I just noticed something. (Spoilers, season 5)

[SG-17]

I was just watching The Enemy at the Gate again and I noticed that the darts and F-302s are dogfighting pretty low to the ground above Area 51.
There are civilians watching Area 51 from the closest legally accessible mountain almost 24/7 at least in our world. From there it would have been easy to see the dogfight as well as the dart kamikaze. If the same is true in the SG universe than someone should have witnessed the dogfight. I'd expect it to pop up on their version of Above Top Secret.

[syfygyrl]

Maybe someone tried blackmailing the government with it & "disappeared". Or maybe that's one of the things the Atlantis movie was supposed to deal with.
Or maybe they managed to get all the civilians away before the fighting started.

[Snowman37]

I still say the Stargate program should have gone public after Anubis attempted to invade the Earth in SG-1 "Lost City." The SGC's secrecy lost credibility with me after that.

[EdenSG]

I still say the Stargate program should have gone public after Anubis attempted to invade the Earth in SG-1 "Lost City." The SGC's secrecy lost credibility with me after that.

Yeah, in the SG world I lot of "strange" things have occured near the Earth's surface, as well a host of other occurances on Earth - and there are countless people in the military, science and civilian world know about the program at this point. I believe TPTB have said they toyed with the idea of making the SG progam known to the world. It would seem a logical progression.

[tomaso88]

one thing you forgot to realize is that this is the stargate verse and if this happened they would either make sure people wernt around arrest for lame reason/ or erase their memory (they do have the tech to) or just make sure no one is around by putting a bigger barrier. their are many things they could do to stop people

[g.o.d]

I was just watching The Enemy at the Gate again and I noticed that the darts and F-302s are dogfighting pretty low to the ground above Area 51.
There are civilians watching Area 51 from the closest legally accessible mountain almost 24/7 at least in our world. From there it would have been easy to see the dogfight as well as the dart kamikaze. If the same is true in the SG universe than someone should have witnessed the dogfight. I'd expect it to pop up on their version of Above Top Secret.

that's nothing compared to having a giant hive ship in low orbit + flying city next to it and a huge explosion

[Perelandra]

I was just watching The Enemy at the Gate again and I noticed that the darts and F-302s are dogfighting pretty low to the ground above Area 51.
There are civilians watching Area 51 from the closest legally accessible mountain almost 24/7 at least in our world. From there it would have been easy to see the dogfight as well as the dart kamikaze. If the same is true in the SG universe than someone should have witnessed the dogfight. I'd expect it to pop up on their version of Above Top Secret.

Plus the fishing boat that saw the fireball. Their version of Abovetopsecret is going crazy and probably crashing. And the government will come out and say it was just a failed missle launch(sort of like the spiral over Norway in RL)

As for area 51 they could explain it away as a military exercise?

[Dawson]

I believe this would be one of those 'cover-up' stories that gets ranted about for years. You would have the civilian watchers claiming that they saw the military engaging an unknown alien spacecraft, but this would get downplayed as a military exercise that went wrong. When the civilian watchers counter this with government propaganda and claiming the alien craft was unlike anything in the Air Force (or whatever), they would simply say it is a prototype design and reveal it with more 'human' touches than alien.

[hedwig]

I was just watching The Enemy at the Gate again and I noticed that the darts and F-302s are dogfighting pretty low to the ground above Area 51.
There are civilians watching Area 51 from the closest legally accessible mountain almost 24/7 at least in our world. From there it would have been easy to see the dogfight as well as the dart kamikaze. If the same is true in the SG universe than someone should have witnessed the dogfight. I'd expect it to pop up on their version of Above Top Secret.

They gathered everyone together that they could find, and then used that flashy light thingy that Will Smith and Tommy Lee Jones used in "Men in Black" to erase the memories of groups of people.