A shapeshifting reptile from outer space guards President Obama, according to a new conspiracy video. Yet according to the White House, the extraterrestrial heft behind Obama's protection detail is a mere allegation – and one that congressionally mandated budget cuts would have to ax, anyway.

If you believe the video above, recently posted to YouTube, the White House deployed at least one reptile guard as recently as this month. The narrator, using a text-to-speech program, suggests a bald-headed G-Man protecting Obama during his March 4 speech to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee "could be a shapeshifter alien humanoid working for the powers that be, caught in a high-definition video during an event of the Zionist cabal."

Could be. It's certainly fodder for Tinfoil Tuesday, Danger Room's occasional look at the internet's most insane conspiracy theories.

The White House dismissed the alien bodyguards as too costly in this era of budgetary austerity. "I can't confirm the claims made in this video, but any alleged program to guard the president with aliens or robots would likely have to be scaled back or eliminated in the sequester," Caitlin Hayden, the chief spokeswoman for the National Security Council, e-mails Danger Room. "I'd refer you to the Secret Service or Area 51 for more details." We are journalistically obligated to observe that this isn't a flat denial.

Check out the evidence for the reptiles-from-space theory. The video's narrator teases: "Even though at first sight he looks like the average Secret Service spook, a series of odd features on his head, face, plus a very strange behavior and creepy movements suggest something else." Next, another view of the agent – from another angle at a distance and in low lighting – makes him appear slightly different. His head is still swiveling back and forth, with his eyes on the crowd. "His ears, his nose, his chin, cheekbone, jaw and mouth are no longer looking human at all," the narrator observes.

Conclusion: The agent must be "shapeshifting into some sort of reptilian, nonhuman form," since that's a logical explanation. The narrator suggests technology used by the agent to keep his true identity hidden might have glitched out. All this is new evidence of a collaboration between a conspiratorial elite and "at least one extraterrestrial race" that is "pulling the strings of mankind."

Crucially, the narrator hasn't figured out just what kind of alien is guarding the president. Is it an "actual reptilian humanoid?... Is he an Annunaki?" That's a reference to the ancient Babylonian deities who some conspiracy theorists believe were ancient aliens who built the ziggurats for a mysterious purpose. "Is he a tall, grey bio-android?" The White House didn't answer.

Not everyone's convinced. Also keeping tabs on the agent are the followers of the "Grand Order of Draco Slayers," which mirrored the video on its YouTube channel, and which touts itself as a "magical order of spiritual warriors dedicated to the eradication of the reptilian/illuminati current and the full restoration of humankind's liberty and spiritual inheritance." The group called the agent a "weird humanoid," but stopped short of alleging reptilian infiltration. One commenter believes the agent could be a "genetically engineered super soldier or a human-animal hybrid."

To believe any of this, you'll have to discard all contradictory evidence. The narrator instructs you to ignore the low lighting; doesn't mention the abrupt shift to a different camera angle; and asks the viewer to "disregard all the distortions and image artifacts caused by post-editing zooming."

But still: alien guards. They've gotten a raw deal through the sequester. The White House didn't clarify if its reptilian Secret Service agents are subject to the furloughs without pay affecting federal employees. But say this for the automatic budget cuts: They may have prevented Obama from falling into the clutches of an intergalactic conspiracy – that is, if the president wasn't in on it from the start.

Spencer Ackerman provided additional otherworldly aid.