I’ve been thinking; there are lots of supposedly weird mysteries regarding aliens, secret technologies and other hush-hush shit that’s been covered up in America over the decades, and it created the impression that the Americans have who-knows-what secret shit they’re not telling anyone about, stuff developed in cooperation with aliens, or remote viewing capabilities using psychics and so on.

Let’s see, the Philadelphia experiment – they supposedly had a ship equipped with some kind of a magnetic device that caused weird phenomena and reportedly teleported from one place to another and so on. It was in 1943. The most likely explanation I found is that there was a shipment of uranium for the Manhattan project and they had to make up a story explaining enhanced security when they were unloading and storing it. By apparently confirming that there was some secret military experiment going on, they explained away everything they wanted to hide, provided an explanation that sounded completely unrealistic and bound to waste a potential adversary’s time, and it also creates a veil of mystery around American scientific and technological capabilities. It’s a triple-win.

The Roswell UFO incident. Supposedly a hush-hush military operation of recovering the fragments of an alien spacecraft, including the actual aliens. Cover story is that it was a meteorological balloon. A more likely explanation is that Roswell is very close to the White Sands missile base and all sorts of nuclear installations, and who knows what kind of an accident they had with nuclear or other secret military hardware that they didn’t want anyone to know about, since it was 1947, at the height of the cold war paranoia when all sorts of weapons were being developed and tested. When journalists started talking about the aliens and a cover-up, this must have been perceived as an excellent thing by the military – any possible inquiry will be redirected into total nonsense, and they can even invent some of it to keep the story going, and, if anything, it will scare the Russians and make them think we’re stronger than we are.

Area 51 in Nevada. Supposedly a place where the military keeps the UFOs and aliens and stuff. Later revealed that it was probably used for testing the U-2 spy plane. Let’s assume it was also used for testing stealth aeroplanes and similar equipment. Let’s make a further jump and assume it was used to test stealth nuclear-tipped cruise missiles and similar stuff that was prohibited by the START treaty and the Russians couldn’t know about it. You first let out rumours that you’re keeping the aliens there. When the Russians ask to inspect it, you tell them that you have stealth aeroplanes and all sorts of spy shit there that you can’t let them inspect, but none of it’s START-related, scout’s honour. If you let the information leak through a double agent or some other source the Russians trust, they will believe it.

Remote viewing. You let everybody know that the CIA is experimenting with remote viewing and parapsychology in order to peek into Soviet secret facilities. You actually do keep a team working on it, in order to make it plausible. In reality, it serves the purpose of protecting a spy you have in the Soviet facility, whose identity would have been compromised if something became public that nobody could possibly know about unless he’s on the inside.

Basically, it’s a double-whammy: you hide what you want to hide by pretending to hide something extraordinarily weird and advanced, and you also create the impression that you have stuff that’s completely “out there”, while your adversaries are “mere humans” with ordinary human technology; and if the entire story is debunked, the real secret is still safe. It’s all guesswork on my part, but it provides a very simple and straightforward explanation for lots of very weird stuff that’s been “leaked” over the decades, but eventually nothing ever came of it. It’s also very much in line with the Americans always creating an impression that there’s more to their technology than there actually is, and there’s much more going on than anyone is allowed to know.