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This poll found that 33% of Americans believe alien spacecraft have visited earth: https://news.gallup.com/poll/266441/americans-skeptical-ufos...

So while most people don't believe this stuff, it's not exactly fringe either. That's maybe a hundred million people who believe aliens are coming to earth, while Heaven's Gate was 41 people. Using belief in UFOs as the basis for a religion has happened a few times, but it's very fringe.

To be fair a huge chunk of the American population and leadership believe a woman had a child without being inseminated by a man, that all of the animals in the world fit on an a big boat and that the Earth was created a few thousand years ago. By comparison aliens stopping by for a cigarette break on earth at some stage in the past 4.7 billion years sounds more likely.

Sure. My point here is that UFO belief can be characterized as mostly harmless. A few death cults have used it, but the vast majority of UFO believers aren't running off to join death cults.

But that's not UFO centric, that's death cult centric.

You are assuming that suicide cults are somehow harmful to the goals of CIA.