Government UFO. Numbered and signed on reverse of print. High-quality stochastic print on 100 lb, low-acid, uncoated paper with archival ink. Ships rolled. Frame not included. Read about finding a frame before choosing a size.

The Story

Skeptics aren’t the only ones who think that UFOs come out of our government’s basement rather than outer space. Even die-hard UFO enthusiasts admit that a portion of UFOs are genuinely part of a government ufo program. But that doesn’t make them any less alien, they would say. For example, it has long been thought that some element of the US government acquired a specimen of alien technology during an alleged crash-landing incident back in 1947 and reverse engineered it for military application.

In one of the most famous episodes of American UFO History, the US Air Force issued a press release about its recovery of a “flying disc” that had crash landed in Roswell, New Mexico in June of 1947. Headlines ran with the story until a press conference was held in which the military corrected the record, saying it had only been a crashed weather balloon. Ufologists believe that was the day that the UFO phenomenon officially went underground and with it the keys to advanced extraterrestrial technology.

For almost forty years following the the 1947 events in Roswell, the theory of an underground government UFO program lacked any substantiating evidence. That changed in the 1980s when controversial presidential briefing documents surfaced through an alleged leak. They describe to then-president Harry Truman the recovery of an exotic craft and two extraterrestrial biological entities (one dead, one alive). Other documents part of the same trove show Truman assembling a team of twelve multidisciplinary experts to learn everything possible from the extraordinary acquisition.

I’m Sorry Mr President, But You Don’t Have the Necessary Clearance

In the years following, the president is said to have maintained oversight of the government ufo program, but that changed when Truman’s successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, signed presidential directive 5412 in 1954. The directive relinquished oversight of all US covert operations to an unelected subcommittee of the National Security Council. Eisenhower found himself locked out of the project and allegedly even threatened to invade the now infamous Area 51 with the US army if he wasn’t let back in.

UFO researchers believe that Eisenhower was the last of the American presidents ever to have direct knowledge of these so-called “black projects,” and that he warned the American public in his farewell address about the danger posed by their secrecy. Since his administration, it’s believed that trillions have been secretly siphoned into what the government calls “unacknowledged special access projects” (USAPs), or what conspiracy theorists might more accurately call government ufo research and development. People like Bob Lazar have emerged from these projects to tell of the work they themselves performed in reverse-engineering alien craft for military application. And many believe that much of the unprecedented technological advancement that was enjoyed in the latter half of the twentieth century can be attributed to a fractional leaking of alien technology into the private commercial business sphere.

Government UFO: The Artwork

Government UFO illustrates one of the many fantasies of conspiracy theorists who imagine a runaway group of mad scientists operating right under the nose of a country unaware. Its black and white patina makes you think of scratched 1950s film footage and places the piece in an historical context. Hanging this in a room adds a unique cocktail of history, secrecy, imagination, and a bit of humour.