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valid information from the fanciful, which get all mixed into one big pot of unhealthy soup. (This is essentially se/f-made disinformation, and no secret agents are needed to disseminate it since the media and large swaths of the so-called UFO community take care of that themselves.) But behind all the extreme reactions is the actual fact that the state doesn't seem to want us to know UFOs exist. Since we know thev do exist, we have to assume that the government knows that, too. If so, why is it hiding this, and what is it hiding? People are desperate for answers, and very frustrated, and they have understandably come to deeply mistrust our government on this issue. Some take advantage of this situation. So-called whistleblowers at varying levels of psychological health and mental clarity regularly jump into the pot—people who have no relationship to the credible sources I referred to earlier—claiming direct knowledge of some aspect of a sinister government cover-up. Undiscriminating UFO groups have made them or their spokespeople into heroes and trotted them out at press conferences, offering them up like sacrificial lambs to be promptly ridiculed by the few media that bother to take note. And in many of these clearly unfounded cases, the ridicule is well deserved. Others market themselves as scholars or activists, making baseless accusations and claims about government misdeeds regarding UFOs, based on rumor rather than record. These extremists only serve to muddy the waters and compound the public relations nightmare that UFOs already face within public discourse. Sadly, this is the only kind of UFO information that so many Americans have been exposed to. Putting the hype aside, serious investigators and retired officials make the legitimate point that the known facts alone, such as those raised so far in this book, do lead to perplexing, unanswered questions about U.S. government secrecy. In 1999, the French COMETA group chastised the United States for what it calls an "impressive repressive arsenal" of tactics protecting UFO information, including a policy of disinformation and military regulations prohibiting public disclosure of sightings. Air Force Regulation 200-2, "Unidentified Flying Objects Reporting," for example, prohibits the release to the public and the media of any data about "those objects which are not explainable." An even more restrictive procedure is outlined in the Joint Army Navy Air Force Publication 146, which threatens to prosecute anyone under its jurisdiction—including pilots, civilian agencies, merchant marine captains, and even some fishing vessels—for disclosing reports of those sightings relevant to U.S. security. Fortunately, I am not aware of any cases in which such extreme actions were taken. But we do know for sure, as shown by the Bolender memo and government files released through the FOIA, that the U.S. government has had some level of involvement in UFO investigations since the close of nm com nm Project Blue Book, despite claims to the contrary. Nevertheless, officials are usually irrationally unresponsive to Nevertheless,