Can the government really keep a secret?

Some think that if the government was covering up the existence of flying saucers or crashed alien spacecraft, that it would end up on the front page of the New York Times. The idea being that Uncle Sam just can't keep a secret. And UFOs and aliens are just too big a story to keep secret. Oh. Really? Let's see.

What intel did we collect this year through covert operations? How about the formula the IRS uses to trigger an audit? The New York Times can't answer those questions. So how can anyone definitively say the government isn’t hiding alien bodies and UFO debris?

Now I'll be the first to admit, I don't know if Roswell was a cover up. I don't know if the US government has crashed UFOs or the bodies of deceased aliens in its possession either. But I do know that the government is perfectly capable of keeping secrets when it serves their purposes to do so. And given the things governments choose to cover up, would it really be that surprising to learn our government was covering up the existence of aliens and UFOs too?

Does the government know any more than us?

I notice many have called upon the Obama administration to declassify what it knows about the UFO phenomenon. And why not? After all, President Obama did promise a transparent administration during the campaign.

But what happens if our government doesn’t know any more or much more than the rest of us? Albeit, there seems to be ample circumstantial evidence that crashes of UFOs have occurred, alien bodies recovered. But what if that is not true? A common government response to unexplainable UFO sightings goes something like "we investigated it and found the event poses no risk to national security." The statements always seem to stay away from any mention of whether the object came from our planet or not. It just says, essentially, "we don't know what it is either but don't worry, you're all safe." Not that our government ever shades the truth. Ok, you’re right, they shade the truth all the time. But it would make sense to say there is no need to worry. If you don't know what it is, why panic people? I could see a bureaucrat utilizing that kind of logic.

The fact is I don't know whether our government has alien corpses and crashed UFO parts in a secret warehouse somewhere. I've heard persuasive arguments that they do and that they do not. But it did occur to me that our government might be just as puzzled about what all these unexplainable UFO sightings mean as the rest of us

Astronauts and UFOs

Buzz Aldrin came forward a few years ago to say he witnessed a UFO during his Apollo 11 mission. Now, you can say he just saw space junk. The problem is that he knows all about space junk too and further, he's had 40 years to reevaluate his opinion on what he saw. Not only did his opinion not change, but he took it a step further and came out publicly, at risk to his own reputation, to say he witnessed a UFO.

Gordon Cooper, another retired astronaut, went on the record to say he had two encounters with UFOs. The first was as a pilot in the Air Force while flying over Europe in 1951. The incident has never been officially explained. He and his fellow pilots witnessed objects flying in formation faster and at altitudes higher than their planes were capable of reaching. Six years later, while overseeing testing at Edwards Air Force Base, a flying saucer landed and was reportedly filmed. After viewing the footage, Cooper sent it ahead to Washington and nothing else was ever heard of the incident. He also talks about airline pilot friends who witnessed UFOs at relatively close range.

To me, these are two expert witnesses who know the difference between a weather balloon and something else. Its accounts like Cooper's and Aldrin's that make it difficult for me to be skeptical on the subject of UFOs.