Trump directs government to release files on UFOs, more

Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump said Thurs­day that he’s di­rect­ing the Pen­ta­gon and oth­er gov­ern­ment agen­cies to iden­ti­fy and re­lease files re­lat­ed to ex­trater­res­tri­als and UFOs be­cause of “tremen­dous in­ter­est.”

Trump made the an­nounce­ment in a so­cial me­dia post hours af­ter he ac­cused for­mer Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma of dis­clos­ing “clas­si­fied in­for­ma­tion” when Oba­ma re­cent­ly sug­gest­ed in a pod­cast in­ter­view that aliens were re­al.

Trump told re­porters aboard Air Force One, “I don’t know if they’re re­al or not,” and said of Oba­ma, “I may get him out of trou­ble by de­clas­si­fy­ing.”

In a post on his so­cial me­dia plat­form Thurs­day night, Trump said he was di­rect­ing gov­ern­ment agen­cies to re­lease files re­lat­ed “to alien and ex­trater­res­tri­al life, uniden­ti­fied aer­i­al phe­nom­e­na (UAP), and uniden­ti­fied fly­ing ob­jects (UFOs), and any and all oth­er in­for­ma­tion con­nect­ed to these high­ly com­plex, but ex­treme­ly in­ter­est­ing and im­por­tant, mat­ters.”

Oba­ma, who made his com­ments in a pod­cast ap­pear­ance over the week­end, lat­er clar­i­fied that he had not seen ev­i­dence that aliens “have made con­tact with us,” but said, “sta­tis­ti­cal­ly, the uni­verse is so vast that the odds are good there’s life out there.”

Trump told re­porters Thurs­day that when it came to the prospect of ex­trater­res­tri­al vis­i­tors: “I don’t have an opin­ion on it. I nev­er talk about it. A lot of peo­ple do. A lot of peo­ple be­lieve it.”

Trump’s daugh­ter-in-law Lara Trump sug­gest­ed this week that he was ready to speak about it, how­ev­er, when she said on a pod­cast that the pres­i­dent had a speech pre­pared to de­liv­er on aliens that he would give at the “right time.”

That was news to the White House. Press sec­re­tary Karo­line Leav­itt re­spond­ed with a laugh when she was asked about it Wednes­day and told re­porters, “A speech on aliens would be news to me.”

Pub­lic in­ter­est in uniden­ti­fied fly­ing ob­jects and the pos­si­bil­i­ty of the gov­ern­ment hid­ing se­crets of ex­trater­res­tri­al life re­merged in the pub­lic con­scious­ness af­ter a group of for­mer Pen­ta­gon and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials leaked Navy videos of un­known ob­jects to The New York Times and Politi­co in 2017. The re­newed scruti­ny prompt­ed Con­gress to hold the first hear­ings on UFOs in 50 years in May 2022, though of­fi­cials said that the ob­jects, which ap­peared to be green tri­an­gles float­ing above a Navy ship, were like­ly drones.

Since then the Pen­ta­gon has promised more trans­paren­cy on the top­ic. In Ju­ly 2022 it cre­at­ed the All-Do­main Anom­aly Res­o­lu­tion Of­fice, or AARO, which was in­tend­ed to be a cen­tral place to col­lect re­ports of all mil­i­tary UFO en­coun­ters, tak­ing over from a de­part­ment task force.

In 2023, Dr. Sean Kirk­patrick, the head of AARO at the time, told re­porters he didn’t have any ev­i­dence “of any pro­gram hav­ing ever ex­ist­ed as a to do any sort of re­verse en­gi­neer­ing of any sort of ex­trater­res­tri­al (uniden­ti­fied aer­i­al phe­nom­e­na).”

The in­for­ma­tion that has been made pub­lic shows that the vast ma­jor­i­ty of UFO re­ports made by the mil­i­tary go un­solved but the ones that are iden­ti­fied are large­ly be­nign in na­ture.

An 18-page un­clas­si­fied re­port sub­mit­ted to Con­gress in June 2024 said ser­vice mem­bers had made 485 re­ports of uniden­ti­fied phe­nom­e­na in the past year but 118 cas­es were found to be “pro­sa­ic ob­jects such as var­i­ous types of bal­loons, birds, and un­manned aer­i­al sys­tems.”

“It is im­por­tant to un­der­score that, to date, AARO has dis­cov­ered no ev­i­dence of ex­trater­res­tri­al be­ings, ac­tiv­i­ty, or tech­nol­o­gy,” the re­port stressed.

As­so­ci­at­ed Press writ­ers Kon­stan­tin Toropin and Steve Peo­ples con­tributed to this re­port.

By MICHELLE L. PRICE

WASH­ING­TON (AP)