By Alex Seitz-Wald - NBC News
WASHINGTON - Stephen Bassett and Mick West disagree on many things.
Bassett has spent much of his adult life proving that there are aliens piloting unidentified flying objects (UFOs), while West has spent much of his career proving that they are not.
But they both agree on one thing: It's a good thing that, after nearly 75 years of taboos and taunts dating back to reports of a "flying saucer" supposedly sighted in Roswell, New Mexico, both regular folks and government officials are finally are talking openly and seriously about the mysterious flying objects that people see in the sky.
"Considering how much public interest there is, I think it's important that these things are investigated openly," said West, a former video game programmer who has become a debunker of UFO theories.
"There are many suspicions that the government is hiding evidence related to UFOs, and it is understandable that there is, because there has been a wall of secrecy. That leads to mistrust in the government, something that can be quite dangerous," West added.
The Pentagon plans to deliver a
special report
to Congress later this June
on what officials call "unexplained aerial phenomena."
The report was compiled by a working group with the participation of various branches of the Government after, a few years ago, videos of objects that move in mysterious ways and that appear to defy the laws of physics, were revealed, spotted by pilots.
["We can't explain it": a mysterious signal from the closest star to the Sun captivates astronomers]
Hobbyists dedicated to investigating the secrets of outer space
hope that in that report there is evidence of alien life,
while many others in the Government hope that the report will clarify what the objects are about, if they could perhaps be espionage operations of terrestrial neighbors. like the Chinese or the Russians.
According to officials, the long-awaited report is expected to resolve little by not finding but also not ruling out evidence of extraterrestrial activity.
But regardless of the report's conclusion, its publication will start an
open conversation on a topic long considered radical
.
In addition, it is believed that speaking openly on the subject will open up new investigative possibilities, including official ones through Defense Department contracts.
Part of a leaked video showing an unidentified object washed up on a Navy ship off the coast of San Diego. US Navy via Jeremy Corbell
"If you consider the larger context of how we have learned things about our reality and its nature, on several occasions it was thanks to the study of something that could seem ridiculous or incredible," said Caleb Scharf, an astronomer who directs the Center for Astrobiology of the Columbia University.
Senators and scientists, the Pentagon and former presidents, former CIA directors and NASA officials, Wall Street executives and Silicon Valley investors - all of a sudden, they're all starting to talk openly about an issue previously only discussed. argued in whispers.
[The former head of Israeli space security assures that aliens exist and that the White House knows it]
The "law of silence" has been broken thanks to a new generation of more professional activists with more convincing evidence, as well as a few key allies in government and the lack of a convincing justification for official silence, which has failed curb interest in UFOs.
In a deeply polarized country where conspiracy theories have ripped through American politics, continuing to believe that the government is covering up truths about UFOs may well turn out to be an outdated and apolitical theory.
The path to breaking the "truth embargo"
Interest in American culture for UFOs comes and goes, but millions of people have questions about it: About
a third of Americans believe we have been visited by alien spacecraft
, according to a Gallup poll.
Yet authorities and academia have in the past responded to these questions with silence or laughter, leaving a void that has been filled by conspiracy theorists, pranksters and fans.
West, the skeptic, believes that the flying objects spotted in recently released videos can be explained by the effects of optical cameras.
But he would like the US government to do a thorough investigation and explanation of UFOs.
[A US Navy video leaks that appears to show a UFO flying over the California coast]
The Government has examined UFOs in the past, but
often secretly or in a limited way.
In fact, the current Pentagon task force is believed to be relatively limited in its mission and resources.
West pointed to models from other countries like Argentina, where an official government agency investigates the sightings and publishes its findings, the vast majority of which are attributed to unusual weather conditions, human objects such as airplanes or optical effects.
"This is something we could do here," West said.
"But right now we are staying with people like me, who are just enthusiasts," he added.
A false image of the capitol surrounded by UFOs. Chelsea Stahl / NBC News;
Getty Images
Believers are also delighted with the cultural change.
"The 'truth embargo' is coming to an end," said Bassett, executive director of the Paradigm Research Group and the only Washington-registered lobbyist dedicated to UFO disclosure.
"I am elated to see that this movement finally reaches its moment."
[Pentagon reports sighting of at least 120 UFOs in the last 20 years]
Bassett is convinced that the government is covering up evidence of extraterrestrial life and that everything that is happening now with the report is an elaborate way of making the information public in the least disturbing way possible.
It is an opinion that, of course, is not supported by evidence or by most experts.
"This is the most profound event for humanity in its history, which is about to come out," he said.
But you don't have to be a believer to believe that
misunderstood things should be investigated, not ignored.
"We don't know if it's an alien. We don't know if it's an enemy. We don't know if it's an optical phenomenon," said new NASA administrator Bill Nelson, a former astronaut and senator from Florida, in a recent interview with CNN.
"And so the bottom line is that we want to know."
Two former CIA directors — John Brennan, who served under Obama, and James Woolsey, who served under Clinton — recently told podcasts in interviews that they have seen evidence of aerial phenomena they cannot explain.
John Ratcliffe, who was director of national intelligence under former President Donald Trump, told Fox News in March that there were "far more sightings than have been made public."
Investigations that go from ridiculous to true
Among the supporters of the congressional UFO report is Florida Sen. Marco Rubio, the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee.
For him, it is a question of national security and to understand whether rivals like China or Russia have developed advanced technology that we are unaware of.
"I want us to take it seriously and have a process to take it seriously," Rubio told
CBS's
60 Minutes
program.
Mexican musician will create a message that they will send to aliens
March 5, 202102: 46
For others, like Ravi Kopparapu, a planetary scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, and Jacob Haqq-Misra, a research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science, it's about discovery.
"For too long, the scientific study of unidentified flying objects and aerial phenomena - UFOs and Fanis - has been taboo," they wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post.
"
If we want to understand what UFOs are, we have to engage the mainstream scientific community in a concerted effort
to study them."
Scharf looks for signs of life on other planets and is a little tired of people asking him if extraterrestrial life has visited us on ours.
But he said looking more at the sky could provide insight into how our own world works.
"These kinds of things are of scientific interest, not because we necessarily think that we are going to find aliens, but because perhaps there is an unknown phenomenon or a set of phenomena that give rise to some of these sightings," he said.
"There has never been a systematic effort to categorize and catalog the things that people see, and from past experiences we know that some of these things sometimes turn out to be interesting," he added.
[The Government does not confirm extraterrestrial activity but neither does it explain the origin of strange flying objects]
The history of science is full of
accidental discoveries and incidents
in which the arrogance of religious or scientific authorities dismissed something as ridiculous that later turned out to be true.
Scientists didn't believe that meteorites actually came from space until the early 1800s, for example.
Government secrecy can lead to confusion and misunderstandings that could be cleared up with the help of a wider circle of experts and researchers.
Sweden spent years futilely searching for what it believed to be Russian submarines off its shores.
But when the Swedish Navy finally let civilian investigators listen to a recording of the alleged submarine, they discovered that it was actually the
sound of fish having flatulence.
Important people have had an interest in UFOs for a long time;
they just haven't really talked about it.
Former President Jimmy Carter claimed to have seen a UFO when he was governor of Georgia and even submitted two formal reports of his observations. Former President Ronald Reagan allegedly claimed he saw a UFO while traveling in a small plane, the pilot told a book written by former Army Colonel John Alexander, whose paranormal investigations later partially inspired the George Clooney film
The Men Who Stare At The goats
.
As the Cold War escalated in the 1950s, American officials worried that the Soviet Union would take advantage of UFO conspiracy theories to spread fear in the American public. Civilians spoke of seeing UFOs that were actually secret spy planes, like the U-2; however, the US Government opted for a policy of silence and denial.
''
More than half of all UFO reports from the late 1950s to the 1960s were from manned reconnaissance flights,
'' according to a secret CIA study that was declassified in the late 1990s. The New York Times reported at the time.
"This led the Air Force to make misleading statements to the public in order to allay public fears and protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project."
The
government's evasions fueled false conspiracy theories,
which came to dominate the study of UFOs and made the subject even more underestimated by serious scholars.
A new generation promoting open debates
In recent years, however, a new generation of activists has been at the center of recent high-profile revelations thanks to a
more professional, careful and credible approach.
Among them are people with serious credentials in national security, such as Christopher Mellon, a former undersecretary of defense for intelligence, and Luis Elizondo, a former Army counterintelligence special agent who led a previous Pentagon team to investigate UFOs.
The budget for Elizondo's team - $ 22 million, a very modest figure in the defense spending scheme - was secured by former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada from the high-level officials he has helped. to drive the resurgence of interest in UFOs.
[NASA reveals what would be the main problem that aliens and humans would face]
The new activists have worked with major media outlets to present evidence and eyewitnesses that meet their high editorial standards, and are careful when speaking to the general public to avoid talking about aliens.
Skeptics and believers alike don't expect the Pentagon report to solve anything.
Rather, they expect you to start something new.
"The idea that super-powerful aliens have come to visit us is a very compelling story," West said.
"So if you get even a small taste of something like that, that will really enhance our story," he added.
