A panel of former government officials spoke about the subject at the Atomic Testing Museum this month.
The panel, which was part of a series of similarly themed events being held during the run-up to the museum's closure of its "Area 51: Myth or Reality" exhibit later this year, was moderated by KLAS investigative journalist George Knapp and featured several experts in the field including CIA chief historian Dr. David Robarge and former CIA senior scientific intelligence officer S. Eugene Poteat.
The topic of secrecy, especially in relation to Area 51, was inevitably mentioned during the event with several panel members reiterating that there is no longer anything to hide regarding the base.
"What happens at that secret base called Area 51 is known by everybody, there’s nothing secret," Poteat stated, while Dr. Robarg said "I can neither confirm nor deny that secrets can be kept."
The CIA has long being associated with the topic of UFOs and UFO secrecy in the United States.
Back in 1952 for instance a nationwide wave of sightings prompted the creation of a special panel which took just 12 hours to conclude that UFOs were not a threat to national security.
The officials however did decide that the reporting of UFOs could represent a problem and decided to recommend that such sightings be debunked. Years later following the release of previously classified documents it was revealed that the agency's involvement in this area had actually continued well in to the 1970s - long after they had officially denounced any interest in it.
When Jeremy Corbell, a filmmaker who was attending the museum panel event, asked whether the CIA still maintained an interest in UFOs Dr. Robarge categorically stated that it didn't and that most of the UFO reports in the 1950s and 1960s could be put down to sightings of the U-2 spy plane.
Whether this was actually the case however continues to remain a topic of some debate.
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