In an archive image of the 1972 Apollo 17 mission to the moon, three white dots are framed above the moon’s surface. Another document is one drawn up with a typewriter witness statement from 1948. In it, pilots describe how they spotted an unknown aircraft “off the west coast of Holland” that left “smoke trails and contrails” – which was accompanied by a “sudden acceleration and then a climb.” If it says “Top Secret” above it is now crossed out.
Or a more recent photo from 2023: the FBI lab generated a graphic layer of a bronze-colored metal object, based on witness statements. The object has the shape of the dome at De Fundatie museum in Zwolle.
The US Department of Defense released an initial set of 162 files on Friday online shared about possible extraterrestrial life, unknown aerial phenomena and flying objects. The documents are freely available and include videos, photos and reports from the FBI, Department of Defense, NASA and the State Department. The file covers decades: from 1947 to 2025.
The Pentagon emphasized on the new website that the released files only contain “unresolved cases.” These are cases where the government could not make a definitive statement about what exactly was observed. In this first series, 120 PDF files, 28 videos and 14 images have been released. The Pentagon has announced that it will regularly release new ‘UFO files’ in the coming weeks as more files are discovered.
The dossier was released due to a decree by US President Donald Trump, who called this information “extremely interesting” and an “important issue”. His decision partly followed a wave of public attention after former President Barack Obama during an interview earlier this year had said that aliens are “real”.
“They are real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama said. “There’s no underground facility unless there’s some massive conspiracy and they’ve hidden it from the president of the United States,” he joked — a reference to Area 51, the top-secret U.S. Air Force base in Nevada that has been linked to UFO conspiracy theories for years.
‘Weapon for mass distraction’
Trump allows the public to judge for itself “what the hell is going onTrump is trying to fit the release of these documents into a broader approach to transparency, which he emphasizes on Truth Social. The president previously said files about the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King.
Not everyone is enthusiastic. “Look at this shiny object propaganda,” said MAGA Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene about the release on X. “While they wage wars abroad, allow rapists and pedophiles to roam free, and ruin the value of our dollar.”
Critics point out that Trump uses these types of high-profile revelations strategically to divert attention from political controversies, such as the discussion about the completeness of the recently released Epstein files. Republican Congressman Thomas Massie, also a Trump critic, cited the release in February X already “the ultimate weapon for mass distraction.” “The Epstein files don’t go away… even for aliens,” he added.
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Pentagon makes part of the UFO files public: ‘The public can judge for themselves’
