Hillary Clinton Vows To Look Into UFOs

Hillary Clinton has made an unusual campaign promise — to "get to the bottom" of UFOs and Area 51 if she is elected president. Leaving the usual lore of Independence Day behind her, Clinton has vowed to make a serious effort in getting more information out to the public regarding UFO sightings and Area 51, the famed, top secret site once thought to have housed crashed extraterrestrial beings. So how would Clinton handle UFOs and Area 51, a topic gone untouched by any of the other presidential candidates?

Area 51 has long been unspoken of in political and military circles. Even though it is rumored to be a development and testing site for experimental weapons systems and aircraft, it wasn't officially named by the Central Intelligence Agency until 2013, according to a declassified CIA report. However, interest in the facility, a remote detachment of the Edwards Air Force Base, originally spiked after a 1947 weather balloon crashed in Roswell, New Mexico. The incident, now debunked but having long gone unexplained, led some people to believe that the military was using the facility to house and test on aliens discovered in the crash, according to a report by PBS. Despite the release of official documents that stated otherwise, the primary purpose of the facility is still unknown to the public, and speculation continues.

If elected, Clinton plans to put an end to the speculation. In a recent campaign stop in New Hampshire, journalist Daymond Steer of The Conway Daily Sun asked Clinton about her plans regarding possible extraterrestrial visitation. Clinton responded:

I think we may have been [visited already]. We don't know for sure.

Hillary and Bill Clinton are no strangers to the topic themselves. Steer reminded Clinton of another discussion they had had on UFOs in 2007, during which she had said: "... the No. 1 topic of freedom-of-information requests that her husband, former President Bill Clinton, received at his library was UFOs."

Bill Clinton has also been probed on the topic. In a 2014 interview with talk show host Jimmy Kimmel, Clinton said: "If we were visited [by aliens] someday, I wouldn't be surprised. I just hope that it's not like [the movie] Independence Day, that it's a conflict."

Clinton's campaign chairman, John Podesta, is in large part responsible for the presidential candidate's recent pledge. Podesta, who served as both former White House chief of staff to Bill Clinton and special counselor to President Obama, has been a huge advocate for the public release of UFO files.

At a National Press Club news conference in 2002, Podesta stated, as reported by Yahoo News:

It's time to open the books on questions that have remained in the dark, on the question of government investigations of UFOs. It's time to find out what the truth really is that's out there. We ought to do it, really, because it's right, because the American people, quite frankly, can handle the truth, and we ought to do it because it's the law.

Now, he seems to have gotten Clinton on board. Clinton has been brainstorming ideas, and she said, "Maybe we could have ... a task force to go to Area 51." A Clinton presidency, therefore, could possibly see an Area 51 task force and many unsatisfied people if the alien conspiracies prove to be untrue (or scared, if they are).

In any case, perhaps it really is better to be safe than sorry. Maybe I've seen one too many alien movies, but we all know when the aliens demand to be "taken to your leader," it's better that leader be prepared.