The Brookings Report (a.k.a. We're not even a little bit ready for the truth)

On April 18, 1961, the 87th Congress was presented findings from a joint study conducted by NASA, and the Brooking's Institute.  Key recommedations from that study related to the implications on the public psyche should intelligent extraterrestrial life be discovered, implying in direct fashion that there's no way in hell Earth's population would handle the news well.

Consider this Brooking's Report finding:

"Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the universe, which have disintegrated when they had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different ways of life; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behavior." 

Alright.  So they are saying that they uncovered many examples of societies that had, when exposed to different ideas and ways of life, disintegrated.  Wait, what?  So back in the 60's the government was advised that people finding out about aliens would probably cause our culture to suffer greatly.  But, wait, there's more.

Consider these recommendations by the report (you can't make this kind of stuff up btw...):

"Continuing studies to determine emotional and intellectual understanding, and attitudes–and successive alterations of them if any–regarding the possibility and consequences of discovering intelligent extraterrestrial life.."

"The positions of the major American religious denominations, the Christian sects, and the eastern religions on the matter of extraterrestrial life need elucidation. Consider the following: 'The fundamentalist (and anti-science) sects are growing apace around the world . . . For them, the discovery of other life–rather than any other space product–would be electrifying. . . . some scattered studies need to be made both in their home centers and churches and their missions, in relation to attitudes about space activities and extraterrestrial life..."

So basically, study the impact that this news would have on society because for one thing, religious folks are gonna flip out.

But, what is a government to do?  They know media is becoming more and more pervasive, and the ability to hide things from the public more and more difficult - what would you do?