Not only have the FBI and CIA investigated UFOs, but both agencies have actively tried to conceal this from the public. Dr. Bruce Maccabee, U.S. Navy research physicist, joined George Knapp to discuss his study of FOIA releases and document leaks, which, when combined with evidence collected by Air Force Intelligence, prove that at least some UFOs are interplanetary craft, he believes. He learned the FBI vacillated on their responses to UFOs, at times claiming they were Soviet missiles, other times suggesting they were all explainable phenomena. Under Hoover, the FBI could be highly interested in Air Force UFO reports, going so far as to investigate military UFO witnesses, then at other periods showing no interest in the subject at all, Maccabee recounted.

He has concluded that the US government cover-up of UFOs started early because agencies were not allowed to use the extraterrestrial explanation for sightings. The document "Estimate of the Situation" written by various Air Force experts in 1948 concluded that some UFOs likely had an interplanetary source, but was rejected by Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, Maccabee detailed. Regarding the Roswell case, one FBI document showed that material was picked up from New Mexico and brought to Wright Patterson AFB, which wouldn't have happened if it was just a weather balloon, he commented.

Various government agencies got into petty rivalries around the UFO issue, and offered differing views of the phenomenon. In the 1940s, the CIA paid little attention to the UFO subject, but by 1952, "the year of the UFO," the Director of the CIA asked for a review of the situation. Interestingly, Maccabee reported, when the agency sought information about UFOs at Wright Patterson, the Air Force lied to them and neglected to tell them about the 2-3% of cases that were unsolved or had no natural explanation. But later, the CIA's top scientist Marshall Chadwell studied incidents and decided something was really going on, which led to the Robertson Panel in 1953. The Panel, however, suggested that UFO reports were spurious. After that, said Maccabee, the CIA concluded there wasn't a threat from flying saucers because they probably didn't exist, but there could be a threat from the reports of them, and they began an active policy of debunking them.

UFOs & the Media

First hour guest Billy Cox, journalist for the Herald Tribune in Sarasota, FL, writes about UFOs in his long-running "De Void" Blog. Making his debut on C2C, he spoke about about his extensive research into UFO cases, and how the media covers them. One of the goals of his blog is to legitimize UFO coverage rather than have it be treated as a non-serious or debunked subject in the mainstream media. The year 2008 was particularly egregious in that regard, he noted, citing such incidents as the libertarian Cato Institute terminating the services of adjunct scholar Dom Armentano after he wrote an op-ed piece advocating for the declassification of federal records on UFOs.