Trump administration begins declassifying documents on UFOs and ‘extraterrestrial life’
The first batch of files, by which the Department of Defense is fulfilling the president’s orders, contains no major revelations and will be followed by others
The Department of Defense began on Friday to comply with President Donald Trump’s order to release documents held by the U.S. government containing information on Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP). This first declassification includes dozens of PDF documents and images — but no sensational revelations about the existence of extraterrestrial life. Authorities have uploaded these files to a department website, war.gov/ufo, a URL that uses the classic designation UFO (Unidentified Flying Object), which has been superseded in recent years in the fields of defense and science due to the popular connotations of the acronym. Materials will be uploaded on a weekly basis, authorities have promised.
Visitors to the website, designed with a retro-tech feel and white lettering on a black background, are greeted by a collection of photos, also in black and white. They are captioned with images such as “Infrared still image (Black Hot) captured of unidentified object(s) over western United States in September of 2025” or “Actual site photo with FBI rendered graphic overlay depicting corroborating eyewitness reports from September 2023.” Overlaid on the image is a drawing of “an apparent ellipsoid bronze metallic object materializing out of a bright light in the sky, 130-195 feet in length, and disappearing instantaneously.”
The first set contains images captured on film during the Apollo 7 (1969) and Apollo 17 (1972) space missions, photographs taken from the Moon on that last mission — never before seen — and the transcript of the communications between the pilots of that spacecraft.
In this document, one of the crew members describes to the command center “bright particles or fragments or something that go drifting by as we maneuver.” “There are a lot of large objects out in front of my window, down there; they’re just bright. From Ron [Evans]’s window, the sight looks like the Fourth of July,” reads the PDF, a very American reference to the fireworks that are a tradition on Independence Day.
New Year’s Eve 1999
There are also FBI photographs from New Year’s Eve 1999. In them, unidentified aircraft can be seen alongside U.S. military planes.
“While past administrations sought to discredit or dissuade the American people [from seeking proof of the existence of these phenomena], 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 Pentagon press release accompanying the disclosure states. “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.”
In February, days before launching the war against Iran alongside Israel, Trump announced in a message on his social media platform, Truth, his intention to release materials like those published this Friday. “Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government 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” the Republican wrote on his social media account.
The declassification comes almost four months later. Trump has demonstrated in the past his penchant for smokescreens, and this latest move, at this point in his second term, has been met by his critics with suspicion that it is just another attempt to divert attention. It is unclear whether it will work this time: presidential approval ratings are at record lows, due to the war and the rise in gasoline prices.
The United States’ fascination with UFOs is nothing new; it dates back to 1947, the year a pilot named Kenneth Arnold described a string of nine bright, unidentified objects flying at tremendous speed over Mount Rainier, south of Seattle. His description introduced the expression “flying saucer” into popular speech.
Exactly 70 years later, the publication of a 2017 article in The New York Times brought the issue back into the public eye. The article revealed the existence of a confidential Pentagon program that, since 2007, had been studying UAP military sightings. As a result of that revelation, the Department of Defense decided in 2020 to release a series of videos from 2004 and 2015 depicting encounters between military pilots and unidentified flying objects, given that they were already circulating freely online.
Trump’s announcement and the recent resurgence of Washington’s interest in extraterrestrial life are also related to the release last November of a documentary titled The Age of Disclosure. It differs from other non-fiction films exploring ufology due to its generous budget, meticulous production values, and cast: rather than featuring fringe activists, the film includes testimonies from dozens of high-ranking officials, military officers, scientists, and influential politicians in Washington. “We are not alone,” they repeat time and again. Among them is Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who asserts that UAP sightings “are not science fiction.”
Sign up for our weekly newsletter to get more English-language news coverage from EL PAÍS USA Edition
