Trump moves to make alien, UFO records public

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump on Thursday said he would direct federal agencies to begin releasing government files related to aliens and unidentified flying objects (UFOs), citing what he described as strong public interest in the issue.

In a post on social media, Trump said he would order Pentagon chief Pete Hegseth and other agencies to release the information, calling the matter “extremely interesting and important.”

Earlier in the day, Trump, without presenting evidence, accused former president Barack Obama of improperly disclosing classified information during public remarks about aliens.

“He took it out of classified information … He’s not supposed to be doing that,” Trump told reporters while traveling to Georgia.

Obama’s remarks came during an interview with podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen, released on Saturday, in which he was asked whether aliens were real.

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in Area 51. There’s no underground facility unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” Obama said.

Area 51 is a classified US Air Force base in Nevada that has long been the subject of speculation by conspiracy theorists who claim it houses alien bodies or crashed spacecraft. CIA archives released in 2013 said the site was used to test top-secret spy planes.

There was no indication in Obama’s remarks that he disclosed classified information, and his office did not respond to requests for comment.

In a separate Instagram post on Sunday, Obama said he saw no evidence during his presidency that extraterrestrials had made contact with Earth. However, he said he believed the statistical probability of life beyond Earth was high due to the vastness of the universe, while the likelihood of such life visiting Earth remained low because of immense distances.

Following his criticism of Obama, Trump said he himself had not seen any evidence proving the existence of aliens. “I don’t know if they’re real or not,” he said.

In recent years, the Pentagon has investigated reports of UFO sightings. Senior US military officials said in 2022 that they had found no evidence suggesting aliens had visited or crash-landed on Earth.

A 2024 Pentagon report stated that US government investigations conducted since the end of World War Two found no proof of extraterrestrial technology, adding that most reported sightings were misidentified ordinary objects or natural phenomena.

The website of the National Archives and Records Administration says it holds records related to UFOs across multiple collections.