It is hard for me to blame so much on government and military incompetence.
Here's another aspect of the whole business that bothers me. If the military recovered a crashed flying saucer and bodies at Roswell, then they have had undeniable evidence of alien visitation since 1947. If they have spent the years since then pouring money into back-engineering that craft and studying the remains of the occupants, they have at least some understanding of the military and intelligence capabilities the foreign power responsible for them has at their disposal.
In this scenario, the military could not dismiss alien abduction reports without some investigation or intervention. If found to be true, some counter measure, for at least themselves, would naturally have to pursued. Also, some visible effort to combat the intrusion of UFOs into our air space would seem to be another logical outcome.
You almost have to believe these efforts are so covert as to be invisible and operating in another dimension themselves to think they, or something like them, are actually going on.
In the end, I don't know what to believe.
Ok, let's follow that logic.
Let's assume a "sport model" zeti reticulan ferarri testarossa carrying 3 greys crashes in new mexico in 1947.
What happens next? The roswell base releases info without clearing it, Truman freaks out, slams the lid down worried the commies will get their hands on the hardware, ushers it off to a super secret bunker somewhere, puts his top braniacs on it, and hunkers down waiting for the goodies to come out to hammer the ruskies back to moldavia or wherever.
One of two things happen: either they reverse engineer some interesting stuff or they don't. Forget the bodies, that won't help us with the reds. Gimme the keys to propulsion and weapons systems.
Let's say they
somehow figure out antigrav or shields or ray gun tech or whatever.
#1 they're gonna be awfully quiet about it. If it does see the light of day (like Panama or whatever) it's gonna be whispers and rumors and whatnot.
#2 I think in 60+ years you'd see some of it operationalized. Maybe fibre optics or stealth or semiconductors or whatever came of this... but each of these technologies has real people behind them with a chain of inventions and discoveries all their own.
Hell, 9-11 would've been a perfect time. Vietnam would have been a perfect time. Desert storm II would have been a perfect time. Uphill losing battles where the public is pissed at the military and we really,
really need a win.
But we didn't. Maybe some small crap came out of this lab, but nothing really earth shattering or substantial.
So let's go back to the other possibility: they got the goods and have sunk billions into researching it... and found dick all.
What would happen then?
First, the powers that be after a few years would be hopping mad. Then a few years later, embarrassed as hell. Then a few decades later just want the whole thing to go away.
I mean, let's say a couple hundred to a couple thousand people are "in" on the secret. The more money and time that got wasted, and the more the cold war threat faded, how could you justify lying to the entire world about the truth of whatever the buggers are and wasting billions essentially with your thumb up your butt? Coming back empty handed?
Nope. You may just shut the whole shebang down, melt it down to slag, and cover it with a few dozen feet of concrete to be safe.
I think this option is far more likely if we did in fact get hardware.