gas station was on the right side of the road, while on the other side just after the road a small grass covered valley dropped down and stretched out to tree covered hills several miles away.
Then I noticed what looked like a silver balloon just hovering maybe a thousand feet over the treetops, its size was about a third of my thumbnail, arms outstretched. At the time I thought it was a balloon, but didn't have anything else to look at while waiting so I paid attention to it. Then it began to slip down, sort of like a pendulum with each swing loosing altitude. I thought that was pretty weird, so while continuing to pay attention I noticed it stop moving outright, and then sort of gyrate like a top spinning in place. There it hovered for a short time, maybe 20 to 30 seconds.
At this point I was thinking that this was the weirdest balloon I'd ever seen, and was trying to figure out what kind of wind pattern might cause this behavior when the damn thing just instantly shot up and over, turned on a dime, and screamed across the sky from my left to my right side as my head panned to follow. Within less than a second it had moved a good 90 degrees of arc across the sky and went behind some nearby trees. And it didn't make a damn sound.
There are a couple of things to note:
My dad was a private pilot and he used to own an single engine airplane. I took flying lessons as a kid, landed an airplane, and all that -- almost lived in and out of airports as a kid (once we flew from southern California to Tampa Beach Florida in my dad's Cessna when I was seven). Been in helicopter, seen idiots make dangerous mistakes in ultralights and hangliders... there is absolutely no way what I saw could have been anything like a balloon, helicopter, or other prosaic craft. I'm certain of that.
But I still don't know what to make of this. I never saw the occupants, no one else witnessed the event, and I have absolutely no proof. I have trouble with the "alien craft" stuff, but I definitely believe, based on what I saw, that some silver disk shaped craft do exist, and display a performance envelope way beyond any kind of common aerodynamic craft. Beyond that, I simply don't know.
When I was about 11-12 I went night fishoing on a 20-30 acre lake near my house. It was kindof down between 2 hills with a road running on one side of it. I was fishing near the road (which had VERY little traffic). You could see headlights coming through the trees on the other side of the lake when a car was coming towards you and you could see lights ON the trees on the other side as cars came down the hill behind you. cars coming from behind thelight woud start at the top of the trees and move down as the cars came down the hill. The speed limit was 25MPh so you could see them coming for about 15-30 secs. I saw light ligiting up the tips of the trees demly in the distance and my mind said another car. After about 10 secs without the light moving a figured someone near the top of the hil was parked or a house had their flood lights on. Then the light started moving and brightening. Slowly at first and taking on a greenish hue. Then it sped way up and got REALLY bright.. bright enough to cast light where I was in the pitch dark middle of the night in a rural area during a new moon (I normally went catfishing during a new moon or overcast night had better luck). A BRIGHT round object flew over head extremely fast. Too fast to tell exact altitude or shape but it couldn't have been MORE that 200-400 ft if not lower. it dissapeared behind the tree line and then I heard a loud bang and saw a bright flash through the trees. This all hapened in about the space of 60-120 secs. Scared the living bejesus outta me. Another wierd thing was that all night for about 2 hours I had been catching TONS of catfish they all stopped biting. Right then. Not even a nibble. Wierd Huh?
www.mp3.com/Undocumented
I see the CIA admits to the unconstitutional act of investigating within the borders of the United States.
Can't you just summarize it for us?
You were smoking at a gas station???
"radio waves travel at the speed of sound not light"
AAAAAARRRRGGGGHH! Please tell me you're joking...please!!! Nobody's really that stupid, are they?! ACK! Get away from me! You must be sick or somethng!
First of all, the speed of sound varies. Through a vaccum it's 0. You do know that radio waves are part of the electromagnetic spectrum, right?!
By the way, I was under the impression that the nearest discovered planet was about 10 light years away. The nearest star is about 4 and for all we know could have a planet. We're not very good at seeing planets yet.
I am not an idiot. Please use my name to email me.
"That's right, I'm quoting myself."
-Upsilon
OK, some I'm not a physicist, so if there are some here that can prove me wrong, fine, but in the meantime, there are certain things in UFO sighting stories that make me wonder about the whole thing.
* Many stories talk about how these things can go from 0 to really, really fast (and vice versa) in a heartbeat. Also hear a lot about 90 degree turns on a dime. With all those rapid/instantaneous changes in direction/speed, wouldn't our friends become green goo inside of their spaceships?
* No sonic boom?
* As someone else mentioned, no stealth technology (other than silence)?
Am I also the only one to notice that many of these sightings seem to be close to Air Force bases? Coincidence?
I'm personally of the inclination that most (if not all) of these are DOD experiments.
For example. What could shine in the sky, hover, move back & forth at incredible speeds, and stop and turn on a dime all silently & without creating a sonic boom?
Lasers/holograms anyone?
Trust no one, Mr. Mulder.....
http://www.fbi.gov/foipa/ufo.htm
-Derek
Not sure where I saw this, but there was a video being circulated of a 'genuine' alien autopsy. A couple of film guys were watching it and giving a running commentary (like MST3K, but less funny), saying things like, "you can't fake flesh like THAT!" and "Wow, that's great blood, if it's fake." It was a black and white film of two guys taking apart what appeared to be a 5' tall alien, with the big head and huge black eyes, the whole bit. Whether the film guys were paid to say the film was real, sigh, you can beat it to death...
So - is the govt., indeed, the govt.'s of the world, in some sort of agreement with aliens, as in - you farm, cover your tracks, and we get some technology? Or is it all a hoax by some agency who's farming people, doing DNA experiments, and getting some joy out of the occasional anal probe?
Who can say...the universe is a BIG place...
If anybody else remembers seeing that film...what did YOU think?
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
Of course, the show The X-Files is just a CIA plot to warm the public in a slow and gradual manner to the idea of a CIA/FBI/gov't plot to hide the existence of UFO's so that when the CIA, et al, realease their documents and evidence about the existence of UFO's, everyone will say, "See!? I *knew* it!"
It's more a PR campaign than an entertaining TV show.
I have no doubt that there are UFO's out there, but only in the textbook-sense of the word UNIDENTIFIED flying objects.
Seeing something that does not fit in your present frame of reference is indeed alarming, (it's supposed to be, for survival's sake) but doesn't imply anything further than the simple fact that the viewer cannot identify what he or she (or they) have seen.
I don't think UFO's are of extraterrestrial origin. Here's why:
I think that if and when beings of extraterrestrial origin arrive in our solar system, we'll know about it in NO UNCERTAIN TERMS. No hiding, no cat and mouse, no conspiracies.
Anyone or anything with the power to arrive here from another system/galaxy will certainly have the power/means to take what they wish, when they wish, without having to resort to politics with political 'power figures' like the CIA or the KGB.
We'll be as amazed and curious about the ALIENS as the Indians and Aztecs were with Columbus and The Spaniards, and then history will repeat itself as it always has, just with a much larger playing field than any of us imagined.
We like to think that anyone/thing smarter than us will also be nicer and more benevolent.
ALL creatures first aim is to further their own existence at ANY cost. I don't think this changes with time and/or technological or spiritual advancement.
**>>BELCH
New Coke was intoduced to cut cost. The deal:
Coca-Cola used to be made with sweet, yummy sugar. Very expensive compared to the competition, but well, that's why Coke was it.
The problem: how do we switch to High Fructose Corn Syrup, and get away with it?
The Solution: Two years of New Coke, Max Headroom, and Catching the wave. Well, Max was ok, but new Coke sucked decidely, and *intentionally*. When the "swirchback" took place, the difference wasn't as obvious.
You *can* actually still get real Coke, btw. Look for it around Passover. It has a Kosher mark and yellow caps/marking.
Corn Syrup isn't Kosher for Passover...so they make it with sugar. But you knew that already, didn't ya'?
So next Spring, stock up.
-K
One day, you'll learn to watch what you post...
Yeah, but none of them have six eyes or hard green skin with little nubs all over. Not to mention the fact that they look like accident victims that only have two legs left. I don't see how any alien could possibly find them attractive.
It's not enough to bash in heads, you've got to bash in minds. - Captain Hammer
as stated above...sorry i just got done watching 2 episodes and had to tell everyone something they knew.
Of course it is. The CIA has been taken over by aliens.
~REZ~ #43301. Who'd fake being me anyway?
Considering that "strange objects in the sky" have been around all through recorded history, calling them UFOs is just, IMHO, bad chronoanthromorphism. (i.e. a cultural projection from our time based on human-centered lack of understanding). Now that physicists are beginning to understand that we live in a 10-dimensional (not 4-D) continuum AND that we are not separate from what we perceive, a better explanation is that these -- things -- are cross-sectional intrusions into our culturally determined perceptual space. They may in fact not actually be made of matter (as we understand it) at all. Go back and read "Flatland". Think of *us* as the Flatlanders. A bit of evidence to convince you is that some of these intrusions seem to pass through a rainbow of colors, which is consistent with a energy spectrum shift. Perhaps the Philadelphia experiments during WWII (where bizarre space-time relativistic deformities were observed utilizing high-energy magnetic fields, leading, unfortunately, to psychoses in the volunteers) cut a little too close to the "truth". I do not think that we will ever find a technologically-based solution to the UFO problem -- because the "technology" being used is partly based on non-physical consciousness (the "inner" 6 dimensions), which will never be able to be produced by machines of any kind. I think that Carl Jung's speculations (near the end of his life) that UFOs are mass consciousness projections may be more accurate than a purely technologically-based solution.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
Your description brings to mind ball lightning. Who knows if that's at all accurate, but it would exlplain a moving bright light near to ground level, the bang, and the catfish vanishing. Catfish are electrically sensitive aren't they? I think I recall that they detect prey, like sharks and duck-billed Platypuses, by detecting the minute electric fields generated by their nervous systems. Then again, it could have just been the light.
You could, for example, move a ship by letting it fall towards a small charged black hole that you accelerated with electromagnetic force. (Yes, this is very unrealistic due to the mass necessary in the black hole to produce large gravitational accelerations.)
Since gravity works on all parts of the spaceship and its occupants equally no acceleration would be felt in the ship, any more than in a falling elevator. (Except from the hole's tidal forces.)
You could survive as much acceleration as the tidal forces would allow this way, probably some hundreds of g's at least.
Jim
At least somebody tries to found out if there is something strange going on: http://indy.hiof.no/~hessdalen/1999/index.html Hessdalen is an area in Norway where strange lights have been seen on the sky for many years, and the local college have put up an automatic field station to monitor it.
I don't think it is aliens at all. Any alien civilization that is advanced enough to travel billions of light years to earth would be smart enough to not be seen. I'm quite sure that any UFO sightings not caused by natural phenomena are experimental military aircraft.
For goodness sakes, some of today's most advanced aircraft were designed 15, 20, even 30 years ago. The F-22 is advanced? Ha! The F-22 is probably a simple little toy compared to what the USAF is flying out in the desert or over the pacific ocean as I type this. Think about it...the SR-71 was built 30 years ago and is still one of the fastest (Mach 3), highest flying birds out there. The F-117 stealth fighter was built 15 or 20 years ago and the only reason we know about it today was because they couldn't keep it a secret any more during Desert Storm.
Another thing to think about is the types of UFO sightings that are occuring. They've slowly shifted from small, round flying saucers in the 50s up to fast, stealthy looking triangular craft today. The government has slowly shifted aircraft design from flying saucers in the 50s to ultra quiet (or maybe noise canceling?), stealth jets today. Hmmm...
The government no doubt is decades above private development companies. Think of all that we have today...thrust vectoring engines that allow for nearly unlimited manueverability, composite materials that allow for nearly unlimited strength, stealth technology beyond belief, noise canceling technology that would reduce jet noise to a dull whoosh...now multiply all that by 10 and you might be able to imagine what the government is playing with today. They could be messing with true X-Files type theories that we can barely dream of for all I know...anti-gravity propulsion, black holes, molecular transports, etc.
Sure, greater technical advancement and intelligence would not neccessarily make the aliens nice. On the other hand, what would a species that advanced possibly want that we have? I can't think of any minerals that wouldn't be easier for them to mine from comets, asteroids, or just planets with lower escape velocities. As far as food goes, they could just grow that in space as well.
About the only things I can really think of that aliens might want from Earth are slave labour and real estate. Understand that when I say slave labour, I'm not suggesting that the aliens would actually need living workers. It would be more a matter of sentimentality. It would basically be about power. If the aliens were anything like human beings, then some of them would enjoy having servants who they can think of as lesser than them. Not very nice, but your whole point was that these aren't very nice aliens. Or, maybe these aliens have read "The Most Dangerous Game" one time too many and want intelligent creatures for bloodsports, hmmmm?
The reasons the aliens would want real estate are fairly obvious. They would probably have plenty of space to house themselves what with space stations, and terraformed planets or just enclosed cities on other planets. Not to mention the fact that if life is common in the universe, there are probably plenty of planets like earth but with no intelligent species. But, we're assuming that these are fairly decadent evil aliens so individual aliens would probably want as much personal space as they can get. Maybe they'd even want their own little fiefdoms, which neatly merges slave and real estate needs into a pretty little package.
I personally don't think most advanced species will be quite that bad. On the other hand, maybe they would consider themselves so far beyond us that they would act in the same way. They might want to restrict our activities and our technology in the interests of conservation. So, just replace slave with pet and we have pretty much the same situation as above.
Well, in any case, I hope not.
This is nothing new. Our government has been lying to us since at least the 1940s. Sometimes the lies were necessary like in the case of the Manhattan Project, in other cases it was to cover people's asses' like the case of the JFK assassination.
Nutty or not, I have seen UFOs. I was a kid and that even in many ways shaped my world view. I knew what I saw, yet almost every adult I knew told me that they did not exist. That I did not see what I know I saw.
Then I found out about Project Blue Book, the military kept records on UFO sigitings. And not even the military could explain all of the Blue Book sighings.
Throughout human history we have seen these things. In Japan there are ancient records of objects that looked like "flying earthenware vessels". For you christians and jews out there look up the story of Elija. He was taken to heaven on a firey disc.
Elija never died. He earned a "Get out of death free" card and was directly able to bypass death. So says the mythology, at least.
I do not know if UFOs are EBEs, remnants of time travel experiments, or natural phenomena that we don't have the science to explain yet but they are very real. Not every witness is mistaken, lying, stupid or insane. There are millions of us going back thousands of years.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
2% of the population claims to have experiences that could be alien-abduction related. Think about it: sure, we'd abduct a few and perform tests, but 2% of the population? Thus, it's obvious that all or nearly all are crackpots, morons, and attention-seekers. Hell, RMS probably claims to have been abducted. I'm surprised Bill Clinton hasn't.
http://www.odci.gov/csi/studies/97unclas/ufo.html
In a world that is Free and Open, who needs Windows and Gates?