Yeah, well, they would say that...

"Bullshit."

-The White House

In response to petitions, a spokesman for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy has released a statement saying that the U.S. Government has never been contacted by aliens, never recovered any alien spaceships or technology and has never engaged in a massive conspiracy to hide evidence of extraterrestrial life from the public. Furthermore, while it's statistically possible that life exists on other planets, it's pretty damn unlikely that we'll ever encounter it given the vast distances between stars. Bummer.

The spokesman, Phil Larson, goes on to say that there's no Santa Claus, the universe is a cold god-less void and that we'll all die alone. Thanks Phil.

Interestingly, the report does mention that unicorns are real. The last one was shot and dissected by the
National Parks Service in 1974, in front of a panel of sobbing 9 year-old girls.

Yup, no resemblance there.

Right, sure, because if there's one thing governments love to do it's come clean because a bunch of people signed a petition. Conspiracies only work if you keep things secret. If you've ever watched The X-Files, you know that 80% of the government is dedicated to keeping aliens secret, do we really think they're going to just give up on decades of document redacting, trench coats and witness murder because we asked nicely?

You might as well try typing 'Area 51' into Google Earth and expect to come up with something that isn't just a big, pixelated blur or covered by a big-uh...

...oh...well, how 'bout that?

What else are they hiding, Mole People?
It's Mole People, isn't it?

Look, I'm not calling Larson a liar. It's entirely possible that this report is on the up and up and the U.S. Government is actually clueless about the vast alien empire whose unfathomable curiosity can only be sated by turning our cows inside out. Remember Independence Day? The movie, not the holiday. There's this part where the Secretary of Defense kept Bill Pullman out of the loop on the alien thing so that he has plausible deniability. Maybe that's what's going on. Maybe the military or some secret element within the government is sitting on the Rosewell ship or something and the White House just wasn't told.

On the other hand, the statement mentions projects like SETI and the Kepler array that are looking for aliens. If someone in the government is hiding aliens, they're letting us waste an awful lot of money and time looking for them in the most tedious ways possible. Listening to background radiation on the off chance that the alien equivalent of AM radio might somehow make it to Earth? Couldn't we just get crackin' on a warp drive?

"If you ask me, it's these Klingons who cross the Neutral Zone
and take jobs away from decent, hard working Bolians."

-Hars Adislo, 

Host of 'The Hars Adislo Show' 

The #1 talk radio show in the Bolian sector

Come on, just take a Sharpie to some
documents, for old time's sake.

Man, what if they really are telling the truth on this one? What if Rosewell was just a weather balloon and alien abductions are just a bad combination of Miller Light and menthols? It would come as a major disappointment for nerds like me who like to think that proof of life on other planets is just sitting in a warehouse somewhere. At least then there's the hope that it would be leaked to the public somehow or whistleblown by some disgruntled Air Force UFO test pilot. But what if this is it? What if there's no more secret files or blurry UFO sightings followed by emphatic yet unconvincing denials?


And I don't know, as much as I'm all for transparency, I find myself oddly comforted by the idea that there's a vast shadow government that's working to keep us from the terrifying truth. Without the men in black (in this case, not the movie) keeping tabs on Galactic Affairs, how can we possibly be prepared for the horrors that await us under alien-rule?

"Sure, the Aliens brought us hovercars, cures for all known diseases
and peace on Earth, but the probings, oh, so many probings."

-Steve Breckinridge,

resident of New York, 2121 A.D.