"More than 100 former or retired US Air Force personnel -- once trusted to operate or guard weapons of mass destruction -- have come forward and revealed ongoing UFO surveillance of, and occasional interference with, our nuclear weapons,'' Hastings told the assembled news reporters. "This information alters the historical perspective on the nuclear arms race and much, much more."

''The fact that the Pentagon and CIA have successfully kept the truth from public view for so long is in itself mind-boggling.''

One of the officers, Robert Salas, was a missile commander at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana on March 1967 when 10 nuclear missiles deactivated after a 'glowing red object' was spotted over his missile silo.

"There is current excessive secrecy in our government surrounding this phenomenon,” Salas told the crowd. And don't we all wish that WikiLeaks was on the case?

Death By 1000 Papercuts points out that this is the third UFO-related story this week: The United Nations appointed 58-year-old astrophysicist Mazlan Othman as its alien envoy. And on Sept. 21st, Vatican astronomer Guy Consolmagno said he'd happily baptise an alien -- but "only if they asked."

"Any entity -- no matter how many tentacles it has -- has a soul,” Othman said. Consolmagno's remarks aren't the first from the Vatican expressing support for the idea of extra terrestrials. Two years ago, the Vatican newspaper ran an interview headlined "the extraterrestrial is my brother."

Despite Stephen Hawking's warning to the contrary, maybe aliens really are just our "brothers'' who just want us to get along. Maybe that's why, even despite so-called evidence to the contrary, the U.S. Air Force finalized its investigation into UFO in 1969.

Project Blue Book, as it was known, concluded that "no UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force has ever given any indication of threat to our national security."

And don't you wish we could say the same about our own species?