Possibly there was no defense contract at all.
"29% believe aliens exist and 21% believe a UFO crashed at Roswell in 1947. [...] 5% of respondents believe that Paul McCartney died and was secretly replaced in the Beatles in 1966, and just 4% believe shape-shifting reptilian people control our world by taking on human form and gaining power. 7% of voters think the moon landing was fake." -- https://www.publicpolicypolling.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/...
"Belief in both ghosts and U.F.O's has increased slightly since October 2007, by two and five percentage points, respectively. Men are more likely than women to believe in U.F.Os (43% men, 35% women), while women are more likely to believe in ghosts (41% women, 32% men) and spells or witchcraft (26% women, 15% men)." -- https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/belief-in-ghosts-2021
"A new Associated Press-GfK poll shows that 77 percent of adults believe [angels] are real. [...] belief in angels is fairly widespread even among the less religious. A majority of non-Christians think angels exist, as do more than 4 in 10 of those who never attend religious services." -- https://www.cbsnews.com/news/poll-nearly-8-in-10-americans-b...
The 77% belief in angels is bizarre though. Like I believe in the possibility of aliens, the universe is quite large. Although I think all spacecraft sightings are almost certainly just mundane stuff from spy planes to weather balloons, etc. I even believe in the possibility of ghosts being real, more likely some strange phenomenon we can't explain that we might misidentify as ghosts. But angels?
One man's angel is another man's ghost or alien though I guess.
The difference here is that to the religious mind, angels are credible in a way that UFOs, ghosts, and magic are not. (The irreligious mind probably finds them all equally credible, hence the disconnect.)
Put another way, it would not surprise me that someone who was "religious but not affiliated" might have a high regard for the Bible. Angels figure prominently in the Bible, and hence fall in that bucket.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irreligion_in_the_United_State...
https://slatestarcodex.com/2013/04/12/noisy-poll-results-and...
The universe is large. In the tiny slice we can observe well enough to draw conclusions, Wikipedia currently lists 62 "potentially habitable exoplanets". I'd be much more surprised by intelligent life being unique to Earth than by there being many planets harboring intelligent life, or to answer the question as asked: I believe aliens exist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_potentially_habitable_...