They want to believe.
That is, the thousands of UFO disclosure activists, who have been clamoring for the federal government to release evidence of extraterrestrials, purportedly covered up since the first half of the 20th century.
Two petitions — totaling more than 17,000 signatures — requested the government to disclose any and all documents pertaining to extraterrestrial contact with humans garnered a response that probably disappointed the erstwhile Fox Mulders.
On Friday, a member of the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy denied covering up evidence of contact with aliens in response to an online petition submitted on the White House’s website.
“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,” the statement read.
The response directs petitioners toward several projects aimed at uncovering evidence of extraterrestrial life, including the Mars Science Laboratory, the SETI Institute and the Kepler spacecraft, but states the government has “no credible evidence of extraterrestrial presence here on Earth.”
But for Michael Salla, UFO researcher and former professor at American University’s Center for Global Peace, the truth is still out there.
“It’s a very predictable response,” he told The Daily Caller. “All government agencies have basically taken a similar line that there is no credible evidence of extraterrestrial life having visited the earth. And that’s been a pretty consistent response for the past 50 years.”
Dr. Salla claims that the White House’s response isn’t necessarily dishonest: Much of the information is classified or has been turned over to private companies.
“The Obama administration’s response should be something like what Bill Clinton did, which is to try to find out which agencies have information. … I can tell from my research that the information has been increasingly privatized, it’s been put into private archives the proprietary control of major corporations like Boeing.”
The White House opened up a can of worms when it opened its “We the People” petitions website. Immediately after it went online, the site was inundated with a myriad of weed legalization activists, animal rights agitators and others. The president promised a response for any petition with more than 5,000 signatures originally, but revised that threshold to 25,000 on October 3.
Some have taken issue with the insipid responses to the petitions, and have launched a satirical petition demanding “a vapid, condescending, meaningless, politically safe response to this petition.” It has more than 10,000 signatures.