Looks like Mulder was right

It took 70 years, but the government finally has admitted it’s been looking for little green men.

Well, OK, they aren’t necessarily little nor green.

But the Defense Department has fessed up to studying what could be alien aircraft — specifically, things that have zoomed past our fastest jets with no apparent propulsion or hovered with no source of lift.

We picked seven decades of denial for this story, because the Defense Department first went into total lockdown after what many observers believed was the crash of an otherworldly aircraft near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

Since then, there have been research programs buried deep inside the Pentagon — and now a former director of one such organization has openly admitted what’s been happening.

Luis Elizondo ran something called the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, and he only spoke out after resigning in October because of what he perceived was lack of funding and support from Pentagon insiders.

IT TURNS out that Elizondo’s secret program came up with some fascinating results.

Elizondo now has given interviews and Harry Reid, former Senate majority leader who has worked to keep the program afloat, spoke out on “60 Minutes.”

Elizondo told The New York Times: Officials with the program have studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft — including one released in August of a whitish oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two Navy F/A-18F fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.

Separate from these programs run by the Navy and the CIA, there is a national database where sightings of unidentified flying objects are recorded.

In the past year, there were 44 entries from Idaho — including two in Kootenai County.

On New Year’s Eve last year, a “flaming ball” was sighted around 11 p.m., heading in the direction of the airport from Lake Coeur d’Alene.

On Oct. 8, some residents of Athol reported seeing an orange ball in the sky (in the general direction of Sandpoint) and noted that it was visible for 15 minutes.

MANY OF the “sightings” the government concedes it has logged since launching research in 1952 have very reasonable explanations.

For instance, Google is testing a new program in an attempt to provide internet access all over the world with the use of giant balloons — and they’d surely look like UFOs.

But there also have been plenty of sightings that cannot be explained, encounters reported by military pilots and other trained observers.

So what do you think?

Have you seen something that simply defies explanation?

Let us know, because we’re going to visit this subject again.

We won’t laugh, even if you’re sure E.T. is in the bedroom closet.

Me?

Personally, I’ll go with a line from the movie “Contact,” in which Jodie Foster plays a scientist who receives transmissions from another galaxy.

As a young girl, Foster’s character is fascinated by the stars, and asks her dad if there are other intelligent beings somewhere out there.

He replies: “The universe is a huge place. If it’s just us, it would seem like an awful waste of space.”

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Steve Cameron is a columnist for The Press. Follow A Brand New Day at facebook.com/BrandNewDayCDAPress. Email: [email protected]

Have you ever seen a UFO? Email Steve at: [email protected]