如果希拉里当总统，她会揭开外星人之谜吗？

Hillary Clinton Gives U.F.O. Buffs Hope She Will Open the X-Files
如果希拉里当总统，她会揭开外星人之谜吗？

When Jimmy Kimmel asked Hillary Clinton in a late-night TV interview about U.F.O.s, she quickly corrected his terminology.

当吉米·基梅尔(Jimmy Kimmel)在一档深夜电视节目中向希拉里·克林顿(Hillary Clinton)提到UFO时，她马上对这个术语的使用进行了纠正。

“You know, there’s a new name,” Mrs. Clinton said in the March appearance. “It’s unexplained aerial phenomenon,” she said. “U.A.P. That’s the latest nomenclature.”

“实际上它有一个新名字，”克林顿在3月的那次露面中说。“无法解释的空中现象，简称UAP，这就是它最新的学名。”

Known for her grasp of policy, Mrs. Clinton has spoken at length in her presidential campaign on topics as diverse as Alzheimer’s research and military tensions in the South China Sea. But it is her unusual knowledge about extraterrestrials that has struck a small but committed cohort of voters.

克林顿以对政策的把握著称，她在总统竞选中发表的长篇讲话，涉及从阿尔茨海默氏症研究到南海军事对峙的广泛主题。但是，她对外星生物的这种非同寻常的了解，已经打动了一群为数不多但立场坚定的选民。

Mrs. Clinton has vowed that barring any threats to national security, she would open up government files on the subject, a shift from President Obama, who typically dismisses the topic as a joke. Her position has elated U.F.O. enthusiasts, who have declared Mrs. Clinton the first “E.T. candidate.”

克林顿曾誓言要抵挡任何针对美国安全的威胁，她会在外星生物问题上公开政府文件，这与奥巴马大不相同，奥巴马通常会对这种事一笑置之。克林顿的立场让UFO爱好者心花怒放，他们宣告克林顿是第一个“ET候选人”。

“Hillary has embraced this issue with an absolutely unprecedented level of interest in American politics,” said Joseph G. Buchman, who has spent decades calling for government transparency about extraterrestrials.

“希拉里对这个问题的看重，在美国政界绝对是前所未有，”约瑟夫·G·布克曼(Joseph G. Buchman)说。数十年来，布克曼不断呼吁美国政府提高外星生物问题的透明度。

Mrs. Clinton, a cautious candidate who often bemoans being the subject of Republican conspiracy theories, has shown surprising ease plunging into the discussion of the possibility of extraterrestrial beings.

作为一个小心翼翼的总统候选人，克林顿经常抱怨自己成了共和党阴谋论的主角，但是在谈论外星生物的可能性时，她表现出来的轻松自如令人惊讶。

She has said in recent interviews that as president she would release information about Area 51, the remote Air Force base in Nevada believed by some to be a secret hub where the government stores classified information about aliens and U.F.O.s.

她在近日的采访中说，如果当选总统，她会公开有关51区(Area 51)的信息。51区是一个偏远的空军基地，位于内华达州，有人认为它是一个保密中心，被政府用来存放关于外星生物和UFO的秘密信息。

In a radio interview last month, she said, “I want to open the files as much as we can.” Asked if she believed in U.F.O.s, Mrs. Clinton said: “I don’t know. I want to see what the information shows.” But she added, “There’s enough stories out there that I don’t think everybody is just sitting in their kitchen making them up.”

上个月在接受电台采访时，她说，“我想尽可能多地公开文件”，当被问及如果她是否相信UFO的时候，克林顿说：“我不知道。我想看看资料说了什么。”但她也表示，“我们周围流传着那么多的外星生物故事，我不认为全都是人们坐在厨房里编造出来的。”

When asked about extraterrestrials in an interview with The Conway Daily Sun in New Hampshire last year, Mrs. Clinton promised to “get to the bottom of it.”

克林顿去年在新罕布什尔州接受《康威每日太阳报》(The Conway Daily Sun)采访，当被问及外星生物时，她承诺要“进行彻底调查”。

“I think we may have been” visited already, she said in the interview. “We don’t know for sure.”

“我认为，外星生物可能已经访问过我们，”她在接受采访时说。“我们还不确定。”

While Americans typically point to issues like the economy and terrorism as top priorities for the next president, a desire for answers about aliens has inspired a passionate bloc of voters, who make their voices heard on social media.

美国人通常认为经济、恐怖主义之类的问题应该是下任总统最优先考虑的，但一些热切的选民渴求获得有关外星生物的信息，他们在社交媒体上发出了自己的声音。

Stephen Bassett, who lobbies the government on extraterrestrial issues, views a Clinton presidency as a chance to finally get the United States to disclose all it knows about life beyond Earth. Since November 2014, Mr. Bassett’s organization has sent roughly 2.5 million Twitter messages to presidential candidates, elected officials and the news media urging a serious discussion of the issue.

斯蒂芬·巴塞特(Stephen Bassett)在就外星生物问题游说政府，他认为，克林顿当上总统是个契机，可以让美国最终披露手中掌握的所有有关地球以外生命的信息。自2014年11月，巴塞特的组织已经向各位总统候选人、当选官员，以及新闻媒体发送了大约250万条Twitter消息，敦促他们认真讨论这个问题。

“That was a storm, and now it’s like a steady drip,” Mr. Bassett said.

“那是一场风暴，而现在是源源不断的细流，”巴塞特说。

The movement viewed Mrs. Clinton’s decision to correct Mr. Kimmel’s use of the term U.F.O., which some view as loaded and rooted more in science fiction than in science, as a breakthrough because it “suggested she’d been briefed by someone and is not just being flippant,” Mr. Buchman said.

这些人把克林顿纠正基梅尔对术语UFO的使用视为一大突破，UFO这个词更多地植根于科幻虚构作品而不是科学，他们认为，克林顿的说法“显示有人告诉了她这件事，而她也很上心，”布克曼说。

In fact, Mrs. Clinton had been briefed. She was prepped by her campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, who is not only a well-respected Washington hand, having served as a top adviser to Mr. Obama and President Bill Clinton, but also a crusader for the disclosure of government information on unexplained phenomena that could prove the existence of intelligent life outside Earth.

事实上，确实是有人把这件事告诉了克林顿。她的竞选团队主席约翰·D·波德斯塔(John D. Podesta)不仅是一个受人尊敬的华盛顿圈内人，曾任奥巴马和比尔·克林顿总统的高级顾问，还大力呼吁政府公开一些信息，它们涉及无法解释的现象，可能可以证明地球外智慧生命的存在。

“The time to pull back the curtain on the topic is long overdue,” Mr. Podesta wrote in his foreword for the 2010 book “UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record,” by Leslie Kean, an investigative journalist.

“早就应该拉开这个话题的帷幕了，”波德斯塔在2010年出版的《UFO：将军、飞行员和政府官员的记录》(UFOs: Generals, Pilots and Government Officials Go on the Record)前言中写道。该书作者莱斯利·基恩(Leslie Kean)是一名调查记者。

Mrs. Clinton, who speaks frequently about her childhood aspirations to be a NASA astronaut, has been sympathetic to Mr. Podesta’s efforts.

克林顿经常提到自己儿时的理想是当NASA宇航员，她很能理解波德斯塔的努力。

In 1995, when she was photographed visiting Laurance S. Rockefeller, the billionaire philanthropist, in Jackson Hole, Wyo., she had tucked under her arm a copy of “Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life,” by Paul Davies.

1995年被拍到在怀俄明州杰克逊霍尔拜访拥有亿万财富的慈善家劳伦斯·S·洛克菲勒(Laurance S. Rockefeller)时，她胳膊下夹着一本保罗·戴维斯(Paul Davies)的《我们是惟一的吗?——发现外星生命的哲学含义》(Are We Alone?: Philosophical Implications of the Discovery of Extraterrestrial Life)。

Before that meeting, John H. Gibbons, the former director of the White House Office’s of Science and Technology Policy, had warned Mrs. Clinton about Mr. Rockefeller, who had spent years pressuring the government to release files relating to a 1947 crash near Roswell, N.M., that had become the source of theories about a cover-up of an alien spaceship.

在那次会面前，前白宫科技政策办公室(Office of Science and Technology Policy)主任约翰·H·吉本斯(John H. Gibbons)警告克林顿提防洛克菲勒。后者数年来一直向政府施压，要求公布和新墨西哥州罗斯韦尔附近发生的一起碰撞事件有关的文件。那起事件成了各种关于官方掩盖外星人宇宙飞船的理论的源头。

He will “want to talk to you about his interest in extrasensory perception, paranormal phenomena and U.F.O.s,” Mr. Gibbons wrote.

吉本斯写道，他会“希望向你讲述他对超感知觉、超自然现象和UFO的兴趣”。

When Mrs. Clinton started to talk openly about U.F.O.s and government disclosure in her 2016 campaign, some activists traced the remarks back to the 1995 meeting with Mr. Rockefeller.

当克林顿在2016年竞选期间开始公开谈论UFO和政府公开相关文件时，一些活动人士认为其言论的源头是1995年与洛克菲勒的会面。

To this subset of Americans who say the government is covering up what it knows about aliens, and who are incredibly vocal on social media, Mrs. Clinton’s discussion of extraterrestrials signaled an important turn.

一些美国人称政府正在掩盖自己掌握的外星人情况。他们在社交媒体上的呼声越来越高。对这个群体来说，克林顿讨论外星人标志着一个重要的转折。

Other activists do not care as much about Mrs. Clinton’s vow to “open the files,” but do want prominent politicians to seriously acknowledge that humans may not be the only intelligent life in the universe. A major victory, some say, would be for the candidates to be asked about the topic in a presidential debate.

其他活动人士没那么关注克林顿“公开文件”的誓言，但他们的确希望有名望的政界人士严肃地承认，人类可能不是宇宙中唯一的智慧生命。一些人说，如果在总统辩论中向候选人提出这个话题，会是一个重大胜利。

“It shouldn’t be a source of embarrassment to discuss it,” said Christopher Mellon, a former intelligence official at the Defense Department and the Senate Intelligence Committee. “We should be humble in terms of recognizing the extreme limits of our own understanding of physics and the universe.”

“不应该为讨论这件事而感到尴尬，”曾在美国国防部(Defense Department)和参议院情报委员会(Senate Intelligence Committee)担任情报官员的克里斯托弗·梅隆(Christopher Mellon)说。“我们应该谦虚地承认自己对物理和宇宙的认识极为有限。”