Hillary wants to believe

Is Hillary Clinton's campaign manager is making a play for the rubes who like Trump?

While Donald Trump continues to promise a wall between the US and Mexico, Hillary Clinton is thinking about a different kind of alien: if elected she will release classified UFO files, her campaign manager revealed.

As the Clinton campaign passed through Las Vegas last month, campaign manager John Podesta told KLAS-TV Politics NOW that he has persuaded the Democratic candidate to open up the long-closed documents for the US public.

'I think I've convinced her that we need an effort to kind of go look at that and declassify as much as we can, so that people have their legitimate questions answered,' he said.

In December of last year, Clinton said much the same at a meeting with The Conway Daily Sun, in which she 'enthusiastically' told the editorial board, 'Yes, I'm going to get to the bottom of [the UFO files].'

She added that Podesta 'has made me personally pledge we are going to get the information out, one way or another. Maybe we could have, like, a task force to go to Area 51.'

She also said, 'I think we may have been [visited already]. We don't know for sure.'

How could she not know? She was the First Lady!

She has been linked to UFOs since 1995, when a photograph was taken of her and businessman Laurance Rockefeller in which she can be seen holding a copy of the book Are We Alone: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life by Paul Davies.

Believe it or not, I was told about that meeting from a private source, not long after it happened. (I did not actually know anyone who attended the party, but word got around. Back then, my ears were long enough to hear that kind of gossip.)

Basically, Laurance Rockefeller was fascinated with flying saucers -- so much so that he funded a nutty alien-hunter named Dr. John Mack to the tune of a quarter million bucks a year. Rockefeller's pockets were extremely deep, and Bill Clinton needed to amass a re-election war chest. So the President listened patiently to Laurance's UFO spiel, nodding his head and trying to look interested. After the ordeal was over, Clinton made his escape and seems never to have given the topic much thought ever again.

In the mid-to-late 1990s, there were a few east coast Brahmin types who become immersed in the flying saucer subculture. I can't recall many names, although Marie "Bootsie" Galbraith (wife of a famous investment banker) comes to mind. Her idea of serious UFO research was to have name-brand investigators flown out to New York, where she would treat them to phenomenal meals. Nothing wrong with that, I suppose -- but I don't see how that kind of "research" can make ET any less mythical.

If memory serves, Hans-Adam II, Prince of Liechtenstein (!) was also deeply intrigued by this absurdity. Strange days indeed!

And those strange days continue. Podesta has been bleating about flying saucers for some time now. Can he possibly be serious?

Maybe.

Or maybe there are still some wealthy, gullible aristos out there willing to invest in any candidate who flatters their flying saucer fantasies.

(I'm surprised that they don't fund Ted Cruz. According to Donald Trump, Cruz really is an alien.)