Odin1: "Let's play 'what if' and assume that EBE's are known to exist and have been watched by the western world’s governments."
OK, I'll play, and provide a few ill-considered thoughts, but on the understanding that (disclaimer!) this is science fiction in which any resemblance to reality is purely coincidental.
You stipulate that a discovery has been made, suppression of all related information is taking place, and your question is: Why is the suppression taking place?
There are surely plenty of variables to play with, but I suppose it broadly depends upon:
- the characteristics of the artefact in question
- the characteristics of the political powers of the time
- the characteristics of the society being governed
- the chances of being able to successfully maintain suppression of the information
- the perceived balance of cost v benefit regarding disclosure v suppression
To create a scenario, you simply play with the variables. The reality would very complex, and all I could come up with would be pure speculation based upon presumed information about the variables.
Actually, it would be possible to write a decent novel on the strength of such doodlings. Speaking of which, have you read Carl Sagan's novel 'Contact'? In case you haven't, it touches on the social and political impact of the first message from ET. Excellent, I thought.
