I'm convinced this is all phony. After a lot of hoopla, this story goes nowhere. Every trail is a dead end, and every lead has just dried up. I believe it is a fraud, either a deliberate hoax designed to distract us from something else, or a fake trail designed to lead the MSM into some blind ally so it can ridiculed. Or maybe its just an elaborate joke. Anything as "secret" as this would never have been released at all, and if so, it would be covered up with an elaborate cover story. No, this is a gag that was sprung prematurely and now they are just trying to ignore it before anybody traces it to its ultimate, and embarrassed, source.

The legit news agencies have given up because they smell a rat, they are being sucked into a trap designed to discredit them. There are too many dead ends, and if it were what it appears to be, a super secret leak that was compromised and then quickly plugged, you'd be hearing a lot more from more experienced reporters. So far all I've seen is commentaries on the commentaries on 2nd hand websites desperate to believe.

I think the NYT bit a baited hook, but spit it out before it could be set. They won't make that mistake again, but they're not particularly eager to admit they went after the bait in the first place. The alternative, that they discovered a super secret UFO program and now are not following up on the story just doesn't wash.

As far as the super-secret UFO project, that is nothing new. As far back as the '40s and '50s there were official government projects to investigate UFOs--Project Sign, Project Grudge, Project Blue Book, so it would not be surprising if there were others.

As far as I'm concerned, this fails the Strangeness Test. If we do encounter machines in our atmosphere operated by alien technologies, they would be so technologically advanced over us they would not even be recognizable as artifacts. We would probably mistake them for biological or meteorological, even spiritual phenomena.

19th century UFOs looked like balloons. Blimps and zeppelins were things they could relate to.