And what we are telling you is we do not agree with that. I for one, and I think most of the people here, do not think NASA or the government would cover it up, and would not be able to if they wanted to.

__________________
At night the stars put on a show for free (Carole King)

My point is that taking government money doesn't mean doing what the government wants. If they paid me $640 a minute, or even a second, I still wouldn't lie about history. No one and no entity has enough money to pay me for that.

Um . . . no, you see, people knew in 1567 that Bothwell killed Henry Stuart. Because he opened his mouth in 1567. Those were two separate examples intended to show a pattern of human behaviour. What does Mark Felt have to do with Mary Stuart, her second husband, and her third husband? Nothing. What he knew about was a certain break-in at a certain hotel. He spilled as close to right away, in historical terms, as to make no difference. Bothwell bragged the day after the crime. In fact, he went on trial. (He didn't get prosecuted, but that had a lot to do with the near-army he had surrounding the court.) Mark Felt helped bring down a President.

Your failing is that you think of the government as an it. You think of the government as one entity, which is manifestly isn't. Each individual person who is part of the coverup must keep silent in order for the thing in question to remain covered up. The more people you have, the more likely it is that someone will spill. And many of the conspiracies posited have a lot of conspirators. How many people do you think know of extraterrestrial life? How many are involved in the coverup? And why do they all stay quiet?

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

ofcourse it doesnt make it true.. I have never asked anyone of you to testify what I am saying here.. I am just giving my point of view on if NASA can keep secrets if they come to know or already know of alien life..

also as you said that "the fact is that if you cant prove it wrong does not make it right".. the same way if just because it cant be proved does not mean that it is not true

Maybe not everyone...but you must admit the rest is true...

__________________
The views expressed are the febrile product of an overactive imagination of a person who in shadows sees the gyrating Elvis-like ghost of Leonid Brezhnev.

And we are whole-heartedly arguing that they would not be able to keep that a secret. At least, not for any relevant length of time.

Well, here you are correct. Something that one cannot prove or disprove is neither true or false...it's speculation...which is also irrelevant here.

__________________
I'm like one of those idiot savants...well, except for the savant part.

"A long time ago, yet somehow in the future"

greattt.. atleast we agree on something...

Maybe Killed him.

James Hepburn, the son of Patrick Hepburn, 3rd Earl of Bothwell, was born in 1535. Hepburn became the 4th Earl of Boswell when his father died in 1556.

Mary Stuart returned to Scotland in 1560. The Protestants were not happy having a Catholic queen and a religious riot took place soon after her arrival in Scotland. Mary attempted to reduce tension by accepting Protestants as her chief advisers. This included Hepburn who gradually became her closest friend in Scotland.

In 1565 Mary married Henry Darnley, the son of Lady Margaret Douglas, the granddaughter of Henry VII. The marriage was not a happy one and when Darnley was mysteriously killed while recovering from smallpox at Glasgow in January 1567, when the house in which he was in was blown up by gunpowder.

Suspicion fell on Hepburn. When Mary married Hepburn two months later, the Protestant lords rebelled against their queen. After Mary's army was defeated at Langside in 1567, Hepburn fled to Norway. He was seized by his enemies and taken to prison in Denmark. he died in chains in 1578.

__________________
'The eye can only see what the mind is prepared to accept'

hoaxorreal & zerocold
Alright...
Let's say that I am one of the countless people who know the TRUTH about aliens.
Let's say that, instead of killing me, the government buys me off because money rules in your paradigm. Let's say they pay me a cool $10 million, because apparently they have containers full of the stuff. Now, if I get greedy and demand more money, they may well take me out, so I remain silent. Does that sit right with you?
Or...
I go to a news agency - perhaps that of another nation - that is willing to pay me $50 million for the rights to my story which, quite frankly, is the biggest story of the last million years and cheap at ten times the price. Then I spill the beans, safe in the knowledge that no-one will dare touch me.

None of the garbage spouted by hoax believers and conspiracy nuts actually stands up to rational thought. Now you can believe what the hell you want to believe and no-one will care. BAUT, however, is the cyber home of a great many intelligent, analytical people who actually know what they are talking about and have at least one foot firmly in the real world. If you come here and expound these daft ideas, you'd better have some concrete evidence - or even a believable scenario - or someone will quickly tear you to shreds

__________________
This is not an idea to be tossed aside lightly - it should be thrown with great force

Does this reply make sense to anyone?

__________________
Wanted: Diabolical Plan for World Domination.

I understand what he was trying to say but
Neither the wording now the logic made any sense.

Not to be overly argumentative, but if neither the wording nor the logic made any sense, what was left to understand?

<shrugs>

__________________
Wanted: Diabolical Plan for World Domination.

Well, I understood that his claim is that the government or NASA can hide things from the public, but his logic also doesn't make sense.

It is similar to claiming that if I can jump one foot up into the air, it only is reasonable to say I can also jump a thousand feet up into the air.

The government can and does and does try to keep secrets. These secrets deal with national security and resources. However, once a secret becomes public knowledge- it is no longer kept.

The government is notoriously bad about handling conspiracies. Keeping a secret is like jumping one foot up in the air. Running a massive conspiracy is like jumping a thousand feet.


ETA: Most government secrets would sound rather uninteresting to the general public. That's what makes them easier to keep. The main concern is not about a conspiracy in keeping secrets- just in not letting another government know.
An example is the shape and design of a submarine propellor. Big Huge Secret. Running silent is crucial to a sub and they don't want other guys knowing how we do it.
Not very fascinating to Joe Schmoe walking down the street though.

Perfect example. They can't even keep that a secret.

"Kmart has better security than the Navy" - John Walker, Jr., spy for the Soviet Union. 1968-1985.

__________________
The views expressed are the febrile product of an overactive imagination of a person who in shadows sees the gyrating Elvis-like ghost of Leonid Brezhnev.

"It is easy for three people to keep a secret, as long as two of them are dead." B. Franklin

A secret can be kept successfully (for a time) if all of the knowlegdeable parties feel their is a serious need to keep it.

The Manhattan Project, the Normandy landings... these secrets were kept because those who new felt there was so much at stake that the secret had to be kept. Watergate, Monicagate... these secrets were "outed" becuase someone who knew did not feel there was enough at stake to warrant keeping them secret; indeed, it was felt in the case of Watergate that what was being done was wrong and needed to be told and in the case of Monicagate that "he has it coming." Some secrets are lost because some people love to brag and show off how "in" they are. And, of course, there are secrets that are not kept because someone sees a profit in the telling (Aldrich Ames comes to mind).

Unless The Powers That Be (TPTB^TM) could convice everyone involved that the earth was doomed if it got out, keeping knowledge of ET secret would be impossible. Someone wouldn't be convinced, someone would think it wrong to withhold, someone would have an agenda, someone would brag, someone would want money...

Franklin was right.

__________________
Never attribute to malice what can be adequately explained by ignorance or stupidity.
Isaac Asimov

Points to be made:

1. NASA is not a monolithic organization. It has groups, individuals and divisions constantly competing for ever-dwindling resources (money).

2. If someone in NASA were to discover evidence of ET intelligence, their section would be awash in cash for decades.

3. That someone would be famous overnight.

4. Keeping someone quiet in NASA is impossible. As evidence, see the recent global warming dustup between Hansen and the Bush Administration. They tried to shut him up, but it didn't work.

5. SETI is a privately funded endeavor.

6. If they were to discover alien signals thier funding problems would be over.

7. Given the stature of SETI in the astronomical field, they would jump at the chance to prove others wrong.

8. I don't have the protocols in front of me, but confirming an alien signal doesn't just involve pointing one receiver at the area and making a recording. It needs to be confirmed by receivers all over the world, with the data then reviewed by many astronmers.

9. Given the earth-shattering news this would generate, there is no way this news could ever, in a million years, be suppressd.

hoaxorreal addresses this in the opening post with a link to a newspaper article discussing the Brookings Report which said that the discovery of intelligent aliens might lead to the collapse of civilization. Of course, all it takes is for one person in the know to disagree with that conclusion.

I've never read it, but I don't think the Brookings Report was an advisement to cover-up any evidence of ET, but rather an advisement to prepare for the potential outcome of such a discovery. In other words, even the Brookings Institute realized that it would be impossible to keep such a discovery (were it ever happen) under wraps.

__________________
If you're going to tell people the truth, you'd better make them laugh. Otherwise they'll kill you. - George Bernard Shaw

And the important words, even in those situations, are for a time. Admittedly, both of those were revealed, when they were, in pretty big ways, but neither one was really secret for terribly long. Further, the secrecy of the Manhattan Project was substantially aided by the fact that, well, it wasn't in Manhattan! It was a bunch of scientists in the middle of nowhere. There were soldiers as well, but I don't think any of them had enough knowledge to really spill. However, there are multiple examples of people working with the US nuclear program who sold information to the Soviets. (There are multiple examples even without getting into the Rosenbergs and discussing their guilt of innocence.)

__________________
Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Not sold, gave. There was at least one ideological Marxist at Los Alamos -- or at any rate, a person who felt it was wrong to keep such a secret from an ally. The fundamentals of both bomb designs and other critical technology were in Moscow before the bombs were used. Stalin was the least-surprised person on Earth after Trinity.

__________________
Bring back Firefly!

"It is quite clear that Occam's razor does not sharpen in your pyramid." (Nicolas)

"Still, a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest." (Paul Simon)