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Notes -
The US government acts shady about lots of things. If looking into something would expose classified projects that have nothing to do with space aliens, their reaction is going to look an awful lot like someone acting shady about space aliens.
An extremely funny but prosaic explanation for a lot of this stuff is that the government just keeps lying about aliens to conceal their totally mundane projects and occasionally people within the government get fooled and the story gets out of hand and it's embarrassing to admit how much you lied/got fooled, so...
An even funnier and scarier version of this is that this and the "aliens are real and can hurt you" theories are true and the people who know about the aliens actually prefer alien stories to circulate anyway since it's helpful for people to peel back the layer and find that the "real" story is that the aliens are just a cover for the next stealth bomber or whatever.
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