Bill Clinton discusses the Roswell Incident

Here is an interesting video clip with former President Bill Clinton discussing the Roswell UFO incident.



Early in the questioning, Clinton mentions that there were people in his administration that thought there was a UFO and an alien buried in Nevada by the government (the location was off-limits to the public).  Clinton said he sent someone there to "figure it out."  According to him, there was just a secret defense installation there with people doing "boring" work that they didn't want anyone else to see.  Maybe that's true, but what I found to be interesting about it was that Clinton had to send someone to figure it out.  Not only were there people in his administration that thought there was a UFO there, but apparently this installation was so secret that he didn't even know what it was and couldn't just ask one of his generals what it was or pull it up in some sort of encrypted database of secret installations on his computer.

As far as Roswell goes, Clinton said he did attempt to find out if there were any secret documents about the UFO incident, but said that if there were any secret documents about it, they were concealed from him too.  He also said, "I wouldn't be the first President that underlings have lied to or that career bureaucrats have waited out.  But there may be some career person sitting around somewhere hiding these dark secrets even from elected presidents.  But if so, they successfully eluded me, and I'm almost embarrased to tell you I did try to find out."

So apparently, like a lot of us, even Clinton wanted to find out if something other than the official story happened at Roswell.  Many people suspect the government of lying and covering up Roswell and many other incidents and programs.  According to Clinton, underlings (i.e. government officials) have lied to Presidents before.  So if they'll lie to the President, who's to say they won't lie to us too?

I think we can also glean from Clinton's statement just what a tangled web the government is.  Not only did he not know about everything that was going on in the government, he also alludes to not being able to just pick up the phone and find out anything he wants to know about particular government operations - he had to send someone to find out about the secret operation in Nevada.   He said that operation was in the public domain now, but you have to wonder how many other operations there are that are going on now that aren't in the public domain.  You also have to wonder, considering that he admitted that 'underlings' have lied to Presidents, how many times a President sought information about secret information and was lied to about what was really going on.  You also have to wonder why the 'underlings' would lie about it to the President in the first place.  You also have to wonder why an 'underling' would be privy to something the President wasn't.  Makes you wonder who the 'underling' really is.

And I couldn't tell for sure, but I thought Clinton seemed slightly fidgety in the video and had a tendency to look down a lot (but, granted, it was hard to tell if he was looking down and I'm not sure where the audience was sitting either).  If my observation is accurate, I can't help but wonder if he wasn't hiding something himself.

Sometimes I think the President has become to much of a figurehead to the people.  People often applaud the President when things are going good, and blame the President when things are going bad.  But I don't think we should lump to much of the praise or blame on the Presidents.  I think that video clip really shows that a President does not rule alone - there is a lot more going on in the government than just what the President does.  I think the 'career bureaucrats' that Clinton mentions wield a lot more power in Washington than the Presidents do, but the career bureaucrats seem to remain mostly behind the scenes.


H/T for the video.