For the first time these documents seemed to officially confirm that the U.S. government did recover a crashed saucer at Roswell in the summer of 1947 and that the Majestic 12 committee was formed by President Harry Truman on Sept 24, 1947, to investigate the implications of this incident. Since then more MJ-12 documents have surfaced that indicate the United States has secretly worked with aliens and utilized their technology.

Through the stories of whistleblowers, and the recovered memories of abductees, it seems that our planet has attracted all manner of aliens. They range from humanoids, the notorious grays, to "reptoids" and praying mantis creatures. In secret underground bases they keep vats of human body parts to produce medication for their genetically deficient bodies.

They have mutilated cattle and abducted thousands of people against their will. Some are peace loving, others are war-like and bloodthirsty. Some are solid, physically real beings with "nuts and bolts" craft; others are ghostly entities that skip into and out of our physical universe. World governments, and especially the U.S. government, have worked hard at keeping this all secret through the use of debunking, disinformation and ridicule.

Ufology, like any other subject, goes through great changes. The belief that UFOs are vehicles piloted by aliens from outer space has dominated ufology since the 1950s. The contactees of the 1950s told of meeting friendly humanoid aliens who took them for rides to the Moon, Mars and Venus. Their claims were either ignored or dismissed by the more scientifically inclined UFO investigators, who only considered sightings of UFOs by reliable witnesses.

By the 1960s, sightings of UFOs landing and disgorging their occupants became more acceptable but were still viewed with some suspicion. This all changed when the story of Betty and Barney Hill's abduction was published in John Fuller's book The Interrupted Journey in 1966.

"Exopolitics" is an area of ufology that has emerged over the last decade, but its origins are rooted in the 1970s. One of the key factors was the release of Steven Spielberg's film "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" (CE3K) in 1977. In the post-Watergate period, its story about a secret government project devoted to contacting aliens and spreading disinformation about UFOs certainly hit a nerve.

The media publicity surrounding CE3K, which was based on real UFO reports and stories, brought forward more alien abduction reports. Simultaneously, the long-forgotten crash of a flying saucer at Roswell, New Mexico, and many other similar crash cases were re-examined and re-evaluated.

The late 1970s seems to have been a fertile time for the spreading of information and disinformation. Lieutenant Colonel George Edwards (retired, U.S. Air Force), spoke about his involvement in the development of the Avrocar VZ-9, which was an 18-foot diameter flying saucer-like aircraft. There were high hopes that this would be a "flying jeep" for the Army. Unfortunately, it did not fly very well and the project was cancelled in 1961. It was Edwards' view that the U.S. Air Force was really testing an alien flying saucer elsewhere and that they used the Avrocar project as an explanation for any saucer sightings.