Perhaps the Roswell anniversary occupies that site in the popular culture of American democracy that can’t be occupied by the anniversary of the CIA. Like Roswell, the Central Intelligence Agency pinpoints its origins to July 1947. Like Roswell, it is enmeshed in conspiracy and innuendo, in hints, cover-ups, denials, and half-truths. It implicates and is implicated in the Cold War. Both are outside the ideal and civil speech of the public sphere; both remain part of the hidden underside of liberal democracy. The stigma attached to UFOs and conspiracy theory, the stigma that embeds Roswell in the popular subculture, provides a fire wall that continues to block access to the CIA. Even at a time when the agency seems ever less significant, concern with its crimes and attention to its secrets carry a hint of paranoia that reflects more on the one seeking to investigate the CIA than on the agency itself. It’s hard to talk about spooks, black budgets, and covert actions without sounding crazy. We can talk about Roswell because in so doing we deliberately enter a stigmatized site. We can’t talk seriously, to be sure; but we can talk, jokingly, laughingly. We can’t even joke about the CIA.
– Aliens in America (1998), p. 190