Here are the two relevant articles. Draw your own conclusions:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Aviation_Threat_Identification_Program

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USS_Nimitz_UFO_incident

Note particularly what's become of Luis Elizondo, the AATIP head who was featured in the Huffington Post: he founded an _entertainment company_ that same week.

If you knew something transcendent and wonderful and secret were true, would that the first thing YOU did with that news, rather than, I don't know, try to send greetings or thumb a ride?!?

See also his vague and inconclusive descriptions of UFO encounters in https://www.express.co.uk/news/weird/896247/UFO-sighting-aliens-Pentagon-Luis-Elizondo-Earth-space-US-Navy-pilot These are the same sort of encounters that have been reported since the very start of UFO sightings -- which, mysteriously, only happened after Richard Sharpe Shaver's legendary hoax in Amazing Stories ( http://sacred-texts.com/ufo/irl/ ), and tend to drastically resemble his original fiction.

That's right. I said it was a weather balloon.</soul_coughing>

Apologies to anyone who was weighing any hopes of getting off this planet upon this story. But fringe culture, including UFOlogy, has been a major hobby of mine since I was a teenager, and after a while you get REAL hard to impress with these stories.

Note also that the "alloys" story is probably not the proof people were hoping for: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-truth-about-those-alien-alloys-in-the-new-york-times-ufo-story/

In particular, note that it would be pretty obvious if a metallic sample came from deep space due to the inevitable ionization.

Note also that the alleged money quote refers to odd reactions in people who encountered the alloys, not the alloys themselves. The same can be said of cell phone signals, MSG, and cursed objects. :p