Why are some important people kept in the dark and not others? Especially scientists.

I started a book recently that talks a lot about Frank Drake (a pioneer astrophysicist famous for his Drake’s equation to determine the potential of life in the universe). He spent a lot of his career monitoring radio signals for life on other planets. It begs a few questions for me.

Why would someone as groundbreaking as him not be told “hey we have life here already, focus on helping with that”. Why would they let someone like him (and dozens of other bright minds) just carry on with their business when we have NHI?

Why are the leading whistleblowers all related to the military and so many of the smartest scientists in their field have never came forward?

It’s just odd to me that if we do in fact have proof of NHI, physical or otherwise, that more leading scientists never came out as helping on those projects.