Having recently featured the strange (and now infamous) “Gable Film” on his program, now it appears that Fox News commentator Sean Hannity has turned his focus to UFOs, in accordance with his recent “Conspiracy Month” theme:

A complete transcript can also be viewed here.

In this piece, Hannity asserts that little evidence exists as proof of UFOs, save people’s own beliefs, which he says “are pretty much all the proof that they have”, and that most UFOs can be explained easily or are simply “random, unrepeatable occurrences.” Hannity also points out that “the government has not officially examined UFO sightings since 1969,” when the famous Project Blue Book ended. Established in the wake of the 1947 crash near Roswell, New Mexico, Hannity states that “the government says (the Roswell UFO) was a weather balloon, but conspiracy theorists, well, they still claim it was an alien spacecraft.”

True, Project Blue Book was the last officially recognized government program that publicly discussed and dealt with UFOs. However, during the 1980s there were many events that began to indicate that government involvement had hardly ended with Blue Book, thanks to the use of Freedom of Information requests filed with various agencies of the federal government. Although the Robertson Panel Review on UFOs (officially disclosed years later) ended in early 1953, evidence suggests that the CIA has maintained interest the subject, having published a secret monograph on the “Investigation of UFOs” in 1961.

This all appears to be in accordance with what Hannity points out: that the government hasn’t officially looked into UFOs since 1969. However, In 1956 retired Marine Major Donald Keyhoe founded a civilian group called the National Investigations Committee on Aerial Phenomena (NICAP). By 1969 (which coincides with the end of Project Bluebook) Keyhoe had begun to focus on the CIA as being “the source of the UFO cover up”. NICAP’s board was headed by Colonel Jospeph Bryan III—incidentally, a former covert CIA agent who served as founder of the agency’s psychological warfare division—who also later forced Keyhoe to retire as NICAP chief. Taking over in place of Keyhoe, Bryan disbanded NICAP and its local and state affiliate groups. By 1973 it had been completely closed.

Although NICAP was a civilian agency, it is believed that CIA activities may have influenced the disbanding of the group. If indeed the CIA had felt that UFOs might be an issue of national security (thus legitimizing the cover-up many were discussing at the time), does this also indicate that the CIA had continued studying the phenomenon? Whatever the case, this may indicate that government involvement was indeed feasible around 1973, when NICAP was disbanded.

Later in 1983, Air Force Intelligence established a joint UFO research project with help from Army Intelligence and General Pfauz of the Defense Intelligence Agency. However, Pfauz failed in being selected as the next director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, prompting his retirement in 1985, and thus closing work on the joint UFO task force. The following year, the North American NORAD radar fence was triggered by something described as performing “impossible maneuvers”, spanning the entire United States as it traveled. Resulting from this, the UFO Working Group was convened under the Defense Intelligence Agency in 1987. This organization intended to review all previous government research into UFOs, as well as perform ongoing investigations. Interestingly, government intelligence agencies that included the CIA were brought in to assist with the group’s activities, but as independent UFO researcher Burt Webb points out, “nothing conclusive has been reported.” Could the involvement of such intelligence agencies have led to the suppression of information, or is it simply that there is so much to review that disclosing information about UFOs to the public, at present, just wouldn’t serve “the greater good” in the minds of government agencies?

Whatever the real circumstances may be, one thing seems pretty obvious; though “official committees” may not have continued to probe the UFO enigma, government involvement has never really ended. That being the case, how much water is held by Mr. Hannity’s assertion that most UFOs “can easily be explained away and seem to be random, unrepeatable occurrences”? If this were the case, would so many individuals with histories working with government agencies put their reputations at stake by involving themselves with UFO research? Quite frankly, it seems that there is a good bit more going on here, Sean.