[devwastaken]

The idea of UFO's was created and funded by the U.S. during their X planes project to create misinformation to attempt to keep the project itself quiet from the soviets. At a certain point they didn't have to push the idea, people took it up freely and expanded it. The Pentagon is not going to do anything against its own interests. In this crazy timeline maybe they'll use it to demand more funding for secret projects.

[mjbeswick]

Maybe the Roswell incident in 1947 started it, as one of the classified balloons crashed that used to monitor Soviet nuclear tests. The CIA capitalised on the rumours relating to aliens and used them to build a campaign of misinformation. Even if there were any real sighting of flight tests it would have been really hard for the Soviets to filter them out from all the nonsense. The fact that people still believe the rumours today show what a great idea it was!