Not in the US at least since 1993, when some "far-thinking" (insert sarcasm mode) senators
stopped funding NASA's SETI program (Brown of Nevada was one).

As for the discovery of a real ETI discovery, the word would not stay put for very long.
Jill Tarter of the SETI Institute wrote in a 1997 issue of Astronomy magazine how a
seemingly positive signal of artificial origin was detected by them. In less than 12
hours, one of the technicians had called his girlfriend to say that they had found
the real deal and things started spreading.

The signal turned out to be a satellite of human origin and the discovery was made
just in time before the media got a hold of it.

Remember the famous (or infamous) Mars rock of 1996 that was thought to contain
fossils from the Red Planet? Word of that discovery first came from the mistress and
hooker of a US senator who had told her of the find in confidence. She wasn't quite
a professional in the astronomical sense, though, as she wrote in her diary that NASA
had found life on Pluto!

So the message might be garbled and misunderstood, but when we do find solid
evidence of extraterrestrial life, it will not stay hidden for very long.

As for the Government and secrecy, they couldn't keep Watergate under wraps
even when most of the media wasn't all that interested in the story at first.

And what scientist wouldn't give up major body parts to be the one that got
to make and announce such a historic find?