Dr. Phil McGraw is accusing the Pentagon of deliberately deceiving the public about UFOs and refusing to accept sighting reports from ordinary Americans, even as more than 1,800 credible cases sit uninvestigated.
McGraw posted a video to his X account Wednesday tearing into the government's handling of unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAPs. His core charge: the Pentagon's own UFO office has repeatedly promised to let civilians file reports but still refuses to take them, leaving the vast majority of Americans with no official way to flag what they see in the sky.
The TV host pointed to the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, the Pentagon division created to examine UAP sightings, and its own website as proof. AARO's reporting page states plainly that it is "NOT currently accepting reports of UAP sightings/encounters from the general public." Only current or former government employees, military personnel, and contractors with direct knowledge of government UAP programs dating back to 1945 can submit anything.
AARO says eligibility "will be expanded to the general public" at some unspecified future date. That promise, McGraw argued, has been repeated without result.
McGraw built his case around data from the National UFO Reporting Center, a private, non-government database that allows anyone to submit a sighting. NUFORC has cataloged more than 1,800 reports classified as "Tier 1", its designation for the most credible sightings on record.
The government has never investigated them. As the New York Post reported, McGraw framed the gap bluntly:
"Most of you are as angry as I am that the government has lied straight to our face."
He acknowledged that many reports might have mundane explanations. But he said that misses the point entirely:
"If 99% prove to be nothing to see here... fine. What about the 1%?"
McGraw also cited FAA statistics showing fewer than 900,000 active pilots in the country. From that figure he derived his own estimate that roughly 93 percent of Americans have no official channel to report a UAP sighting, since AARO limits submissions to government and military insiders, and the only public alternatives are private databases like NUFORC and the Mutual UFO Network, known as MUFON.
What seemed to sharpen McGraw's frustration was not just the lack of investigation but the absence of any intake mechanism. He described a government posture of active indifference:
"This is what really p***** me off. There is not one government agency that lets everyday Americans report UAPs."
He continued:
"Not thanks but no thanks, don't call us, we'll call you."
McGraw said the government should be telling citizens, "Here's how to submit that report through the proper channels." Instead, he said, "there is no channel, proper or otherwise. Eighty years of trust us has gotten us nowhere."
That "eighty years" is McGraw's own framing, a reference stretching back roughly to the mid-1940s, when modern UFO sighting reports began and when AARO's own reporting window for government insiders starts. His broader accusation was that the pattern amounts to "a conscious, policy-driven decision to deceive the American people about what was going on in the skies" sustained across administrations for decades.
McGraw's complaints land in the middle of an administration that has moved further on UFO transparency than any predecessor. Earlier in 2026, President Trump ordered rolling disclosure of UFO files. On July 21, the administration announced it would waive non-disclosure agreements for former government employees and contractors who hold information on UFO programs, a step designed to remove the legal barrier that has kept many witnesses silent.
The most recent batch of released files revealed that government employees witnessed a triangle-shaped UFO near Colorado Springs in 2023. The disclosure push was reportedly triggered in part by former President Barack Obama's February interview in which he said of alien phenomena, "They're real, but I haven't seen them."
Trump has said repeatedly that he remains skeptical about the existence of alien life. But his administration's transparency mandate has produced tangible results, declassified files, waived NDAs, and a public commitment to disclosure that prior administrations avoided.
And yet AARO, the very office at the center of that mandate, still will not take a phone call from a civilian who saw something in the sky. Its website says the expansion is coming. It does not say when.
McGraw's argument does not depend on whether UFOs are extraterrestrial craft, classified military technology, or atmospheric oddities. His point is narrower and harder to dismiss: the government created an office to study UAPs, told the public it would eventually accept their reports, and then left the door shut, while more than 1,800 of the most credible civilian sightings collected by a private database went unexamined.
He put it simply:
"The point is that no one in the government is even looking at these things."
Whether those 1,800 Tier 1 reports contain anything extraordinary is unknown. That is precisely McGraw's complaint. Nobody in a position of authority has bothered to find out.
The Pentagon has not publicly responded to McGraw's specific accusations.
When the government tells citizens to trust the process but refuses to build a process citizens can use, the trust deficit is not a mystery. It is a policy choice, and Americans are entitled to notice.
