NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman told Fox News on Friday that the Trump administration's sweeping declassification of government UFO files has surfaced decades of real, documented encounters that defy easy explanation, but no crashed alien spacecraft and no extraterrestrial remains. The distinction matters. After years of stonewalling and bureaucratic secrecy, the federal government is finally showing its work, and what the files contain is strange enough on its own terms without the Hollywood treatment.
The second batch of documents released Friday under the administration's PURSUE program, the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, includes more than 40 videos and a trove of previously unseen records, Just The News reported. The material spans incidents from the Apollo era to a 2023 engagement over Lake Huron, and it draws from the files of the CIA, the Department of Defense, the FBI, the Department of Energy, and NASA itself.
The core takeaway from Isaacman's interview is measured but striking: the U.S. government sat on this material for decades, and it took a direct presidential order to pry it loose.
Among the most discussed items in the release is infrared footage from 2023 that appears to show a U.S. F-16 shooting down a diamond-shaped object over Lake Huron. The files also include reports of unexplained aerial objects spotted near military operations in Iran, Syria, Iraq, and Greece. Intelligence officers and military pilots provided testimony describing encounters they could not explain during operations and training exercises, Fox News Digital reported.
Then there are the older records. Astronaut accounts from the Apollo and Gemini eras describe strange lights and unidentified objects observed in space. Isaacman singled out photographs taken on the lunar surface during the Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 missions as some of the most compelling material NASA has contributed to the disclosure effort.
He put it bluntly in his interview with Fox News Digital:
"I would say that some of the most interesting data that NASA has provided as part of the UAP disclosure was taken on the surface of the moon from Apollo 12 and 17. You can't be a moon landing denier and also believe that those photos captured unexplained phenomenon."
That line is worth pausing on. Isaacman is a private-sector billionaire who flew to space before taking the NASA job. He is not a conspiracy theorist. He is telling the public that the agency he runs possesses photographs from the Moon that capture something no one has adequately explained, and he's daring skeptics on both ends of the spectrum to deal with it honestly.
The first tranche of declassified UAP files released earlier in May included documents related to those same Apollo missions as well as the Gemini 7 mission, along with footage of anomalous objects over the UAE, Iraq, and Greece.
The first batch alone contained 162 files, videos, photographs, intelligence reports, FBI case files, and historical news clippings stretching back nearly 80 years, Breitbart reported. The documents are publicly available at war.gov/ufo, a fact that itself would have seemed implausible just a few years ago.
Isaacman credited the president directly for breaking the bureaucratic logjam. Government agencies, he said, had simply never taken the issue seriously enough to dig through their own archives, until now.
"Government agencies really didn't take this quite as seriously in the past until President Trump put out the tweet, basically giving an order to government agencies and going out and saying, look, this time you better go through the files, you better start searching your databases and bring things up."
That tracks with what War Secretary Pete Hegseth said in a statement accompanying the initial release. Hegseth framed the effort as a matter of public trust, not science fiction.
The Washington Examiner reported Hegseth's statement: "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 called it "the first in what will be an ongoing joint declassification and release effort." Additional file releases from the CIA and other agencies are expected on a rolling basis.
Isaacman was careful to separate what the files show from what they don't. No alien bodies. No recovered spacecraft. What they do contain are observations, from American service members, intelligence professionals, and astronauts, that were documented, filed, and buried.
"There's nothing I'm aware of in terms of alien bodies or spaceships. But observations from decades past, from some of our adversaries and potentially some of our allies, essentially saying, 'We saw something, we documented it, and we kept it buried in a file somewhere,' are now being made public."
He also offered a common-sense explanation for why sightings have multiplied in the modern era. Every military aircraft now carries advanced sensors. Every civilian carries a camera phone. The sheer volume of recorded data means more anomalies will surface, many of which might have mundane explanations if captured from a different angle.
Members of Congress have been pressing for exactly this kind of transparency. Rep. Tim Burchett has publicly demanded federal transparency on UAP evidence after classified briefings he described as deeply persuasive.
"Everybody's got a camera phone, a doorbell camera. Every military aircraft flying has a million sensors. You're gonna pick up things. Pick up things that flew at a different angle, you know, across the lens that maybe if you had a better angle on, you'd be like, oh, that's a balloon, or that might be a missile in a combat region. But because we caught it at an angle, it's an unexplained phenomenon."
That is a sober assessment, not a breathless claim about little green men. It is also, notably, an argument for more disclosure, not less. If most sightings have prosaic explanations, the fastest way to prove it is to let the public and the scientific community examine the raw data.
Isaacman framed the entire effort as an invitation. The government has opened its files. Now it wants help sorting through them.
"I think the president has really got [government agencies] now taking this seriously, to go look at the files and bring the data to light, and he's putting it all out for everyone to analyze. This is citizen science right now. Take a look at our files, tell us what you think."
Beyond the UAP question, Isaacman also discussed NASA's broader search for life in the solar system. He expressed personal confidence that Mars samples, if retrieved, would reveal evidence of ancient microbial life, putting the probability at "better than a 90% chance." He pointed to Saturn's moon Titan and Jupiter's moon Europa as additional targets where scientists believe conditions could support biosignatures.
The interest in extraterrestrial life at the highest levels of government is not new. Vice President JD Vance has spoken publicly about his own interest in unexplained phenomena and his plans to investigate classified files using his security clearance.
Isaacman described what a confirmed discovery of even microbial life would mean for the broader question:
"Things that could indicate perhaps that there was microbial life there or some other form there of which it changes the whole equation from surely there is life out there somewhere to what if it's everywhere."
For all the material now in the public domain, significant questions remain. The identity of the F-16 pilot who engaged the diamond-shaped object over Lake Huron has not been disclosed. The nature of that object, what it was, whether it was recovered, how it was destroyed, is not detailed in available reporting. The specific astronauts who documented anomalies during Apollo and Gemini missions are not named in the released material.
The scope of what the CIA still holds is unclear. Officials have indicated that large additional tranches are forthcoming, but no firm timeline has been set. Rep. Burchett has warned that some classified UAP briefings contain material that would keep Americans "up at night", a claim that will remain untestable until more files see daylight.
The PURSUE program itself is still in its early stages. Whether the rolling releases will maintain their current pace, or whether institutional resistance will slow them, is an open question. Bureaucracies have long memories and short enthusiasm for transparency. The fact that it took a direct presidential order to get agencies to search their own databases tells you everything about how seriously the permanent government treated this issue before someone forced the question.
The most important revelation in the declassified files is not any single piece of footage or any particular astronaut account. It is the pattern. For decades, military pilots, intelligence officers, and astronauts documented things they could not explain. They filed reports. Those reports were classified, buried, and ignored. The people who saw these things were left without answers, and the public was left without information.
Now, for the first time, a sitting administration has told the agencies responsible to open the vault and let Americans judge for themselves. No previous administration did this. The Department of War's own statement made the point explicitly: "No other President or administration in history has followed through on this level of UAP transparency."
Whether the files ultimately reveal advanced foreign technology, atmospheric anomalies, sensor artifacts, or something genuinely beyond current understanding, the act of disclosure itself is the story. A government that hides what it knows from the people it serves has no business complaining when those people stop trusting it.
Sunlight remains the best disinfectant, even when it's pointed at the sky.
