I guess the government may not be hiding them (at least up to the level of their oversight ability), but defence most contractors certainly are.

AARO is project blue book/condon committee all over again. Ostensible investigation, directed to reach a negative conclusion^0? Theatre to deal with public momentum and rising interest in a topic deemed too scary to broach, by persuading people there's nothing to see.

It's sad that the US turns so much obvious disinformation at its own citizens. The ultimate effect of this is not to protect national security, but to very effectively undermine it.

Aside from disinformation efforts like AARO (or we can say that AARO has been infested with, or strong-armed by the counterintelligence camp, even if it is not entirely a disinfo effort), another aspect is that actual sincere government oversight investigation is thwarted by multiple layers of obfuscation:

- investigators may not have the correct title 50 and title 10 accesses to request info

- info may be prevented from any public disclosure by the atomic secrets act

- investigators with authority to access records may be denied by those who hold the records

- records may be in black programs / SAPs the existence of which cannot be revealed to investigators

- the records may be put outside of any government oversight at all by moving them into beyond black programs: the corporate/contractor side of an actual black budget/bigoted SAP

- reactive security: if a SAP/program name is revealed outside the bigot list, it is immediately disbanded, given a new identity, and restarted, making it hard to pin down (similar to how shell companies work, I guess)

- contractors / privates that hold recovered materials don't want to divulge in order to protect potential future profits. I get that, and think it's fair, but it should function like patents: you get your 20 years, and if you can't work it within that time, it goes public. If we had that policy, most of the stuff would already be out.

The ultimate point is to keep information that should be studied and widely understood secret. The reason to do this, I think, is because the truth is too embarrassing for governments to reveal, not because it is too 'shocking' for the public to accept:

- non-humans are interacting, mostly covertly, with Earth and our governments cannot coordinate effective defence. In other words, our Earth governments are not the top dog, and cannot fulfill their mandate to protect us. Such failure is unlikely to be admitted, and would conceivably lead to a crisis of confidence in the authorities.

- this NHI tech is way advanced of our tech, and despite decades of study, we have no capability to reproduce, no answers, nothing to be proud of, nor show off. So, we're not the smartest, and our technology and understanding is very inferior in comparison. Again, this is pretty embarrassing for governments to admit.

I think it's incredibly sad that national security as used here, appears to be securing the national leadership from embarrassment, rather than the nation from threats.

The strategic weakness of this approach makes the sense of failure all the more acute: we could most effectively study and understand that tech in the open; and we could most effectively prepare a defense to hostile NHI by public awareness and education. Yet, it seems as if, in order to protect their organizations from the embarrassment of their failure, they are selling out everyone else and our future.

Not to mention the other major strategic failure: by keeping secret the activities of an infiltrating and invading force, you effectively run cover for their covert activities, in effect collaborating with them.

I find this attitude of our government, and defense contractors, charged as they are with our protection, to be the most disgusting aspect of the face-saving secrecy policy they continue to unwisely employ in their fear.

At best, it's primitive human psychology, not befitting of people who should make these big decisions that affect the world.

0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Condon_Committee#:~:text=In%20...