The Trump administration on Friday published a tranche of never-before-seen government files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena, videos, photographs, intelligence reports, and original source documents, and posted them on a public website where any American can read them without a security clearance. The release, hosted at war.gov/UFO, marks the opening round of what officials describe as a rolling declassification effort spanning the Department of War, the FBI, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, NASA, and other agencies.
The move fulfills a pledge President Donald Trump made on Truth Social after former President Barack Obama told a podcaster that aliens were real. Fox News senior White House correspondent Peter Doocy asked Trump directly about the existence of aliens in February. Days later, Trump posted his directive.
The White House told Fox News that the files are now "all in one place, no clearance required," and framed the disclosure as a sharp contrast to prior administrations that, in its words, "sought to discredit or dissuade the American people."
The initial batch includes photographs captured during the Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 moon missions. One image, taken from the lunar surface, appears to show a cluster of three tiny dots in the sky. A communications transcript from Apollo 17 records operators describing bright particles drifting past their windows during a maneuver.
One operator reported seeing objects that looked "like the Fourth of July" outside a crewmate's window. Another described them as "very jagged, angular fragments that are tumbling." The command center's response, preserved in the transcript: "Roger. Understand."
A second set of photos comes from the FBI and dates to New Year's Eve 1999. Those images show UAPs appearing in the same frame as U.S. aircraft. The New York Post reported that the Pentagon released 162 declassified files in all, including videos, intelligence reports, FBI case files, and eyewitness accounts spanning roughly eighty years.
The Washington Examiner noted that the first batch also includes unresolved footage from incidents over the United Arab Emirates in 2024, Iraq in 2022, and Greek airspace, material coordinated across the White House, FBI, Department of Energy, ODNI, and NASA.
The release operates under what the administration calls the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, or PURSUE. A White House official told Fox News the initial disclosure is only the first in a series.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the Department of War stands with the president on the effort. In a statement, Hegseth framed the decades of classification as part of the problem:
"These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation, and it's time the American people see it for themselves. This release of declassified documents demonstrates the Trump Administration's earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency."
Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard described the effort as a joint operation between her office and the Department of War. She said the ODNI is "actively coordinating the Intelligence Community's declassification efforts" and called Friday's release "the first in what will be an ongoing joint declassification and release effort."
For an administration that has repeatedly clashed with legacy institutions over access to information, whether in high-profile Supreme Court battles or debates over government pressure on media, the UAP disclosure represents a different kind of transparency fight: one where the White House is pushing material out rather than defending its right to hold it back.
FBI Director Kash Patel issued a lengthy statement calling the release a landmark moment:
"For the first time in history, the American people have unfettered access to declassified government files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon, a level of transparency that no prior administration has delivered. The FBI remains committed to supporting this rolling declassification effort with the same rigorous and integrity we bring to every national security matter."
NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman struck a more measured tone, emphasizing the agency's scientific mission. He applauded the "whole-of-government effort" and said NASA would "remain candid about what we know to be true, what we have yet to understand, and all that remains to be discovered."
The president's Truth Social post that set the process in motion left no room for ambiguity about the scope he intended. Trump wrote that he would direct "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."
Just The News reported that Trump later promoted the release, describing it as part of an effort toward "Complete and Maximum Transparency" and urging the public to review the files and draw their own conclusions.
In a separate post captured by the AP, Trump told the public to decide for themselves: "Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, 'WHAT THE H*** IS GOING ON?' Have Fun and Enjoy!" That quote was reported by the Associated Press, which also noted that many of the materials include longstanding declassifications and records dating from the 1940s to January of this year.
When Doocy first asked Trump about aliens in February, the president gave a candid answer: "I don't know if they're real or not." But he added that someone, unnamed in the exchange, had improperly disclosed classified information on the subject: "He gave classified information. He's not supposed to be doing that, he made a big mistake."
Not everyone expects the files to settle the question. Sean Kirkpatrick, the former head of the Pentagon's All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, told the New York Post that the release is unlikely to contain major revelations or proof of alien contact, noting that many sightings have mundane explanations. The AP quoted Kirkpatrick more bluntly: "There's nothing unexpected in the release and without analysis it will only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and arm-chair pseudoscience."
A 2024 Pentagon report previously found no evidence that the U.S. government had recovered alien technology or confirmed extraterrestrial life. Experts have cautioned that UAP videos are frequently misinterpreted by the public.
That skepticism is fair. But it also highlights why the release matters in a different way. For decades, the federal government's default posture on UAPs was to classify, compartmentalize, and dismiss public curiosity. The result was not less speculation, it was more. The Trump administration's approach flips that dynamic. Instead of telling the public to trust the experts and stop asking questions, it hands over the files and says: you decide.
The broader pattern fits an administration that has made a habit of challenging institutional gatekeeping, from shaking up White House staffing to pressing for disclosure on politically sensitive matters that previous administrations preferred to keep quiet.
The initial release raises as many questions as it addresses. The administration has not detailed the full scope of what the 162 files contain beyond the examples highlighted so far. Officials have not said how many additional batches are planned or on what timeline. The identities of the objects in the Apollo-era photos and the 1999 FBI images remain unresolved.
Nor has the administration explained who Trump was referring to when he said someone had improperly released classified information about the subject. That thread remains loose.
The PURSUE program itself is new, and its legal framework, how it interacts with existing classification authorities, congressional oversight, and intelligence community equities, has not been laid out in public detail. Whether this effort produces genuine new understanding or simply a larger archive of ambiguous footage will depend on what comes next.
The administration's willingness to engage on a topic that Washington has long treated as fringe is itself a form of accountability, a signal that the public's right to know outweighs the bureaucracy's preference for secrecy. That principle has guided other disclosure fights in this administration, and it applies here too.
Whether or not the files prove aliens exist, they prove something else: the government had them, kept them locked up, and needed a president willing to open the vault.
