The Alien Conspiracy

In fact, it comes from the trailer that aired during the Super Bowl for Disclosure Day, Steven Spielberg’s new movie, opening June 12. For people who believe in aliens, or who would like to be able to believe in them, that title leaves no doubt about the kinds of secrets in question: Disclosure refers to the long-awaited moment when the U.S. government will admit what it really knows about visitors to our planet.When President Trump promised, in a social-media post in February, “to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life,” he implied that disclosure might be just around the corner. It wasn’t: This morning, the Pentagon released a tranche of historic images on a new website, war.gov/ufo, which feature plenty of black-and-white murk but nothing that looks even a little like an alien spacecraft. Still, if history is any guide, this disappointment won’t put an end to the belief that the government is hiding a spaceship or an alien corpse; according to one of the best-known UFO legends, both were retrieved from a crash site near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947. Or the proof could be something less tangible—a clear image of a nonhuman craft in flight, a radio signal from an extraterrestrial civilization. However it happens, disclosure will finally reveal the truth—not just about aliens, but about the authorities that have been deceiving us for so long.This isn’t a new theme for science fiction, or for Spielberg. His career as a director took off in a post-Watergate climate when Hollywood was obsessed with official conspiracies and heroic whistleblowers—think of Alan J. Pakula’s All the President