A group called the Extraterrestrial Phenomena Political Action Committee is urging President-elect Barack Obama to “end the six-decade truth embargo” on UFOs. Specifically, the group wants Obama to “demand a full briefing” from the military and intelligence agencies on what they know about extraterrestrial phenomena. They want him to press for congressional hearings. They want him to “formally acknowledge the extraterrestrial presence.” And make available for development the technologies that aliens have brought to Earth.
They want him to open thousands of pages of documents, and who knows, maybe even divulge the plot of “Battlestar Galactica’s” final season before it airs this winter.
We just have one thing to say to the incoming president: Don’t do it!
Please don’t open all those glorious government files full of UFO reports and alleged alien abductions and other mysterious lights twinkling just above the horizon and moving away at speeds that could not possibly be an airplane — or a weather balloon!
Sure, we’d like to know if and when the aliens arrived here. We’d like to know why — with technology (and weapons?) so clearly advanced beyond anything we have — they are skulking around.
But we urge the president to resist the UFOlogists’ demands because … well, because what if there’s no smoking ray gun in those files? What if all those UFO conspiracy theorists are wrong? What if the whole alien invasion plot is as flimsy as a Klingon’s anger control?
Life would be so much bleaker without the possibility that aliens are here on Earth, or at least in the general cosmic vicinity. That tantalizing hope has fueled so many magnificent books, television shows, movies — and imaginations.
Many of our top scientists today are sci-fi geeks. From what we’ve read, the first spark of their future career paths came when they encountered classics like “Close Encounters of the Third Kind,” “Star Wars” or “Star Trek.” Or when they read masters of science fiction such as Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury or Arthur C. Clarke.
Obama already has a long enough to-do list. We doubt that he has time to plow through all the files on Area 51. Let’s keep it that way.
The U.S. government hasn’t managed to keep many important secrets. Let’s hope one of them continues to be the truth about aliens on Earth.
