Somewhere in my files, I have a handout from a long-ago planetarium program I went to as a kid. It's a form to fill out when you spot an unidentified flying object.
I also have a 1956 book on my shelf titled, "They Knew Too Much about Flying Saucers," about how prominent UFO researchers were being silenced by mysterious men in black suits. I once attended a UFO convention in Connecticut, where visitors were greeted by a menacing plastic statue of a towering, gray-skinned extraterrestrial.
The UFO expert who invited me to the conference said he didn't like to call them aliens. He preferred the term "visitors."
My fascination with UFOs has vaporized since then. But a certain slice of the public remains deeply interested in the idea that space creatures could be flying the skies above us and occasionally snatching people for invasive experiments.
Government secrecy plays a big role in propagating wild theories of alien landings and coverups. When the government goes to great lengths to hide what it's doing, people fill in the blanks with alien monsters.
Earlier this month, Politico and the New York Times simultaneously reported that the Pentagon ran a secret, $20 million program to investigate "unidentified aerial phenomena." Pilots were seeing strange aircraft doing seemingly impossible maneuvers. A big campaign donor who's also a believer in extraterrestrial visits persuaded then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., to launch the program in 2009 with an obscure appropriation.
The Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program was led by a career intelligence officer. The program petered out in 2012, and its leader resigned in frustration, in part over the program's excessive secrecy.
The Pentagon did not acknowledge the program until this month, after reporters had already confirmed its existence.
