Conspiracy theories flock to Barack Obama like moths to a lightsaber. He forged his birth certificate; he was born in Kenya; he’s a Muslim; he’s both a fascist and a communist bent on destroying the U.S. from within; he has 39 different social-security numbers; he’s a British citizen. He is, in short, the subject of the most easily dismissed kind of scrutiny. But it’s worth not overlooking (underlooking?) the craziest theory of them all: The CIA teleported teenage Barack Obama to Mars.

That one might actually be relevant.

Here’s the deal: In November 2011, Andrew Basiago, a lawyer from Washington State, and William Stillings came forward to claim that they were part of a CIA training program in 1980 that teleported people to Mars. The two stated that among the participants was the future 44th president of the United States of America. He would have been around 19 years old at the time.

According to Basiago and Stillings, this “chrononauts” program (no, not the card game, and no, not the comic), also included the former DARPA head Regina Dugan. Obama allegedly went by “Barry Soetero” out of apparent respect for his Indonesian step-father. The Mars training class took place at California’s College of the Siskiyous, and Basiago and Stillings were one of 10 other young adults plucked by the CIA.

Basiago also claimed to have served in DARPA’s 1970s time-traveling program called Project Pegasus. And if that sounds outlandish, listen to Stillings describe the program in his own words during an appearance on Radio RMN:

The chrononauts made it to the red planet through a “jump room” that instantly transported them to the Martian surface, where the U.S. had already established secret government bases. Stillings and Basiago say they met Obama there on two different occasions — including one time when Basiago and Obama went through the jump room together.

Did I mention that Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was there too? She was already an experienced CIA agent who had previously carried out assignments in Kenya and Indonesia.

Asiago and Stillings say the purpose of the Mars program was to establish “a defense regime protecting the Earth from threats from space,” with the U.S. asserting territorial sovereignty over the planet.

Here’s Basiago doing a PowerPoint presentation in 2012 about life on Mars (where he talks about real walking lizards on the surface of Mars, his experience feeling dehydrated during his teleportations to the red planet, and he and his father, Raymond, saying farewell to intelligent alien beings they met during their visit):

The pair’s testimony is actually corroborated by three other “Mars whistleblowers,” including Laura Magdalene Eisenhower, less-than-credible great-grandaughter of President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Let’s don our tinfoil hats and assume for a second that it’s all true. Perhaps the reason we’re finally hearing about liquid water on Mars is because Obama is in office. We have a president who has been to Mars and seen the planet with his own eyes, and maybe this means he is eager to start getting the public acclimated to the idea that the U.S. is there — doing Martian things, hanging out with Martian people, getting the world ready to take formal part in the interstellar community.

The announcement about water on Mars has intensified speculation about life on the red planet. Within the context of a conspiratorial world, that’s no coincidence. Obama is merely making sure we’re acclimatized to the idea of Martian life.

A statue of Obama's head on the surface of Mars, duh. UFO Sightings Hotspot

The major reason this conspiracy doesn’t hold water itself is that it’s insane and violates the basic laws of physics as we know them. That said, there’s an anxiety at the core of the idea that’s worth considering with an open mind. As information about Earth has been democratized by the internet and private drones and FOIA and Wikileaks and a host of other factors, information about space has seemingly consolidated. Sure, there are companies and even private individuals in low-Earth orbit, but Mars is another story and, no, if the government didn’t want you to know about life on Mars you probably wouldn’t know.

NASA is so far out in front of private and international programs that the U.S. Government is once again able to control information flow. Would Barack Obama actually do that? We can’t possibly know. But we do know that he’ll hear about whatever discoveries are made before the rest of us, which is its own sort of high-powered time travel.

President Obama probably has nothing to hide as far as Mars is concerned. But he might. We don’t know. Ours is only to weigh the balance of probabilities and draw logical conclusions.