One of my favourite things to bring up here is that when one 90s show I loved, the X-Files, introduced the Lone Gunmen--a group originally created as a foil to Mulder to give him credibility--one of their "crazy conspiracy theories" was that the government was recording everyone's phone calls. Scully rolls her eyes at them in this scene after they say that.

So at least some people believe that the current US gov, on the crazy scale, beats out UFO-chasing. But to be fair, 3-letter agencies and police departments have also done UFO-chasing, talking to psychics, etc.