NO ALIENS: SNOWDEN

Says he checked CIA files

American whistleblower Edward Snowden said he went looking for any evidence of extraterrestrial life hiding in U.S. government documents, but couldn’t find any.

Snowden has just released his new book, “Permanent Record,” which details his life as an employee of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and subcontractor for the National Security Agency (NSA), and his leaking of classified government surveillance information to the press in 2013. In the memoir, he writes that he tried to answer a burning question many conspiracy theorists have been positing for years — whether the U.S. government had found — and was hiding — aliens from the public.

Like anybody else would be, Snowden was curious. The difference is that Snowden had the security clearance to access classified government documents, so he went looking on the internal network, but to no avail.

“For the record, as far as I could tell, aliens have never contacted Earth, or at least they haven’t contacted U.S. intelligence,” Snowden writes in his book.

I HAD RIDICULOUS ACCESS TO THE NETWORKS OF THE NSA, THE CIA, THE MILITARY, ALL THESE GROUPS. I COULDN’T FIND ANYTHING.

In an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan posted Wednesday, Snowden said he knows people want aliens to exist — and says that they probably do — but if so, the U.S. isn’t purposefully hiding that information.

“The idea that we’re hiding them, if we are hiding them, I had ridiculous access to the networks of the NSA, the CIA, the military, all these groups. I couldn’t find anything,” Snowden told Rogan. “So if it’s hidden, and it could be hidden, it’s hidden really damn well, even from people who are on the inside.”

The epicentre of extraterrestrial conspiracy theories is the Area 51 military base in Nevada. For decades, people have believed that the government is hiding and researching extraterrestrials at the site. Last month, more than two million people RSVP’ED to a Facebook event titled “Storm Area 51,” joking that they would rush the base and uncover whatever secrets it held.

“Everybody wants to believe in conspiracy theories because it helps life make sense. It helps us believe that somebody is in control, that somebody is calling the shots,” Snowden said in the Rogan interview.

During his snooping, he managed to debunk a few other theories as well.

“In case you were wondering: Yes, man really did land on the moon. Climate change is real. Chemtrails are not a thing,” he writes in his book.