If you follow politics at all, you probably noticed this tidbit: Hillary Clinton was quoted by the New York Times as saying she promises to get to the truth about UFOs.
Actually, she used the term UAP, or Unexplained Aerial Phenomena, which she says is the latest terminology.
Clinton gets some points for being a ufology wonk. And she might get a few votes — more than a third of the population believes UFOs are real.
But whether she calls them UAPs, UFOs, aliens or flying saucers, it’s unlikely Clinton will make good on that promise if she makes it to the White House.
That’s because other presidents — including her husband, former President Bill Clinton — have made similar promises.
My own limited research into the history of the UFO phenomenon — and conspiracies surrounding them — shows these possibilities:
— There is nothing to UFOs at all,
— The military or our spy agencies have been doing an extremely good job over the past 70 years of hiding what they know from the president,
— Or our presidents have always known the truth but have been convinced they need to continue concealing it from the public for reasons of national security.
So if they think you don’t need to know, they won’t tell you.
That’s why I like to get away from what politicians say and examine official government documents in my own research. I did just that with the Project Blue Book case files in my book, UFO Cold Cases: Kansas.
In the book, I re-examine 10 documented real-life Kansas UFO X-files. Most of the documents were kept secret. And many of the military pilots or technicians involved were initially told they couldn’t talk about their own cases to the media because of national security.
But all the secrecy has led to conspiracy theories. I don’t like to spread conspiracy theories.
But I don’t mind examining them for any grains or truth.
For example, there are theories that President Eisenhower actually met with aliens during the early 1950s.
That theory arose in 1952 after UFOs buzzed Washington, D.C., and showed us they could run rings around our fastest nuclear missiles. Ike also had some missing time while on “vacation” in California that was explained away as an emergency visit to the dentist. But the conspiracy buffs say he used that time to meet with aliens.
Another story was that Richard Nixon, who was vice president under Eisenhower, was the last president to know the whole story about UFOs.
The source was a tabloid story quoting TV and Hollywood star Jackie Gleason who claimed Nixon actually showed him an alien being kept in a government facility.
We know President Jimmy Carter claimed he saw a UFO, and tried to get more information about it.
Also, President Bill Clinton tried to find out what was going on at Area 51.
As far as we know, neither Carter nor Clinton were able to turn up anything about UFOs and aliens.
So we keep coming back to the conclusion there’s nothing to the stories — unless, of course, there is something to them and we can’t know for national security reasons.
When Hillary Clinton says she’s going to seek the truth, about all you do is ask her what she’s going to do that past presidents haven’t done.
If Bill Clinton or Jimmy Carter couldn’t find anything, how does she plan to unravel seven decades of secrets?
Also, as secretary of state, wouldn’t she have already known about our dealings with other governments — including any agreements or treaties with have with extraterrestrials?
All we can do is take her at her word. If she is elected president, she’ll look into it.
But here’s the kicker: if she does finds anything, we might not ever know. Her promise is to share what she finds out, “unless it’s a threat to national security.”
And that takes us right back where we’ve been since the Roswell crash in 1947.
One reason she might be talking about UFOs now is because her new campaign chairman is John Podesta, a longtime advocate of finding out the truth concerning UFOs.
Podesta should have been able to find out the truth in his past White House jobs — he was President Bill Clinton’s chief of staff and served as counselor to President Barack Obama. The following is what he said back in 2002 — 14 years ago.