‘This public issue should not be dismissed on a technicality. The government is traditionally secret on this topic. You are not doing justice by letting secrecy prevail.’

The suit included a copy of a purported FBI document dated March 22, 1950 that said: ‘An investigator for the Air Force stated that three so-called flying saucers had been recovered in New Mexico’ and the bodies of nine small beings were recovered.

But Bryant told Gasch: ‘We don’t know where the bodies are. We don’t have any information. The government is relucatant to give out that information.’

And he added: ‘We called it a Writ of Habeas Corpus Extraterrestrial because we have no other way of signing the petition based on the evidence we are working with.’

But based on the evidence, Assistant U.S. Attorney Royce Lamberth asked Gasch to dismiss.

‘They do not know if there are any extraterrestrials,’ Lamberth said. ‘They have never seen them or talked to them and don’t know if they ever existed.’

Bryant tried to introduce a document submitted by Leonard Stringfield, a retired Cincinnati businessman who has interviewed former military personnel who claim the ETs were held at Wright-Patterson AFB, near Dayton, Ohio.

Gasch asked if Stringfield had ever had contact with an ET, and Bryant said no. Then the judge asked, ‘What you are telling me is hearsay?’ And Bryant responded, ‘In a case like this, hearsay prevails.’

After the suit was thrown out, Bryant said, ‘The bodies are there. It’s just getting to them. There’s smoke and there has got to be a fire. This court has lost a big opportunity.’

As he was leaving the courtroom, Lamberth said the government is not holding any — then cracked: ‘Actually they’re in my office. We were going to line up three of them here wrapped in black sheets.’