For decades, Americans were told that Area 51 didn't really exist and that the US government had no official interest in aliens or UFOs. Statements to the contrary, official-sounding people cautioned, were probably the musings of crackpots in tinfoil hats.

Well, score one for the crackpots.

For decades, Americans were told that Area 51 didn’t really exist and that the U.S. government had no official interest in aliens or UFOs. Statements to the contrary, official-sounding people cautioned, were probably the musings of crackpots in tinfoil hats.

Well, score one for the crackpots.

The Pentagon has officially confirmed that there was, in fact, a $22 million government program to collect and analyze “anomalous aerospace threats” — government-speak for UFOs.

As The Washington Post’s Joby Warrick reported, the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was a rare instance of continued government investigations into a UFO phenomenon that was the subject of multiple official inquiries in the 1950s and 1960s.

For a specific segment of the population that doesn’t need to Google the terms “Paradise Ranch” and “Cheshire cat airstrip,” it was a eureka moment —  the first (of presumably many) alien-related secrets that have slipped out of the clenched jaws of the government.

The non-Googlers have it easy, it seems: The admission — and the fact that the government spent $22 million on UFO research — gives any out-there theory a patina of credibility.

The level of cynicism and outright contempt in the above WaCompost snippet is breathtaking. This is not news. The USG has been studying UFOs for over 50 years. Do your fu**ing homework. What is important in this latest flash in the pan, is the timing and backstory behind this obviously limited hangout. Despite decades of compelling evidence, there has never been an official announcement that non-terrestrial advanced technology is and has been flying around our skies for a long time. That will not happen. This is just more tantalizing trickling and tickling. If you knew for certain that a number of technologically advanced ETs were visiting Earth and actively interacting with its inhabitants and that some of them may have hostile intentions, would you tell the hoi polloi? To read motre, click here.