Appearing on Jimmy Kimmel Live! to promote his new book of paintings of soldiers wounded in the wars he started, former President George W. Bush refused to reveal anything about the government’s classified “UFO documents.”
“This is a question that I think is very important to me and very important to the country,” Kimmel said. “When you were in office — and I don’t know when this happened or if it happened — did you go through the secret files; the UFO documents?” The audience broke into laughter.
“Maybe,” Bush said. “I’m not telling you nothing.”
Bush is not the first president or politician to refuse any form of disclosure on Kimmel’s show. He’s also pressed Hillary Clinton, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, who made a joke of it on Kimmel, but later told GQ, “I gotta tell you, it’s a little disappointing. People always ask me about Roswell and the aliens and UFOs, and it turns out the stuff going on that’s top secret isn’t near as exciting as you’d expect.”
That would come as a disappointment to Disclosure advocates, who have been struggling to pressure the government into releasing anything they know about UFOs or extraterrestrials. Many, including the Disclosure Project, which pushed for congressional hearings in the 90s, believe the government is hiding advanced energy technology, including propulsion systems reverse-engineered from extraterrestrial vessels. While some are just curious what the government is hiding, others hope eventual Disclosure could lead to environmental and global political revolution.
While Bush continued the tight-lipped tradition, UFO hunters may find some paradoxical comfort in how GWB’s assessment differed from Obama’s. “Are there really great secrets that you know that you can’t share with people?” Kimmel asked.
“Yeah,” Bush said.
Despite the laughter, the UFO phenomenon is less of a fringe issue than many Americans believe. A Gallup poll found that 71% of Americans believe “the government is hiding something it knows about UFOs.”
Whatever the actual content of the government’s UFO secrets, even if there’s absolutely nothing to the phenomena beyond secret military tests, disclosure should be the expected outcome in response to widespread public sentiment. Anything less — such as laughing as a war criminal former president continues a tradition of over-classification on his reputation rehabilitation tour — would be anti-democratic.
