If we were going down the conspiracy route, I'd say an attack like this could be dropped if it became clear that the shooter was a foreign state operative.
It's something you actually see a lot when you look into UFO's.
Most UFO stories are kinda bullshit. But the most legitimate ones involve the fact that the government suddenly realizes it doesn't have control over it's own airspace, and needs to absolutely bury that information.
Sputnik launched the space race, primarily because the American people were fucking terrified that the Russians could put visible satellites into orbit over the US. The US had literally zero capability of intercepting such satellites. So the only next logical question was: "what if the next satellite has a bomb on it instead?"
At that exact moment the US military got directly involved in Space & Intelligence operations. The US military was happy to get funding, and even share it with the civilian sector into investigating space-born threats, but they absolutely buried any information about the fact that the Soviets weren't just ahead of us in the space race, they were absolutely spying on the US, and effectively for years, even after the Apollo program.
The Soviets had a bunch of insane programs that the US doesn't talk about. Including child pilots that would be effectively Kamakazie nuclear pilots in the event of a nuclear exchange, and Astrospies: people who stayed in Russian spy satellites to take secret pictures because the Soviet Union didn't have the technology to actually communicate and control some of the spy satellites controls remotely.
The single most legitimate UFO incident in human history appears to be the Kecksburg, PA crash. Unlike every UFO story you've ever heard, this one is so pants-shittingly obvious that there's no way to argue the events described didn't happen. A fireball appears over the midwest in the middle of the night. Fucking everyone sees. Literally hundreds of witnesses. Like, everyone. Including two police officers who see it fly over head and then crash. Air Traffic Control towers track the object until it's crash and notify emergency services. The police spend a long time looking for it until they come upon the crash site. As they approach the glow in the forest, US Army soldiers, M1 Garands in hand, approach them and order them to stop and not come closer. The cops ask the guards wtf is going on, and they tell them that even they don't know, but their orders are to prevent anyone from coming any closer. At which point, they call the police chief and tell him to come down, and the police chief calls the fucking mayor, and asks him to come down too. Eventually the scene becomes ridiculous as these cops, the mayor, the police chief, and these soldiers stand awkwardly chatting until more people from the military come by and tell them nothing, all while heavy equipment trucks begin to drive down the nearby road and into the fucking woods. Eventually the unit commander, a Colonel of some sort also tells the mayor, police chief, and two LE officers that they still can't come in, but there's been some kind of a crash. No one's hurt, but they can't see the site. Eventually, 2 literal men in black identifying themselves as working for a government agency tell them that this is a crash site and it's a matter of national security. However... they do say that they can't clear the crash site of material without physically removing the debris which is a bit large. They ask the mayor and police chief if they can help the soldiers move the debris to the local USAF base with a police escort through the nearby towns so they don't have to stop. The mayor and police chief agree. The mayor then describes that a massive bell-shaped object with a tarp over it was placed on the back of a flatbed truck, and the convoy moved through the night to the Air Force base, lights and sirens blaring, and again, hundreds of witnesses agree with the size & description of the object. Finally, everyone in the convoy makes it to the Air Force base safe and sound, and they promise to update the mayor on what the fuck happened when they can.
A week later the mayor called the Air Force base and they said that there was never a convoy, never an object, never a crash, and no one came to the Air Force base that night.
I assume the words, "Bitch I was fucking there!" may have been used.
The DoD then denied that literally anything ever happened in Kecksburg PA for forty fucking years. Truth is, it appears that it may have been a Soviet capsule (or I'd argue a spy satellite). Russia, to this day, specifically denies that it was a Soviet spacecraft, or that such a space craft would have been in orbit at that time.
Similarly, although NATO has reported tons of Russian incursions and maneuvers in it's own intel briefs, normally no one reports these events until the government starts giving the press the right to report on it. Some people in the US knew that we flew fake bombing runs at the Soviets in the Cold War to detect their nuclear air defense capability, almost none of them know that the Soviet Union did the same to the US to the tune of hundreds of thousands of sorties that were actively being intercepted by the Canadian Air Force. There was even a point and time in the Obama administration that the Russians managed to fly a Yak Bomber into the Gulf of Mexico. How the fuck it got there, I don't know.
If you remember the concept of terrorist Sleeper Cells, that was something that was taken from something (again) the soviets had been doing. I think it was in 2005 or 2010 when FBI agents and US Marshals kicked in the door of a family home in Pennsylvania and scared the bejesus out of the 3 kids that were there. The kids were already worried because when they got home from school, their parents weren't there. Both their mother and father were gone and didn't leave a note. Turns out Mom and Dad were long-term Soviet Spies that had moved to the US from Russia in the 1970's, and were still actively spying for Russia. They got word that the Feds were coming and they (probably quite sadly) had to abandon their children and run for their lives. Their children had absolutely no knowledge that their parents were both Soviet Agents, and they never told their kids.
Even worse, we can talk about the KGB Archives and Venona chronicles that clearly identify that not only was the KGB explicitly bankrolling Communist activity in Hollywood during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also that possibly 1/3rd of the State Department had been infiltrated by Soviet spies, were informants, were sources, or were agents.
You'll also note that you tend not to hear of American defectors to the Soviet Union either. Including scientists that worked on the American nuclear program because they McAruthr and LeMay were arguing for preemptive nuclear bombardments rather than conventional wars in order to create American hegemony.
The lesson here is that when the US government actually doesn't have control over it's own borders, or that there is evidence of significant penetration into US "territory", the government absolutely buries the fuck out of whatever it is.
If this were a terrorist attack by a foreign government that the US didn't want a war with, then yeah, they would absolutely bury it.
If we were going down the conspiracy route, I'd say an attack like this could be dropped if it became clear that the shooter was a foreign state operative.
It's something you actually see a lot when you look into UFO's.
Most UFO stories are kinda bullshit. But the most legitimate ones involve the fact that the government suddenly realizes it doesn't have control over it's own airspace, and needs to absolutely bury that information.
Sputnik launched the space race, primarily because the American people were fucking terrified that the Russians could put visible satellites into orbit over the US. The US had literally zero capability of intercepting such satellites. So the only next logical question was: "what if the next satellite has a bomb on it instead?"
At that exact moment the US military got directly involved in Space & Intelligence operations. The US military was happy to get funding, and even share it with the civilian sector into investigating space-born threats, but they absolutely buried any information about the fact that the Soviets weren't just ahead of us in the space race, they were absolutely spying on the US, and effectively for years, even after the Apollo program.
The Soviets had a bunch of insane programs that the US doesn't talk about. Including child pilots that would be effectively Kamakazie nuclear pilots in the event of a nuclear exchange, and Astrospies: people who stayed in Russian spy satellites to take secret pictures because the Soviet Union didn't have the technology to actually communicate and control some of the spy satellites controls remotely.
The single most legitimate UFO incident in human history appears to be the Kecksburg, PA crash. Unlike every UFO story you've ever heard, this one is so pants-shittingly obvious that there's no way to argue the events described didn't happen. A fireball appears over the midwest in the middle of the night. Fucking everyone sees. Literally hundreds of witnesses. Like, everyone. Including two police officers who see it fly over head and then crash. Air Traffic Control towers track the object until it's crash and notify emergency services. The police spend a long time looking for it until they come upon the crash site. As they approach the glow in the forest, US Army soldiers, M1 Garands in hand, approach them and order them to stop and not come closer. The cops ask the guards wtf is going on, and they tell them that even they don't know, but their orders are to prevent anyone from coming any closer. At which point, they call the police chief and tell him to come down, and the police chief calls the fucking mayor, and asks him to come down too. Eventually the scene becomes ridiculous as these cops, the mayor, the police chief, and these soldiers stand awkwardly chatting until more people from the military come by and tell them nothing, all while heavy equipment trucks begin to drive down the nearby road and into the fucking woods. Eventually the unit commander, a Colonel of some sort also tells the mayor, police chief, and two LE officers that they still can't come in, but there's been some kind of a crash. No one's hurt, but they can't see the site. Eventually, 2 literal men in black identifying themselves as working for a government agency tell them that this is a crash site and it's a matter of national security. However... they do say that they can't clear the crash site of material without physically removing the debris which is a bit large. They ask the mayor and police chief if they can help the soldiers move the debris to the local USAF base with a police escort through the nearby towns so they don't have to stop. The mayor and police chief agree. The mayor then describes that a massive bell-shaped object with a tarp over it was placed on the back of a flatbed truck, and the convoy moved through the night to the Air Force base, lights and sirens blaring, and again, hundreds of witnesses agree with the size & description of the object. Finally, everyone in the convoy makes it to the Air Force base safe and sound, and they promise to update the mayor on what the fuck happened when they can.
A week later the mayor called the Air Force base and they said that there was never a convoy, never an object, never a crash, and no one came to the Air Force base that night.
I assume the words, "Bitch I was fucking there!" may have been used.
The DoD then denied that literally anything ever happened in Kecksburg PA for forty fucking years. Truth is, it appears that it may have been a Soviet capsule (or I'd argue a spy satellite). Russia, to this day, specifically denies that it was a Soviet spacecraft, or that such a space craft would have been in orbit at that time.
Similarly, although NATO has reported tons of Russian incursions and maneuvers in it's own intel briefs, normally no one reports these events until the government starts giving the press the right to report on it. Some people in the US knew that we flew fake bombing runs at the Soviets in the Cold War to detect their nuclear air defense capability, almost none of them know that the Soviet Union did the same to the US to the tune of hundreds of thousands of sorties that were actively being intercepted by the Canadian Air Force. There was even a point and time in the Obama administration that the Russians managed to fly a Yak Bomber into the Gulf of Mexico. How the fuck it got there, I don't know.
If you remember the concept of terrorist Sleeper Cells, that was something that was taken from something (again) the soviets had been doing. I think it was in 2005 or 2010 when FBI agents and US Marshals kicked in the door of a family home in Pennsylvania and scared the bejesus out of the 3 kids that were there. The kids were already worried because when they got home from school, their parents weren't there. Both their mother and father were gone and didn't leave a note. Turns out Mom and Dad were long-term Soviet Spies that had moved to the US from Russia in the 1970's, and were still actively spying for Russia. They got word that the Feds were coming and they (probably quite sadly) had to abandon their children and run for their lives. Their children had absolutely no knowledge that their parents were both Soviet Agents, and they never told their kids.
Even worse, we can talk about the KGB Archives and Venona chronicles that clearly identify that not only was the KGB explicitly bankrolling Communist activity in Hollywood during the collapse of the Soviet Union, but also that possibly 1/3rd of the State Department had been infiltrated by Soviet spies, were informants, were sources, or were agents.
You'll also note that you tend not to hear of American defectors to the Soviet Union either. Including scientists that worked on the American nuclear program because they McAruthr and LeMay were arguing for preemptive nuclear bombardments rather than conventional wars in order to create American hegemony.
The lesson here is that when the US government actually doesn't have control over it's own borders, or that there is evidence of significant penetration into US "territory", the government absolutely buries the fuck out of whatever it is.
If this were a terrorist attack by a foreign government that the US didn't want a war with, then yeah, they would absolutely bury it.