I do have a wee bit of insight, to a degree, on Spielberg. When he preps his films, he loves to assemble his own ‘think tanks’ that are incredibly far reaching...farther than you would or could expect for a two hour slice of ‘entertainment.’ When he was making Close Encounters, he had direct access to materials and experts not only from the ‘UFO conspiracy’ heavy hitters, but also current (at the time) and retired military, government, and intelligence officials...and while primarily US, not exclusively. As of the mid 90s, he still kept a shipping container filled to the brim with research materials, a lot of it (at the time) still bearing various levels of secrecy classification. These weren’t all redacted FOIA requests, either. I know at the time, he had lots of ‘advisers’ both at the script development stage as well as during production...most uncredited. The film was as much propaganda as it was entertainment. With that, it’s curious to see the shift in his films from awe-inspiring, mysterious but benign (Close Encounters), to friendly and gentle (E.T.) to vast and diverse (Men In Black) to dangerously militaristic and violent (War of the Worlds). Needless to say, he is (was?) EXTREMELY well-connected and had access, as a civilian, to data that perhaps even Presidents don’t. Also, related or only tangentially so, he had President Clinton and Hillary stay AT HIS HOUSE while they were on a West Coast trip during Bill’s presidency. All employees, even those who were barred access to his house during the visit, were screened heavily by the secret service.