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?