Aliens, UFOs not being hidden from public (really): New Pentagon report

WASHINGTON – Nothing to see here. The Pentagon, after an extensive probe, found no evidence of aliens or extraterrestrial technology on Earth.

In a conclusion sure to rile conspiracy theorists everywhere, the Pentagon review found there is no reason to believe the U.S. government is hiding information about extraterrestrial visits.

The findings, sent to Congress as part of a mandated review, are the most extensive rebuttal that the Department of Defense has issued in response to claims that it is covering up alien visits to Earth.

As with practically everything else originating from the U.S. military, the new report has a wonky name and comes from a wonky office. It’s called the “Report on the Historical Record of U.S. Government Involvement with Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) Volume I,” and comes from the Pentagon’s All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office, dated February 2024.

But the report is a very serious effort, based on an exhaustive all-source review, to put to rest the notion that the Pentagon ? or anyone else in or working for the U.S. government ? is hiding anything when it comes to visits from outer space.

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“To date, AARO has found no verifiable evidence for claims that the U.S. government and private companies have access to or have been reverse-engineering extraterrestrial technology,” Pentagon spokesman Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder said in a statement accompanying the report. “Also, AARO has found no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research, or official review panel has confirmed that any sighting of a UAP represented extraterrestrial technology.”

“All investigative efforts, at all levels of classification, concluded that most sightings were ordinary objects and phenomena and the result of misidentification,” Ryder added, while also emphasizing that military and civilian authorities will continue to investigate all of the many claims about alien visits.

“As AARO has said before,” Ryder said, “they will follow the evidence where it leads, wherever it leads.”

Spy planes, balloons, and other anomalies

The 63-page report looked into all information available, and was designed to take into account a broad array of potential anomalies generated by new ? and old ? technologies. That includes spy planes and balloons used by friendly and hostile nations, military and civilian drones and satellites and even more recreational types of airborne vehicles.

The report, as exhaustive and conclusive as the Pentagon says it is, is unlikely to quell all suspicions that it is hiding something about the existence of UAPs, its authors acknowledged.

They cited the increasing attention paid to aliens and UFOS, and widespread distrust of the government.

Last July 26, Congress held a hearing on the issue of UAPs, where lawmakers and a large crowd of spectators listened as a former Air Force intelligence officer testified that the U.S. government is concealing a longstanding program that retrieves and reverse engineers unidentified flying objects.

The Pentagon has denied the claims made by retired Maj. David Grusch. But his testimony before the House Oversight subcommittee made international headlines.

According to an AP report on the hearing, Grusch testified that he was asked in 2019 by the head of a government task force on UAPs to identify all highly classified programs relating to UAPs. At the time, Grusch said, he was detailed to the National Reconnaissance Office, the agency that operates U.S. spy satellites.

“I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access,” Grusch told lawmakers. He also said the U.S. government likely has been aware of “non-human” extraterrestrial activity since the 1930s.

The report released Friday did not mention Grusch by name. But it said that in completing it, the AARO “reviewed all official USG (U.S. government) investigatory efforts since 1945, researched classified and unclassified archives, conducted approximately 30 interviews, and partnered with Intelligence Community (IC) and Department of Defense (DoD) officials responsible for controlled and special access program oversight, respectively.”

The Pentagon also said the AARO will publish a Volume II ? also in accordance with its mandate under the National Defense Authorization Act ? that will provide analysis of any information acquired by AARO after the date of the publication of Volume I.

Report unlikely to satisfy everyone: Pentagon

The report’s findings are unlikely to satisfy everyone, especially those in the community of conspiracy theorists and other independent investigators who think any denials are part of the cover-up, the report’s authors acknowledge. Some are insistent, for instance, that the government has a secret site where it is exploiting downed extraterrestrial craft, which it says it investigated and came up empty.

“A consistent theme in popular culture involves a particularly persistent narrative that the USG (U.S. government) – or a secretive organization within it – recovered several off-world spacecraft and extraterrestrial biological remains … and that it has conspired since the 1940s to keep this effort hidden from the United States Congress and the American public,” the report stated.

But to drive home its findings, it included details of past investigations, beginning with Project Saucer in 1946 and Projects Sign, Grudge, Twinkle, Bear and Blue Book over the decades that followed.

An 'obsession' with UFOs dating back more than half a century

America’s “obsession” with UFOs began in 1947, “when two headline-making sightings of strange flying objects prompt the U.S. Air Force’s newly formed Department of Defense to create a series of secret programs to determine how unidentified phenomena may pose a threat to national security,” according to a new – and apparently perfectly timed – book on the topic by journalist and historian Garrett Graff.

“Over the next half-century, as the atomic age gives way to the space race and the Cold War, the mission continues, bringing together an unexpected group of astronomers, military officials, civilian contactees, and true believers who bring us closer, then further, then closer again, to answering one of our most enduring questions: What exactly is out there?” Graff writes in the book “UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government's Search for Alien Life Here – and Out There.”

Graff was unavailable for immediate comment. But X, formerly known as Twitter, was already aflame with hot takes from people who questioned the new Pentagon report’s findings.

“So the people doing the cover up of #ufo #uap say they find no cover up classic self-fulfilled prophesy,” said Tim Burchett, who described himself as a former Tennessee state legislator representing the state’s 2nd district.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Alien, UFO mothership is not being hidden from you: Pentagon report