Did the ‘Deep State’ Invent the U.F.O. Craze?
The last few times I wrote about unidentified flying objects, in the spring and fall of 2023, there had been a series of curious happenings — reveals and leaks and would-be whistle-blowing — that convinced me that some group of people inside our government wanted Americans to believe that the national security state had secret knowledge about U.F.O.s.
This was a deliberately circumspect take on an extremely weird situation, which had three notable features. First, the kinds of people coming forward with claims and the footage and accounts of mysterious flying objects being publicized (in this newspaper, among other places) were more serious-seeming, more difficult to eye-roll away, than what we’d seen in prior eras of U.F.O. enthusiasm.
Second, the sudden bipartisan interest from senators and congressmen — not just eccentrics in the House of Representatives but also figures like Senator Chuck Schumer, who was then the majority leader, and Senator Mike Rounds, Republican of South Dakota — was real and substantial, suggesting that a bit more was visible behind the curtain than we knew.
But third, at the same time, all the leaks and insider accounts fell consistently short of what U.F.O. believers call, expectantly, “disclosure” — offering enough to feed speculation about secret government programs, but not nearly enough to overcome a basic skeptical default.
At the time, I argued that all the high-level political and media interest was removing the impediment that many believers argue stands between us and the truth — the alleged fear, among those with secret knowledge, of being jailed or killed if they speak out. If would-be whistle-blowers with national security backgrounds like David Grusch and Luis Elizondo were hale and well (and in Elizondo’s case, publishing a best-selling book), then surely there was no better time to deliver the supposedly world-altering truth.
And if nobody stepped forward — well, you should be more inclined to assume that the truth was never really out there.
