 It's hard to believe the year 2020 could have gone out with the bang any bigger than the hundreds of bangs it made across the previous 364 days. Yet, many in the UFO research world and those demanding full disclosure of secret government files on UFOs, space ships from other planets, and extraterrestrial lifeforms deemed the signing of a $2.3 trillion COVID-19 relief and government funding bill on December 28th as the bang they've been waiting for. Why? Back in June, Florida Senator Marco Rubio, chairperson of the Senate Intelligence Committee, included a committee comment to the Intelligence Authorization Act in the budget that directs the Director of National Intelligence in consultation with the Secretary of Defense and the heads of such other agencies to submit a report within 180 days of the date of the enactment of the act to the Congressional Intelligence and Armed Services Committee on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena. Because that committee comment was still buried somewhere in the nearly 6,000 pages of the budget, UFO-interested media sites immediately began counting down the 180 days to government disclosure of close encounters of the first through fifth kind. It has to happen because the money is in the budget and everyone knows the government spends every penny in the budget and then some, right? The Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021 calls for data and intelligence reporting held by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, a detailed analysis of data of the FBI which was derived from investigations of intrusions of Unidentified Aerial Phenomena data over restricted United States airspace, identification of potential aerospace or other threats posed by the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena to national security and an assessment of whether this Unidentified Aerial Phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries. And identification of any incidents or patterns that indicate a potential adversary may have achieved breakthrough aerospace capabilities that could put United States strategic or conventional forces at risk. That's all well and good and could conceivably lead to the disclosure of UFO-UAP encounters, the likes of which Fox and Mulder only dreamed of, if they really happen. There are a number of barriers to this kind of full disclosure though. The biggest is national security. In interviews recently about UFOs, both President Trump and former President Obama alluded to knowing things about UFOs that they were not allowed to tell. A former Israeli space security official went so far as to say that it's not just our governments but aliens themselves that are blocking disclosure due to security issues. They fear we can't handle the knowledge. And then there's the fact that just because money is in the budget and gets spent, it's not necessarily being spent on what it was intended to be spent on. This happens all the time, both openly and covertly. Who would argue if some UFO money went to something else like COVID relief or disaster aid? Finally, six months is a very short period in government time to get data from the various secretive organizations that may have it, check it for security risks, run it by review committees, and all the other things that fall under the definition of bureaucratic red tape. Those are the same six months where government attention in the U.S. is rightfully being spent on a transition of administrations, a continuing pandemic, a vaccine rollout, non-UFO defense issues, a Super Bowl, and a myriad of other things demanding the attention of those running the country. It's important to hold government officials to their commitments. And this is definitely more of a commitment than a campaign promise. And even if the 180-day countdown is reached without disclosure, it's still a commitment. And one that implies to many that there is definitely something to be disclosed or prevented from being disclosed. Isn't it nice that 2021 begins with something less disastrous than 2020 hit us with? I'm Darren Marlar. Thanks for joining me in the Weird Darkness.