This may be an urban myth, but supposedly even presidents don’t have a high enough security clearance to go to Area 51. Also, the presidents never get to know whether or not there are UFO/aliens.
Does anybody know about this?
You’ve watched too many movies. :rolleyes:
There is nothing remotely plausible that shows that Area 51 is used for anything other than testing of secret aircraft projects. The president certainly does have clearance for that. Independence Day is not a documentary.
If you have plausible information proving otherwise feel free to provide a cite.
There’s no legal way to classify info from the Prez if he wants to find out. The laws that create the US classification system delegate almost all the details of who gets to know what to the Executive.
I suspect that the origin of the story, other than just general paranoia, is misunderstanding John Podesta’s attempts to get the militarise UFO files declassified.
But a) the issue there is declassification, Podesta already knows whats in the files.
b) Podesta isn't the President, and wasn't even in gov't during most of the time he was pushing the issue.
But I can see where “Bill Clinton’s Chief of Staff can’t get UFO stuff declassified” could get turned into “Even the President can’t get clearance to see UFO stuff”.
Presidents may not have asked about UFOs, and government officials may not have divulged information about UFOs to a President, but if a President were to ask, and the government official knew anything about it they would obliged to tell the President whatever they know.
The fact is there are no UFOs at Area 51, so there is nothing to hide from anyone, conspiracy theories notwithstanding.
There are no government secrets, except, perhaps, those that have been sealed by a judge, that the President wouldn’t have access to if they were interested in reading them…
It might be on a need to know basis. But I’d have to think the president would get the low-down if he threw a hissy fit.
Btw, UFOs are real.
When Shirley Maclaine was on Letterman many years ago, she told Dave that Jimmy Carter had told her that everything she heard about the UFOs was true. That would seem to imply that Carter had access to it all.
Then again, Dave seemed to think that the President was perhaps having a bit of fun with the actress.
Jimmy Kimmel has also posed this question to both President Clinton and President Obama:
Many many people have asked under FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) for the secret area 51 files. Some of the files are actually classified and they will not get them. When they receive their packet and it is heavily redacted they think they have some proof of aliens being hidden from them.
In reality no matter what you ask for there will most likely be redaction. That only means you are not allowed to see everything because names and identities and events of certain things are NOYB.
Area 51 files are only the 2nd most requested items. JFK assassination is number one.
FWIW I worked for the FBI and their FOIA requests.
Area 51 aka Groom Lake is, or was, classified top secret because it was were they developed & tested secret, high tech aircraft. Sorry, but no UFOs or aliens there…
Just a reality point (yeah, I know - completely irrelevant to these conversations):
UFO = Unidentified Flying Object = somebody saw/thought they saw something they could not identify.
Quite common, especially since airplanes started flying above clouds… :rolleyes:
It’s a long way from “unidentified” to “identified as extra-terrestial vehicles carrying intelligent life forms”.
Unless you shape your foil hat just… so…. :dubious:
My theory on secrets: If five or more people know a secret, it is almost inevitable that secret will get leaked.
So this whole idea that a whole branch of government with hundreds of people are keeping this one major secret, for decades, seems ridiculous to me.
If they can’t keep quiet that the President got his wang sucked in the Oval office, they sure as hell can’t keep “aliens are here!” a secret.
All classified information, at every level of classification, is on a need-to-know basis. But the President can also decide whether he needs to know. And if the President asked some other intelligence agent for some secret, and the agent asked why the President needed to know that, then the answer to that question would probably be “you don’t have a need to know”.
Of course, the President doesn’t know all the secrets. There are quite a lot of them, and a large number are technical enough that he probably wouldn’t even understand them if he did know (we elect politicians, not engineers). But that’s just a matter of his human limits, not of his security clearance.
Something I’ve always wondered about, but never bothered to ask—if the government did possess tangible evidence of the existence of an extraterrestrial species, is there any outstanding reason why this information would be kept under wraps? Are there any valid reasons why the government would be motivated to not publicly disclose this fact?
Psssst. Keep this quiet please, just between the two of us.
President Eisenhower had 3 secret meetings in Area 51 with Aliens. Yes, real out of this world aliens, not the kind from South America. It happened in 1954. And it’s on the internet so you know it’s factual.
Here’s the cite, however, if you don’t have at least a secret clearance, you better not click on it. cite
If it was just Washington that had diplomatic relations with the peoples democratic republic of Arcturus, yeah, I imagine that the rest of the world might be a bit testy, so a valid reason.
Second, “they” have requested a non disclosure of their existence, we would just be honoring that.
Third, we know someones in the neighborhood and not saying anything, just skulking, but we dont have a clear image or radar return enough to take it to court so to speak, could easily be some sort of natural event or someone is spoofing stuff as a practical joke.
So lots of reasons they would with hold
Declan
I followed this field closely during the late '80s -early '90s and although I gave up on it a long time ago, it’s still fun to talk about.
For that to make any sense, one would have to imagine some higher authority than the President, with a legal structure that supports that authority and gives it the right to classify information arbitrarily no (or almost no) oversight by the open part of the government. While large institutions can certainly do stupid things, the notion of the open government willingly signing away its authority so completely seems a bit over the top. In any event, therein lies somewhat of a paradox: if there is an agency so secret that it’s completely off the government map, how does it exert any authority at all?
[Quote=Washoe]
Something I’ve always wondered about, but never bothered to ask—if the government did possess tangible evidence of the existence of an extraterrestrial species, is there any outstanding reason why this information would be kept under wraps? Are there any valid reasons why the government would be motivated to not publicly disclose this fact?
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Another paradox: we’re spending significant money and resources attempting to identify potential lifeforms on nearby planets, and listening for transmissions from distant star systems, but faced with positive, direct (supposedly) evidence of extraterrestrial life we go all coy and don’t want to know about it. Indeed, what’s up with that?
The two most common reasons I’ve seen given for this supposed airtight coverup is:
a) people would freak out: Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes,
the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together… mass hysteria! (to quote a little movie you may have heard of)
b) The military somehow has used advanced extraterrestrial technology to its advantage and either wants to keep that edge (although if it does exist, it didn’t seem to materially affect the outcome of our adventures in Viet Nam or Iraq) or is so scared of that it has simply suppressed all knowledge, even from itself.
How could any legitimate scientist or engineer faced with access to such a rich area of potential research simply say “no”, even if legitimate threats were made over disclosure? All it take is one good, traceable artifact or bit of organic tissue in the hands of a lab and/or the press, and the jig is up.
ETA: Declan’s reasons hold water reasonably, maybe more than my speculations do.
OK, I’ll stop rambling now.
So you’re figuring there’s this conspiracy that’s so secret even the President doesn’t know about it. But you’re going to get factual information about it by asking on an online message board.
He never said the President doesn’t know about it. He just asked if there is any validity to the Prez not having clearance to look at the Area 51 classified files.
The obsession with Area 51 has become laughable. True, there is a lot of info about Area 51 that’s classified–but what army base does have all of its info wide open to the public? Just like the people who say "will they shoot you if you try to enter Area 51? Do you really think you could wander into Fort Hood or the Bremerton Naval Base without authorization and the guards would just smile?
The President has no security clearance, so the theory is off to a bad start from the get-go.