The Pentagon has begun releasing new files on UFOs, saying members of the public can draw their own conclusions on “unidentified anomalous phenomena” (UAP).
Besides the Pentagon, the effort is led by the White House, the director of national intelligence, the Energy Department, Nasa and the FBI.
The Pentagon said on Friday in a social media post that while past administrations sought to discredit or dissuade the American people, President Donald 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 says additional documents will be released on a rolling basis.
Trump, a Republican, has been teasing the announcement since February. He has previously released records related to the assassinations of president John F. Kennedy, senator Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jnr that revealed little beyond what was already known.
The Pentagon has been working on declassifying documents related to UFOs for years, and Congress created an office in 2022 to declassify material. Its 2024 debut report revealed hundreds of new UAP incidents but found no evidence that the US government had ever confirmed a sighting of alien technology.
Congress ordered the Pentagon to begin releasing decades of files on UFO sightings in 2022 as some members of the military shared encounters with unexplained aircraft.
