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| The Truth Will Soon Be Out There: History of DoD’s UFO Files Amid Looming Release of Tell-All Report |
In the United States, public
interest in unidentified flying objects (UFOs) originates in the immediate
post-WWII era, with increasingly advanced aerospace technology, the sci-fi craze of the 1950s, and exaggerated Red Scare fears of radically advanced
Soviet technology. All of this contributed to burgeoning UFO sightings and gave
birth to theories that we’re not alone in the universe.
The US government and military
were not immune to the speculation, and in 1948 formally tasked the US Air
Force with officially studying and documenting UFOs, with the initiative
codenamed Project SAUCER, and later renamed Project Sign.
In 1949, the Air Force issued its final report under Project Sign,
concluding that most UFOs could be explained away by mundane
phenomena like aircraft, weather balloons, clouds, sun dogs, stars, and other
phenomena that were not out of this world.
The same year, the Air Force initiated a new investigation, dubbed Project Grudge, and like its predecessor, determined that most of the evidence at its disposal pointed to manmade technology or ordinary cosmic and earthly events. Project Grudge’s final report, issued in August 1949, concluded that on the basis of its data:
“There is no evidence that objects reported upon are the result of
an advanced scientific foreign development; and, therefore they constitute no a direct threat to national security. In view of this, it is recommended that the
investigation and study of reports of unidentified flying objects be reduced in
scope.”
The report also determined that “all” of the evidence at its
disposal led it to determine that the sightings were the result of
“misinterpretation of various conventional objects,” “mass-hysteria,” and “war
nerves,” hoaxes deliberately perpetrated by individuals seeking publicity, and
“psychopathological persons.”
In the early 1950s, some US media investigators questioned Project
Grudge’s objectivity by claiming that it was aimed at debunking UFO sightings
from the get-go, and suggesting that the Air Force was not taking its work
seriously or even ignoring or belittling civilians reporting the unidentified
aerial phenomenon.
Project Blue Book continued until 1969, during which time over
12,600 sighting reports were collected, and the Air Force again concluded that
most of them were simply misidentified natural phenomena or human-made
technology. However, a total of 701 of the sightings formally remained
classified as “unidentified.”
Nevertheless, studies based
on Project Blue Book found that:
“No UFO reported, investigated, and evaluated by the Air Force was
ever an indication of threat to our national security,” and that there was “no
evidence…that sightings categorized as ‘unidentified’ represented technologically
developments or principles beyond the range of modern scientific knowledge,” or
were “extraterrestrial vehicles.”
Project Blue Book was formally shut down in early 1970 and although
the Air Force continued to informally catalog reports on UFO sighting
incidents at sensitive military facilities into the mid-1970s, no new formal
programs to collect and analyze data about UFOs would be created until the
new millennium (at least none that the public knows about).
That changed in the 2000s. In 2007, the US Defence Intelligence
Agency undertook a new investigation into UFOs dubbed the Advanced Aerospace
Threat Identification Programme (AATIP). Congress allocated $22 million to the
project over a five-year period. The secret program’s existence was only
revealed last year, when its successor, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task
Force (UAPTF), was detailed by officials.
Unlike the programs that came before it, AATIP was not run by the
Air Force and instead fell into the lap of the Defence Intelligence Agency,
which ordinarily engages in military intelligence and informs policymakers
and the military on potential foreign adversaries’ military capabilities. AATIP
came into existence at the initiative of Senate Democrat Harry Reid, who at the
time was serving as Senate Majority Leader and was reportedly set up after
Reid was convinced to allocate funding to UFO studies by a billionaire government contractor friend of his. The contractor was awarded money to create
a report on decades’ worth of potential UFO sightings worldwide over the
space of several decades, and also provided Congress, the DIA, and the Pentagon
monthly reports, with some 38 additional studies published.
AATIP eventually bore fruit with the release of three bombshell
videos captured by US military aircraft between 2004 and 2015 and showing UFOs
with incredible speed and maneuverability and shaped like spinning tops and
Tic Tacs – with their capabilities and design unlike any flying object known to
have been created by human engineers. In April 2020, in an incredible and
never-before-made public acknowledgment, the US military confirmed the videos’ authenticity.
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