Donald Trump Orders Pentagon to Declassify UFO and Extraterrestrial Files Amid Public Curiosity

Donald Trump on Thursday said he has directed the Pentagon and other US government agencies to identify and release files related to extraterrestrials, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), citing “tremendous interest” among the public.

Trump announced the move in a social media post, hours after accusing former President Barack Obama of revealing “classified information” during a recent podcast interview in which Obama spoke about the statistical likelihood of life elsewhere in the universe.

Speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One, Trump said, “I don’t know if they’re real or not,” adding that declassifying material could “get [Obama] out of trouble.”

In a later post, Trump said he was instructing agencies to release records 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.”

Obama subsequently clarified that he had not seen evidence of aliens making contact with Earth, but noted that the vastness of the universe makes the existence of life elsewhere statistically plausible.

Trump said he has no firm opinion on extraterrestrial visitors, remarking that many people believe in them, while he rarely discusses the subject. Speculation intensified after Trump’s daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, suggested on a podcast that the president had prepared a speech on aliens to deliver at the “right time.” The White House downplayed the claim, with press secretary Karoline Leavitt saying such a speech would be news to her.

Public fascination with UFOs surged after former Pentagon and government officials leaked Navy videos of unidentified objects to major media outlets in 2017, prompting Congress to hold its first UFO hearings in five decades in May 2022. Officials later said many of the objects were likely drones.

As part of efforts to increase transparency, the Pentagon in 2022 established the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO) to centralize reports of military encounters with unidentified phenomena. In 2023, then-AARO chief Dr. Sean Kirkpatrick said there was no evidence of any program involving reverse engineering of extraterrestrial technology.

An unclassified report submitted to Congress in June 2024 said US service members filed 485 reports of unidentified phenomena over the previous year. Of these, 118 cases were identified as ordinary objects such as balloons, birds and unmanned aerial systems. The report emphasized that AARO has found “no evidence of extraterrestrial beings, activity, or technology.”

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