This is newly interesting in light of the recent pentagon UFO revelations (https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/23/us/politics/pentagon-ufo-...). While these have low credibility, and even if true are likely not extraterrestrial, finding life on mars would change this calculation.
Lower then low, to the point that whenever somebody mentions them, I believe there was just a "wish to be true" and then stop.
When checked, it was just a "rerelase" of the old already published material (one can also think about to whose benefit that distraction was) which was already carefully debunked by Mick West:
Also, one day after NYT published their article "No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public" they published a correction too:
"Correction: July 24, 2020
An earlier version of this article inaccurately rendered remarks attributed to Harry Reid, the retired Senate majority leader from Nevada. Mr. Reid said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied; he did not say that crashes had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades. An earlier version also misstated the frequency with which the director of national intelligence is supposed to report on unidentified aerial phenomena. It is 180 days after enactment of the intelligence authorization act, not every six months."
Emphasis mine, now imagine how many articles in how many media were written before the above correction, and it will explain what most of the consumers got as the message (namely, the first, utterly fake version with fake "crashes").
Lower then low, to the point that whenever somebody mentions them, I believe there was just a "wish to be true" and then stop.
When checked, it was just a "rerelase" of the old already published material (one can also think about to whose benefit that distraction was) which was already carefully debunked by Mick West:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7jcBGLIpus
Mick West's full playlist with explanations:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL-4ZqTjKmhn5Qr0tCHkCV...
An article mentioning Mick West:
https://petapixel.com/2020/04/28/that-navy-ufo-footage-has-a...
Also, one day after NYT published their article "No Longer in Shadows, Pentagon’s U.F.O. Unit Will Make Some Findings Public" they published a correction too:
"Correction: July 24, 2020 An earlier version of this article inaccurately rendered remarks attributed to Harry Reid, the retired Senate majority leader from Nevada. Mr. Reid said he believed that crashes of objects of unknown origin may have occurred and that retrieved materials should be studied; he did not say that crashes had occurred and that retrieved materials had been studied secretly for decades. An earlier version also misstated the frequency with which the director of national intelligence is supposed to report on unidentified aerial phenomena. It is 180 days after enactment of the intelligence authorization act, not every six months."
Emphasis mine, now imagine how many articles in how many media were written before the above correction, and it will explain what most of the consumers got as the message (namely, the first, utterly fake version with fake "crashes").