A more important question, “Why were they a secret to begin with and why is most of 1947 crash still highly classified?”
Didn’t know if adversaries had leaped ahead and left us in the dust.
Also, the American people want answers right now, so policy was to retain and study to see if they are one of ours or China or Russian.
Now they can say they studied them and have no answers other than we are looking into the sightings. We have a responsibility to protect our national airspace, with UFOs we couldn’t very well say, “sorry, we can’t protect you. Have no idea.
Also, too much documentation of sightings.
Saw one myself.
All this nonsense about pilots seeing a UFO AND THEN SAYING: “did you see that? I’m not going say anything” (implying MIB show up and threaten you). Never happened and won’t happen.
In my case, the other pilot and I couldn’t wait to land and tell everyone about our sighting.
Years ago they encouraged pilots to publicly say they saw something as the reports usually were reported in National Enquiry, thereby discrediting sightings. Now we have very good tapes and recording devices.
Back in the mid 90s me, my wife, and our 3 year-old daughter were able to visit the Roswell crash site. It was on land owned by a man named Hub Corn. We had to pay a certain amount, and sign waivers, but he did take us back there and we got a ton of pictures. I don't know exactly what happened - or if we'll ever truly know - but it was fascinating being there and imagining what took place.
While we were there we were able to visit with Walter Haut, who wrote the initial press release about the incident. He was an interesting man, but I came away thinking he'd dramatically over-stated his part in all of this.
Our betters don't want to create a panic. Oh, wait...