A clueless conspiracy?

Richard M. Dolan's book (with a foreword by Jacques Vallée) argues that UFOs are real, extraterrestrial and covered-up by the U.S. military and intelligence communities. I agree that his book does prove the latter. In public, the proper authorities have ridiculed or at least explained away all UFO sightings. Backstage, they have filed them under "Top Secret" and (perhaps) analyzed them.

The author believes that the U.S. authorities - or at least some circles within the military and intelligence communities - know the truth. I disagree. I think it's obvious that the U.S. administration doesn't know the "truth" about pretty much anything. Originally, the U.S. military assumed that UFOs were German or Soviet secret weapons. Some even suspected that they might be secret U.S. weapons! (I can see some admiral fuming at a meeting with the Joint Chiefs of Staff: "Why haven't I been told about this, dammit?") Later, everyone realized that the flying discs were neither "ours" nor the enemy's. So what where they? The truth, I think, is that nobody had a clue. They still don't. In order to forestall panic, all important UFO observations were classified. Besides, nobody wanted the Russians to think that the U.S. lost control of its air space. Observations of unknown flying objects making impossible feats above military bases or airfields will naturally be classified if inexplicable. Ironically, at least some UFOs have turned out to actually be secret U.S. military projects, including the "flying saucer" that crashed outside Roswell in New Mexico.

While Dolan attempts to be objective, he does want to believe the worst: that the Majestic-12 documents might have been based on a true story, that James Forestall really was murdered, that there is something fishy about Roswell after all, etc. He also implies that J. Allen Hynek might have been some kind of double agent. Dolan's book should be read with this in mind. Still, it *is* intriguing that the most powerful military-industrial complex in the world is at a complete loss explaining what's behind the UFO phenomenon.

Somewhere, somebody is laughing at the presumption of modern man and his clueless conspiracies...