By Bob Gaydos

   “They’re not out there.”

    The little green men.

    The flying saucers.

    The UAPs.

    The UFOs.

    The whatever-they-are that-move-faster-than possible.

     Trust us. It’s one big game of phone tag encouraged by movies, TV and conspiracy theorists. Nothing happening. Nothing covered up. Nothing being reverse engineered. Get on with your day. That is all.

       The above is the gist of a 67-page report issued recently by the Defense Department’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, entitled “Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena.”

    To wit: Nothing out there. Nothing in some desert in New Mexico. The AARO, given full funding by Congress to do its job, concluded that most sitings were simply “misidentification” and, contrary to recent whistleblower claims, it “found no empirical evidence for claims that the USG and private companies have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology.”

     Well … not so fast. I’m not a UFO fanatic or a conspiracy theorist, but I do believe the odds favor some form of life elsewhere in the universe and I know it’s risky business blindly accepting a report by a government agency summarily dismissing allegations against other segments of the same department.

   Also, I know that there were no weapons of mass destruction buried in Iraq, the U.S. did secretly buy weapons from Iran to arm Nicaraguan rebels and it’s still a bit sketchy on whether North Vietnamese ships really attacked U.S. Navy warships in the Gulf of Tonkin, thrusting the U.S. fully into the war in Vietnam.

    The point? The Defense Department investigating the Defense Department on a matter of wide public interest and controversy is probably not the best way to resolve long-standing questions.

      The mere fact that the government stopped referring to UFOs as UFOs and started calling them UAPs, unidentified aerial phenomena, suggests an effort to distance from easier public understanding of the topic. Give it a serious sounding name, suggesting all the other UFO stuff is just Hollywood making money. Most of the world will probably still refer to the balloons, satellites and other objects as UFOs, regardless.

     The report was requested by Congress after numerous reports by Navy pilots and other military personnel regarding the sighting of strange objects in the sky and reports from former Defense Department employees of some technology, not of this planet, being secretly reverse-engineered by  the government and private companies.

     A congressional committee held a closed-door meeting with the inspector general of the Intelligence community on such reports a while back and several members emerged thinking that, at the very least, the reports were credible enough for further investigation.

      AARO was given full funding by Congress to do so, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, of New York, being one of the senators pushing for the full funding. Haven’t heard any response from the senator yet to the AARO report.

       Most of the mainstream media simply reported the facts straight out of the report as presented: No UFOs, no little green men, nothing being hidden, ever, in the desert, or anywhere else regarding alien life. Just people repeating the same stories to each other, misidentified stuff, some references to other secret government programs and, well, maybe a few things there’s too little information on to draw a conclusion.

     Not good enough. Many of the recent reports, based on advanced technology, were made by credible witnesses. In fact, so were some of the older reports, many of which described objects similar to recent reports. Some older reports apparently were not even included in the AARO report.

   Instead of the Executive Department investigating the Executive Department, Congress, as an equal member of government, the funding member, should do so. There are reports that legislation is being prepared for just that purpose.

      People are unlikely to stop believing in UFOS or at least the possibility of them, especially when they’re dismissed as engaging in a game of phone tag. In fact, that’s the kind of response some bad Hollywood scriptwriters would come up with  

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PS: The AARO report is unlikely to dampen the annual UFO parade and celebration in the Hamlet of Pine Bush in upstate New York. The UFO capital of the Northeast will hold its annual festivities June 1 and, yes, there will be little and big green men, robots, other strange creatures, lots of good food, music, goods to be bought and fun to be had. There will also be some serious discussion by serious people about UAPs, etc. I’d venture to say the AARO report will come up. A fun day for believers, non-believers and everyone in-between. Maybe Senator Gillibrand will stop by.

rjgaydos@gmail.com