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The Pentagon on Friday began releasing “never-before-seen” files relating to unidentified anomalous phenomena — previously and more infamously known as unidentified flying objects, or UFOs — that the government has been holding onto for decades.
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The files have been a source of intrigue and fascination for generations of skeptical Americans wondering if we’re alone in the universe.
The release came nearly a month after President Donald Trump gave a sneak preview of the possible contents, telling a conservative gathering that some “very interesting documents” would be released by the Department of Defense “very, very soon.”
The first batch of the long-awaited files on what the government is calling Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) are being housed on a dedicated government site, https://www.war.gov/UFO/, and additional files will be added to the site “on a rolling basis,” Pentagon Public Affairs said in a press release.
“The American people can now access the federal government’s declassified UAP files instantly,” the press release said. “The latest UAP videos, photos, and original source documents from across the entire United States government are all in one place — no clearance required.”
The documents don’t suggest any wide-ranging government cover-up of extraterrestrial encounters, which may disappoint some conspiracy-minded individuals looking for such evidence. The files show no indication that the U.S. government has had any interaction with beings from other planets or that it has any reason to believe such beings have visited Earth. Instead, the release offers pages and pages of files for the public to consume and potentially draw their own conclusions.
The collection includes more than 160 files, detailing more than 400 incidents from all around the world. Some of the most recent eyewitness statements were taken last year, while other cases date back to the 1940s.
Many of the declassified videos consist of grainy U.S. military footage from infrared sensors, and the release included a slew of mostly indiscernible photos showing points of light or dark and unusually shaped objects.
Among the files in the newly unsealed trove are incidents from the Apollo 11, Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 moon missions. In a 1969 debriefing after the Apollo 11 flight, astronaut Buzz Aldrin reported seeing “little flashes inside the cabin, spaced a couple of minutes apart,” while trying to fall asleep. In another incident, Aldrin described seeing “what appeared to be a fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser.”
During Apollo 12 in 1969, astronaut Alan Bean reported “flashes of light” that he described as “sailing off into space.”
During Apollo 17, the program’s final mission in 1972, the crew saw “very bright particles” of light that were “tumbling” and “rotating way out in the distance.” Astronaut Harrison Schmitt said the phenomenon looked “like the Fourth of July.”
The newly released documents show some of the incidents were immediately debunked. For example, on Sept. 5, 1948, there was a report from military crew members flying at 30,000 feet over the Netherlands of an unidentified aircraft sighting. The crew cited “sudden accelerations and then a climb.” Within a few months, intelligence officials concluded that it was a single propelled jet using “rocket assists with tremendous reserve power.”
Other incidents in the files are only described and do not draw conclusions.
There is a transcript of an exchange between astronaut Frank Borman from Gemini 7 in 1965 in which he refers to a “bogey at 10 o’clock high,” which occurred about 4 ½ hours into the space flight.
Houston acknowledges the reference and responds: “This is Houston, say again Seven?” Borman then describes the bogey as the following: “It looks like hundreds of little particles going by to the left out about three or four miles.”
The files also include incidents from 2020 to the present as mission reports from the U.S. Air Force identifying “potential” UAPs, with few details on what the object is or when or where it was identified.
Other accounts in the files are reports from people around the country since the 1940s that were submitted to the government.
Other sightings were redacted, such as a September 2023 report of an FBI FaceTime interview with a drone operator who, along with colleagues, saw a “bright light over the horizon” at a U.S. test site.
The document notes that “redactions have been made to protect the identity of eyewitnesses, the location of government facilities, or potentially sensitive information about military sites not related to UAP.”
The sighting was described as the following: “a linear object with a super bright light on the east side of the object. The light was bright white and bright enough to see bands within the light. The object was metallic / gray in color. It did not have any wings or exhaust. The object was smaller than a 737, one to two Blackhawk helicopters in length and was definitely bigger than a drone.”
The witnesses said the object was about 5,000 feet above ground, then moved east to west before vanishing after about 5 to 10 seconds. The person said after that the sky was clear and the object could not be found again.
Lawmakers on Capitol Hill, along with interested parties ranging from serious scientists to conspiracy theorists, have pressed for the disclosure of these files for years. Trump has also spoken often of the need to release this information.
“The American people have asked for more transparency on these topics, and President Trump is delivering,” the press release said.
“While past administrations sought to discredit or dissuade the American people, President Trump is focused on providing maximum transparency to the public, who can ultimately make up their own minds about the information contained in these files,” the release added.
But there’s a caveat.
“While all of the files have been reviewed for security purposes, many of the materials have not yet been analyzed for resolution of any anomalies,” the press release said.
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman praised the Trump administration for its efforts to bring greater transparency to unidentified anomalous phenomena.
“At NASA, our job is to bring the brightest minds and most advanced scientific instruments to bear, follow the data, and share what we learn,” Isaacman wrote on X. “We will remain candid about what we know to be true, what we have yet to understand, and all that remains to be discovered.”
Trump did not immediately weigh in on the new UFO document drop. But he announced in February that he had directed Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and other agency officials to begin reviewing government documents related to “alien and extraterrestrial life.”
Trump made the announcement just days after former President Barack Obama said on a podcast that aliens were real. Obama later clarified that he meant “the odds are good there’s life out there” and said he hadn’t seen any evidence of alien life while he was in the White House.
The interagency effort to release the UFO files has its own acronym — PURSUE, or the Presidential Unsealings and Reporting System for UAP Encounters.
But the Pentagon appears to be using, as its model, a setup similar to the one the Department of Justice began employing in December, when it began releasing the Epstein Files. And the government site with the UFO documents also appeared to be glitchy in the early going.
That Epstein files release, which is still underway, was widely criticized for releasing paperwork that had already been in the public domain, for heavily redacting many documents while inexplicably omitting others, and for inadvertently releasing the names of some of the women Epstein had been accused of preying on before he was arrested and died by suspected suicide in August 2019 in his cell at the Metropolitan Correctional Center in New York City.
Not unlike the government’s Epstein files document dump, there was no interpretation of the unidentified anomalous phenomena shared by the White House on Friday.
Corky Siemaszko is a senior reporter for NBC News Digital.
Denise Chow is a science and space reporter for NBC News.
I am NBC News’ producer & off-air reporter covering stories about and related to the Defense Department around the world.
Laura Strickler is the senior investigative producer on the national security team where she produces television stories and writes for NBCNews.com.
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