We the People 'ET Disclosure' Official Response: "What Aliens?"

Back in September, the Paradigm Research Group, an exopolitical an exopolitical group founded in 1996 by Stephen Bassett, launched an online petition through the 'We the People' White House portal to "urge the President of the United States to formally acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence engaging the human race and immediately release into the public domain all files from all agencies and military services relevant to this phenomenon."

I was one of the thousands of individuals that (digitally) signed the petition; unlike many of those petitioners however, I had the absolute certainty that it would end up being just another futile initiative to bring about the hypothetical disclosure through normal public channels.

Turns out my pessimism was justified.

I've just received an automatic response mail, likely the same one arriving to the inboxes of the rest of the petitioners. It reads:

Searching for ET, But No Evidence Yet  

By Phil Larson who works on space policy and communications at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy

Thank you for signing the petition asking the Obama Administration to acknowledge an extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.

The U.S. government has no evidence that any life exists outside our planet, or that an extraterrestrial presence has contacted or engaged any member of the human race. In addition, there is no credible information to suggest that any evidence is being hidden from the public's eye.

However, that doesn't mean the subject of life outside our planet isn't being discussed or explored.  In fact, there are a number of projects working toward the goal of understanding if life can or does exist off Earth.  Here are a few examples:

• SETI—the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence—was originally stood up with help from NASA, but has since been moved to other sources of private funding. SETI's main purpose is to act as a giant ear on behalf of the human race, pointing an array of ground-based telescopes towards space to listen for any signal from another world.
• Kepler is a NASA spacecraft in Earth orbit that's main goal is to search for Earth-like planets. Such a planet would be located in the "Goldilocks" zone of a distant solar system—not too hot and not too cold—and could potentially be habitable by life as we know it. The Kepler mission is specifically designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover Earth-sized, rocky planets in or near the habitable zone of the star (sun) they orbit.
• The Mars Science Laboratory, Curiosity, is an automobile-sized rover that NASA is launching soon. The rover's onboard laboratory will study rocks, soils, and other geology in an effort to detect the chemical building blocks of life (e.g., forms of carbon) on Mars and will assess what the Martian environment was like in the past to see if it could have harbored life.

A last point: Many scientists and mathematicians have looked with a statistical mindset at the question of whether life likely exists beyond Earth and have come to the conclusion that the odds are pretty high that somewhere among the trillions and trillions of stars in the universe there is a planet other than ours that is home to life.

Many have also noted, however, that the odds of us making contact with any of them—especially any intelligent ones—are extremely small, given the distances involved.

But that's all statistics and speculation. The fact is we have no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.

 Good thing nobody wasted any stamps on this one...

So, you might be wondering, does that mean I don't actually believe the US government might be withholding important information concerning trust-worthy UFO cases? Not at all; I actually suspect several US agencies might be sitting on very mind-blowing evidence that would proof the case for a non-human intelligence operating in our world once and for all.

But, like several people interested in this subject, I also think that when it comes to UFOs, an increase in data *does not* necessarily translates into an increase in discernment; as many enthusiasts in the subject learn sooner or later —the more you 'learn', the less you understand.

And let's not forget they —whoever they are and wherever they come from— could end up the cover-up any time they wished. One thing politicians learn very early in their careers is try to anticipate your opponent's next move; and since trying to decipher the intentions of an advanced alien intelligence might be next to impossible, what makes us think any self-respecting public servant would throw his career down the toilet just to appease a few obsessed UFO buffs?

Where's the gain in that, aside from a few meager votes?

On a personal level, recently I've been wondering if the true answer to the UFO mystery will arrive from a completely unrelated and unexpected avenue, even if that prospect depresses most professional Ufologists. Who knows? maybe the Singularity will come, or another paradigm change will occur, and we (or our descendants) will look around and exclaim —without much surprise or amazement— "Oh, so THERE you are!"

And maybe the aliens will respond "What took you guys so long?"

______________________________

[PS] My buddy Robbie Graham, the one who actually convinced me into signing the petition, has this to say about the White House response:

For me, the goal here was simply to remind the government that "Hey, there are still thousands of people our there who care about this issue!"

 

That message has certainly been received thanks to the petition, but again, expecting a revelatory acknowledgement was always an extreme long shot. But you never know till you try.

 

In any case, the petition is not entirely without historical significance - it elicited a formal response from the White House explicitly denying not only ANY evidence of ET visitation, but also ANY evidence that would indicate a cover-up of the UFO phenomenon. That last part is going land them in very hot water very soon, in my opinion. Even from a cursory glance at its own UFO documentation it's abundantly clear that the US gov has indeed been engaged in a large-scale cover-up (of something, at least) for decades - telling the public one thing ("UFOs are of no significance!"), while doing another (monitoring the phenomenon both at home and abroad and drawing-up thousands of Secret and Top Secret documents). The testimony of Gordon Cooper alone with his description of a filmed UFO-landing at Edwards AFB and the disappearance of said film into a murky Pentagon vault is in itself a smoking gun for a UFO cover-up. It would convince any jury in a court of law. As we know, there are many more retired military and intelligence folk with stories similar to Cooper's.

 

So, the White House's denial is easily rebuffed: "There is plenty of evidence Mr. President, you've simply chosen to ignore it." When the ET s%#t hits the fan, as it inevitably will do (probably sooner rather than later), Obama's outright denial of a UFO cover-up will come back to haunt him.

Definitely the right attitude to take.