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UFO Information Center

The only courage that is demanded of us: to have courage for the most strange, the most singular, and the most inexplicable that we may encounter.”
— Rainer Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and novelist

There are areas of our lives that have the potential to change our assumptions about reality and what is possible.

Unidentified Flying Objects (UFOs). Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon (UAP). Non-human spacecraft. Flying saucers. Interdimensional and extraterrestrial (ET) beings. UFO encounters come in a wide variety of mysterious forms. Some involve experimental military aircraft and secret technologies, while others point to the serious possibility of extraterrestrial or interdimensional life.

Over 20+ years, we’ve documented some of the best, most reliable resources on UFOs that radically transcend conventional models of reality. Instead of speculating ourselves, we describe what has been documented and backed by credible evidence. UFO experts and government officials with first-hand experiences have made meaningful contributions to our site.

Much of our UFO Information Center is based on verifiable material from declassified government documents obtained from public records, Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, internal memos, and courageous whistleblowers. We also rely on information from experts, journalists, investigators, and individuals who have experienced UFO encounters directly.

Although the term UFO has historically been associated with tin foil hat conspiracy theories, reputable people and top government officials have disclosed significant information on the subject over the years. Wilbert B. Smith, engineer and head of the Canadian government’s first study on UFOs, concluded in a declassified 1950 memo that US authorities consider UFO phenomena to be “of tremendous significance,” and that UFOs are the “most highly classified subject in the US government.” Luis Elizondo, former head of the secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), even asserted that only three presidents have been fully briefed on the matter.

It is now well-known that governments and private defense contractors have covered up the UFO issue, while covertly studying it for their own purposes in secret programs within different branches of the military-intelligence apparatus.

UFOs are a deeply complex issue. The deeper you look, the stranger it gets. We invite you to suspend certainty and tap into your curiosity as you navigate this information. We don't claim to know "the "truth." Rather, we seek to document important considerations when navigating this controversial topic. We also share our research in accessible and trustworthy ways, avoiding the speculative rabbit holes and reactionary thinking that are common in UFO research.

Our universe is complex, and it can be challenging to make sense of the UFO phenomenon by solely relying on what we’re told or what feels familiar. Opening up to what’s possible, we might find that our universe is much more mysterious, wondrous, and fascinating than anything we’ve known.

Did you know...

Parallel universes, life after death investigations, and other deep mysteries reveal the mind-boggling nature of reality. World-renowned physicist and pioneering radio astronomer Sir Bernard Lovell has even calculated that “even allowing for a margin of error of 5000%, there must be in our own galaxy about 100 million stars which have planets of the right chemistry, dimensions, and temperature to support organic evolution.”

Project Stargate was a top secret government program that explored paranormal science and extraordinary extrasensory perception abilities like remote viewing. According to a CIA declassified document, defense intelligence agency use of psychic spying helped locate American hostages, enemy submarines, and strategic buildings in foreign countries using only their mind to do so. Other declassified documents from the Pentagon reveal the Department of Defense investigated invisibility cloaking, dark energy, mind-controlled robots, wormholes and space travel using current understanding of quantum processes! In our UFO information center, we reveal how some of the core researchers and consultants for these projects are now working on top-secret UFO matters.

Right now, we’re getting trickles of information about UFOs. Yet soon, we may get a flood. As more information comes to light, we will continue updating the information center with verifiable sources and trustworthy information.

Note: WantToKnow.info's older UFO Information Center is still accessible. While it is less comprehensive, it is a great place for those who don't necessarily want to go deep yet still want to learn basic information regarding UFO phenonema.


Government Officials and Public Figures Speak Out

The American people are stronger than the government gives them credit for, and … I’ve come to that decision myself. The American people can stand to know the truth, and they should know the truth, and that’s one reason I’m coming forward. I want them to know that there’s a better life possible.

— Excerpt of testimony from US Air Force, NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), Master Sergeant Dan Morris (read full testimony on pg. 268 of the full Disclosure Project briefing document)

People across the world in all walks of life continue to report phenomena in the sky that they can’t explain. Luis Elizondo, whistleblower and former head of the secretive Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), described intriguing accounts of radiation exposure and warping of space time that pilots have reported in the presence of UFOs.

Declassified Pentagon documents reveal significant investigations into documented injuries and health impacts of people in close proximity to anomalous vehicles. The term “foo fighters” was used by Allied aircraft pilots during World War II to describe mysterious UFO encounters that were never officially explained.

Did you know...

The term “flying saucer” was popularized in the newspapers after experienced private pilot Kenneth Albert Arnold claimed that he'd seen 9 shiny objects flying together in the sky at high speeds near Mount Rainier, Washington on June 24, 1947.

As Arnold’s story spread, thousands of others stepped forward to share their experiences with mysterious objects in the skies. Not all of these were saucer shaped, and in 1952 the term Unidentified Flying Object (UFO) was created by the Air Force to encompass the various types of objects that witnesses had encountered.

The official shift from "UFO" to "UAP" emerged in 2020, when the Pentagon established the US Navy "UAP Task Force" to investigate reports. UAP initially stood for Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon, but the Pentagon updated it to Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon in 2022, so as to include more types of unusual objects.

Strangely, the media is no longer debunking UFOs. Yet still to this day, government narratives claim that their official investigations have not produced anything conclusive. However, the long history of secret government programs and cover-ups make it clear that factions within our government possess significant and possibly revolutionary UFO knowledge. Many intense and real UFO encounters have been reported by military officers, government officials, and public figures, yet those stories rarely get discussed in the mainstream press. Notably, their testimonies emphasize that there hasn’t been any proof suggesting that ET intelligences have ever attacked us even when provoked.

Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell was the sixth man to walk on the moon. He not only believed in the existence of UFOs and extraterrestrial activities, but that knowledge of the phenomena has been covered-up extensively by all governments. Mitchell was also particularly passionate about the compelling idea that UFOs (and possibly ET forces) have demonstrated interest in human military capabilities. UFO activity was regularly witnessed by various Air Force officers during the Cold War, particularly near nuclear missiles and during weapons tests. See UFO Interference with Nuclear Missiles for more.

Yes, there have been ET visitations. There have been crashed craft. There have been material and bodies recovered. There has been a certain amount of reverse engineering that has allowed some of these craft, or some components, to be duplicated. People in high level government have very, very little, if any, valid information about this. Most have no more knowledge than the man in the street. ... [As to] the question, "How could it be kept secret?" It hasn't been kept secret. It's been there all along. But it has been the subject of disinformation in order to deflect attention and create confusion so the truth doesn't come out. ... I believe it is a very important effort that we get Congressional oversight of all this.

— Apollo 14 Astronaut Edgar Mitchell's testimony on UFOs

First CIA Director and National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena board member Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter also knew that UFOs were a serious national security concern. We've preserved a copy of the 1960s New York Times article that was buried after interviewing Hillenkoetter:

It is time for the truth to be brought out in open Congressional hearings. Behind the scenes, high-ranking Air Force officers are soberly concerned about the UFOs. But through official secrecy and ridicule, many citizens are led to believe the unknown flying objects are nonsense. To hide the facts, the Air Force has silenced its personnel."

— Former CIA Director Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter

Medical doctor and former ER director Steven Greer is the director of the Disclosure Project, a nonprofit research organization advocating for the disclosure of alleged classified UFO information. At the National Press Club in 2001, The Disclosure Project presented a few courageous witness testimonies on the existence of extraterrestrial beings and technologies, most of them from the military and intelligence sectors. View the full 494-page Disclosure Project briefing document.

In Greer’s revealing book Disclosure, he provides transcriptions of videotaped testimonies of astronauts, generals, professors, and highly respected government and military officials who reveal their direct experiences in the UFO cover-up.

Read our compiled summaries of the book below, which highlight 60 stunning testimonies of government and military witnesses:

2-pg UFO Disclosure Summary
10-pg UFO Disclosure Summary
Video Collection of Groundbreaking Witness Testimony Interviews

Canadian engineer and government scientist Wilbert B. Smith headed up the Canadian government's first major study on UFOs called Project Magnet, and was a high level official in Project Second Storey, the Canadian equivalent to the US's Project Blue Book. Declassified files reveal Smith concluded UFOs were most likely extraterrestrial in origin, and that recovered craft might reveal the introduction to a new technology based on “unknown magnetic principles.”

Later in his life, Smith wrote in a couple UFO magazines that he believed entities "claiming to be extraterrestrials" were in telepathic communication with him. He concluded after Project Magnet that "cosmic law" must be preventing ET intervention by extraterrestrials. Watch a fascinating video and analysis of Smith’s revelations, including actual recordings of him speaking on the subject.

Below is an excerpt from Smith’s 1950 Department of Transport memo, declassified in response to a FOIA request (We saved the actual scanned documents, which are harder to read).

I made discreet enquiries through the Canadian Embassy staff in Washington who were able to obtain for me the following information:
a. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the United States Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb.
b. Flying saucers exist.
c. Their modus operandi is unknown but concentrated effort is being made by a small group headed by Doctor Vannevar Bush.
d. The entire matter is considered by the United States authorities to be of tremendous significance.

— Canadian engineer and government scientist Wilbert B. Smith


Disclosure Timeline

1947-1969: Project Blue Book

Project Blue Book was headquartered at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Ohio from 1952 to 1969. Following Project Sign in 1947 and Project Grudge in 1949, Blue Book created reports on 12,618 sightings of unidentified flying objects across the US. Prominent astronomer J. Allen Hynek led the Air Force investigations. Although the purpose of Blue Book was to debunk UFO sightings, there were hundreds of incidents that Hynek was never able to fully explain. According to an Air Force fact sheet on Blue Book, 701 of the 12,618 sightings studied remained mysterious. According to the New York Times, he "eventually concluded that they were a real phenomenon in dire need of scientific attention."

1969: Condon Report Results Released

In 1966-68, a team at the University of Colorado combined Blue Book data with data from the civilian UFO groups National Investigations Committee On Aerial Phenomena (NICAP) and Aerial Phenomena Research Organization (APRO) to study the UFO issue. The Air Force sponsored the effort financially while sabotaging the investigation from its outset. The report ultimately found that scientific discoveries were unlikely to come from the study of UFOs. These findings were published in The Scientific Study Of Unidentified Flying Objects. This study was known as the Condon Report. The Condon Report’s findings were used to completely discredit the whole UFO issue. Following the publication of these findings, UFOs were officially considered to be of no national security interest or relevance (see Government Cover-Ups: Controlling the UFO Narrative for more).

1995: National Institute for Discovery Science

Entrepreneur Robert Bigelow convened a meeting in Las Vegas, NV to consider UFO issues and life after death studies. The group that met, named the National Institute for Discovery Science (NIDS), included scientists, engineers, a CIA spy, a former Army colonel, and two Apollo astronauts. Harry Reid, a sitting US senator from Nevada, also participated. Years later, according to Politico, "Reid ultimately enlisted the support of a handful of powerful committee chairs, including Ted Stevens of Alaska and Daniel Inouye of Hawaii, to fund hush-hush UFO research inside the Defense Department. The existence of that program was revealed publicly [in] 2017. One of the program’s main beneficiaries was an aerospace company owned by ... Robert Bigelow." It was later discovered that Bigelow Aerospace had a secret DoD UFO Study contract.

2001: The Disclosure Project

At the prestigious National Press Club in Washington, DC, a score of former military and security officials publicly spoke out about their experiences with anomalous phenomena. Organized by medical doctor and former ER director Dr. Steven Greer, the event was intended to motivate congressional hearings on UFOs. The Disclosure Project, a nonprofit research organization advocating for the disclosure of alleged classified UFO information, has documented fascinating testimonies from top scientists and military-intelligence officers who reveal their knowledge on the existence of extraterrestrial beings and technologies. Watch the full presentation here.

Full 494-page Disclosure Project briefing document
2-pg UFO Disclosure Summary
10-pg UFO Disclosure Summary
Video Collection of Groundbreaking Witness Testimony Interviews

2007: New Pentagon Investigation

The Department of Defense secretly launched the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) to investigate unusual phenomena. Headed up by military intelligence official Luis Elizondo until his resignation in 2017, the program cost about $22 million and was based on the fifth floor of the Pentagon's C Ring. Although the AATIP apparently ceased operations with Elizondo's 2017 departure, it did produce some intriguing results. According to the New York Times, "The program produced documents that describe sightings of aircraft that seemed to move at very high velocities with no visible signs of propulsion, or that hovered with no apparent means of lift. Officials with the program have also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft." Recently declassified documents from the Pentagon reveal that AATIP investigated breakthrough technologies, including invisibility cloaking, dark energy, wormholes and space travel using our current understanding of quantum processes.

2013: The Existence of Area 51 is Disclosed

A secret base in the vast expanse of the Nevada desert was long rumored to contain UFO secrets. For decades, US officials denied that Area 51 existed. Then, in 2013, the CIA admitted that the base was real in response to a 2005 Freedom of Information Act request. The admission mentioned experimental spy planes but made no mention of more exotic technologies. Although Area 51’s secrets remained hidden, the official acknowledgment of the facility’s existence represented a significant disclosure event. Explore our archive of top news article summaries from credible sources on Area 51.

2017: Luis Elizondo Resigns from AATIP and Becomes a Whistleblower

Luis Elizondo resigns in October from AATIP due to excessive secrecy. As he put it in his resignation letter to secretary of defense Jim Mattis: “Bureaucratic challenges and inflexible mindsets continue to plague the department at all levels... The department must take serious the many accounts by the Navy and other services of unusual aerial systems interfering with military weapon platforms and displaying beyond next-generation capabilities... There remains a vital need to ascertain the capability and intent of these phenomena for the benefit of the armed forces and the nation.” Elizondo also filed a complaint with the inspector general accusing his former agency of malicious activities, coordinated disinformation, professional misconduct, whistleblower reprisal and explicit threats.

2017: To the Stars Academy

Blink-182 rock star Tom DeLonge launched To The Stars Academy, a company with former CIA officer Jim Semivan and director of the Stanford Research Institute (SRI) Hal Puthoff. Here's a transcript of the company's major press conference. Headed by former AATIP head Luis Elizondo, the enterprise also included a Lockheed Martin Program Director for Advanced Systems at Skunk Works and Christopher Mellen, former deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence. While To the Stars Academy brought the UFO issue further into the mainstream, the company had questionable financials and quickly fell out of public view.

2017: Unclassified UFO Videos Released to the Media

Elizondo met with Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon and independent journalist Leslie Kean to reveal the existence of AATIP to the public. The story appeared on The New York Times front page in December 2017. Mellon also released two unclassified but official DoD UAP videos of footage from the cockpits of US Navy fighter jets to the media (in 2019, the DoD acknowledged the authenticity of the unclassified UAP videos that Mellon provided to the media). One of the videos was the mysterious Tic Tac UFO sighting in 2004 when pilots were flying training missions from the USS Nimitz aircraft carrier. They encountered a a 40-foot object, resembling a huge white Tic Tac, with no visible means of propulsion hovering over the Pacific Ocean. This craft outran and out maneuvered the pilots’ F-18 fighter jets. Mellon had been informed by Elizondo that “restricted US airspace is being routinely violated by UAP.”

2018: Navy Pilots Talk to Senate Staffers

Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Intelligence Christopher Mellon and former AATIP director Luis Elizondo set up a classified briefing to introduce Senate staffers from the Senate Armed Services and Intelligence Committees to Navy pilots Dave Fravor, Ryan Graves, and Alex Dietrich. This also included other DoD personnel and contractors who have encountered UAP/UFOs.

2022: All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office

The National Defense Authorization Act for fiscal 2022 included a provision creating a new office called the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO). According to the Department of Defense announcement, AARO's mission is to "synchronize efforts across the Department of Defense, and with other U.S. federal departments and agencies, to detect, identify and attribute objects of interest in, on or near military installations, operating areas, training areas, special use airspace and other areas of interest, and, as necessary, to mitigate any associated threats to safety of operations and national security. This includes anomalous, unidentified space, airborne, submerged and transmedium objects." Prior to the establishment of AARO, the Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force (UAPTF) within the Office of Naval Intelligence handled UAP reports. While the Pentagon won't disclose AARO's budget, it is suggested that the office will cost about $11 million this year. Notably, the National Defense Authorization Act created new whistleblower protections and exemptions to non-disclosure orders and agreements to make it easier for government workers to come forward about their experiences with UFOs and related technologies.

2023: Whistleblower David Grusch Steps Forward

Before becoming a whistleblower, David Grusch worked for the Air Force, the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA), and the National Reconnaissance Office (NRO). In July of 2023, Grusch testified at a hearing held by the House Oversight Committee's national security subcommittee on UAPs that the US government had secretly been studying UAPs since the 1930s. His testimony and comments to the media suggest that non-human crafts and "biologics" have been recovered and studied extensively by these secret government programs.. Grusch also reportedly gave a secret talk about the UAP issue at a Manhattan penthouse. Attendees included "officials from the FBI, CIA, Department of Homeland Security, tech entrepreneurs and Wall Street 'bigwigs.'" During this talk, Grusch described a UAP that could manipulate time and space. Many in the UFO community believe Grusch to be part of a limited hangout, a tactic used in the intelligence community to reveal parts of the truth in order to effectively conceal a greater truth. (see Government Cover-Ups: Controlling the UFO Narrative for more).

2023: Customs and Border Protection Releases UFO Videos

The US Customs and Border Patrol released 10 videos in August 2023. depicting reported UAPs along with 387 pages of supporting documents including testimony from eyewitnesses. The videos were released on a dedicated site for agency records made public via requests under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

2023: "Non-Human Intelligence" Makes it Into the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024

In December, President Biden signed into law the National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2024, which contained the term “non-human intelligence” in Section 9010. This would be the first reference in US legal history. Section 9010 reads as follows: “Sec. 9010 requires the federal government to exercise eminent domain (government seizure of private property for public use without the consent of the property owner) over all recovered technologies of unknown origin and biological evidence of non-human intelligence that may be controlled by private persons or entities. Any such material shall be made available to the UAP Records Review Board.”

As more information and UFO disclosure comes to light, we will continue updating this section.


UFO Interference of Nuclear Missiles

Within a span of six months, we lost 30 nuclear missiles to UFOs. Nobody could explain what happened. And yet we never got de-briefed. And we were cleared for very high classification because these are nuclear weapons we're dealing with.

Air Force Officer Captain Robert Salas

At the prestigious National Press Club in Washington, DC in September 2010, six courageous US Air Force officers and one passionate researcher assembled to release declassified US government documents on the connection between UFOs and disruptions at several nuclear missile bases. Yet even more revealing, they shared their first hand experiences of witnessing UFOs neutralize American and Russian nuclear missiles. These individuals were among more than 100 former or retired US Air Force officers who came forward to share their personal experiences of UFOs near nuclear weapon storage and testing grounds.

For more, explore key excerpts of compelling articles from mainstream media sources covering this unprecedented event. Below, we provide compelling evidence that UFOs monitored our use of nuclear weapons, which many believe secretly influenced the halt on nuclear weapons testing in the early 90s.

Perhaps one of the most remarkable events in the history of UFO encounters took place in March of 1967 at the Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana, which was a base that was responsible for a large amount of nuclear weapons. Air Force Captain Robert Salas, a missile launch officer and Titan 3 missiles engineer, initially received a call from his flight security controller about strange lights that were flying rapidly around the facility, yet making no sound. A few minutes later, he called back with a shaken up voice, and informed Capt. Salas that an oval-shaped UFO with glowing red lights was hovering right outside the gate. Moments later, all of the missiles started shutting down one by one, and then went completely dead. Read Capt. Salas’ full testimony and story of this shocking encounter.

In March 1967, all ten of the 'Minuteman I' missiles under my control were disabled while an oval shaped UFO hovered at close range over the front gate of my launch control center in Montana. I was sworn to secrecy about this incident until 1994 when the U.S. Air Force declassified a similar incident at the request of my investigator, Jim Klotz under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).

Air Force Officer Captain Robert Salas

In a nearby launch facility around the same time, maintenance and security officers at Echo Flight witnessed hovering UFOs at the launch facilities. The entire flight of 10 Minuteman I missiles were also disabled within ten seconds, and remained down the entire day. Capt. Salas would also learn that 10 ICBMs were disabled under similar circumstances at the Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota the previous year, September 1966. UFO encounters at the Minot Air Force Base were quite extraordinary, as detailed in this fascinating summary. Capt. Salas’ colleague Colonel Fred Meiwald would also confirm that a similar incident occurred just eight days before the Malmstrom Base incident at the Oscar Flight nuclear facility.

[Boeing Project Engineer] Bob Kaminski headed up the organization to look at all aspects of these shutdowns. Kominski related to me in writing that at some point he was told by his boss that the Air Force said, "Stop the investigation. Do no more on this and in addition do not write a final report." Again, this is very unusual, especially in light of the fact that CINC-SAC [Commander-in-Chief, Strategic Air Command] headquarters was stating that this was of extreme importance. And yet, the head of the investigative team was told during the investigation to stop the investigation and not to write a final report.

Air Force Officer Captain Robert Salas

It is important to note that there was an intense policy of secrecy regarding UFOs in the Air Force at the time. Despite being deeply frightened and confused by the encounters, officers were required to sign non-disclosure agreements ensuring they wouldn’t talk about the encounters with anyone, including their family and even amongst each other.

Furthermore, the Air Force was not asked to release information on these classified UFO incident reports at nuclear sites to the Condon Committee, an Air Force-sponsored investigation into UFOs following Project Blue Book. The results of the Condon Report heavily influenced public policy and understanding of the phenomena, emphasizing that UFOs do not bear national security interest or relevance. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, the Air Force understandably considered the disabling of all 10 Echo Flight nukes by UFOs to be one "of grave concern” (pg. 8 of declassified government document collection).

Retired US Air Force Colonel Ross Dedrickson, who worked with the US Air Force and Atomic Energy Commission, provide further evidence linking UFO activity and nuclear missiles. Project A119 was a top secret Air Force program developed in 1958. Its aim was to detonate a nuclear bomb on the Moon, which could boost “domestic morale in the capabilities of the US” as the Space Race raged on between the US and the Soviet Union. In a powerful interview, Colonel Dedrickson discusses how the US Air Force was prevented from executing the mission.

After retiring from the Air Force I joined the Boeing company and was responsible for accounting for all of the nuclear fleet of Minuteman missiles. I learned of a number of incidents [in which] nuclear weapons sent into space were destroyed by the extraterrestrials. The idea of any explosion in space by any Earth government was not acceptable to the extraterrestrials, and that has been demonstrated over and over.

Video testimony of Colonel Dedrickson

US Air Force Lieutenant and Professor Robert Jacobs was tasked with supervising the instrumentation photography of every missile that went down the Western test range (a large area of the Pacific Ocean west of California used for US satellite launches). Most of the nuclear missiles blew up on launch, and his job was to provide data on why they blew up. Lieutenant Jacobs also admitted that they were testing to see if they could launch a nuclear warhead into orbit slightly above the nuclear chaff so that Russian anti-missile missiles would aim at the chaff and the warhead would fly over and “obliterate Moscow.”

After successfully launching a dummy nuclear warhead into the test range, he sent the film back down to Vandenberg Air Force base. Shortly after, he was called into the office of Major Florenze J Mansmann, where two CIA agents were also present. Maj. Mansmann told Lt. Jacobs to watch the film clip. After the three stages of the rocket’s powered flight were observed in the film, a saucer-shaped object traveling at 8,000 mph suddenly appeared and circled the missile.

So this thing [UFO] fires a beam of light at the warhead, hits it, and then it moves to the other side and fires another beam of light, and then moves again and fires another beam, and another. And the warhead tumbles out of space. What message would I interpret from this? Don't mess with nuclear warheads.

— US Air Force Lieutenant and Professor Robert Jacobs

After the screening of the footage, the two officers confiscated the tape and Major Mansmann told Lt. Jacobs to never speak out about this event. Watch Lt. Jacobs’s intriguing full testimony here, where he discusses how he was sworn to secrecy about what he saw for 18 years. By 1983, Maj. Mansmann spoke out about the encounter as well, describing the UFO as a “classic disc, the center seemed to be a raised bubble … the entire lower saucer shape was glowing and seemed to be rotating slowly.” An anonymous US Senate investigator allegedly confirmed that the existence of the footage was verified by Luis Elizondo, the former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

Major-General Vasily Alexyev of the Russian Air Force has extensively discussed his participation in programs that studied UFOs, including one that deliberately provoked the appearance of UFOs at military bases. Interestingly enough, he elaborated in great length that many of their reported UFO sightings were seen over locations containing “high concentrations of advanced science” like nuclear facilities. He suggests that extraterrestrials are concerned about the future of our species.

I know that in some places they even learned to create a situation which would deliberately provoke the appearance of a UFO. A UFO would appear where there was increased military activity connected, say, with the transportation of “special” loads. It was enough to artificially stimulate or schedule such a move for a UFO to appear. In other words, some kind of conditional relationship emerged.

I know that at certain testing ranges … they even learnt to make contact of a kind. First the UFO appeared; in most instances it was a sphere, but there were other kinds. Contact was achieved with the help of physical indications of behavior – pointing your arms in various directions, say, and the sphere became flattened in the same direction. If you raised your arms three times, the UFO flattened out in a vertical direction three times as well.

Military men in general are not inclined to fantasise. They only report what they see, what actually occurs.

I think that if their level of civilization allows them to move in space across great distances, possibly in other forms of material – and that is indeed the case – then at their level of development, when it comes down to it, they are also concerned about … the survival of intelligent life, if it does exist in the world. And if we look at the Earth from that point of view, then our whole history is a tale of self-destruction, and not creation. It’s the history of murders and the death of whole peoples. Not a single truly civilized society could tolerate that. The higher the level of civilization, the greater the awareness of that.

— Excerpt from interview with Major General Alexeyev (full interview on pg. 257 of the Disclosure Project briefing document)


Controlling the UFO Narrative: Government Cover-Ups and Secret Programs

For all the other officers and men in the Air Force who have had to keep silent about what they experienced with these objects, I, without reservation, accuse the U.S. Department of the Air Force of a blatant, pervasive and continuing cover-up of the facts, deception, distortion, and lying to the public about the reality of the UFO phenomenon.

Air Force Officer Captain Robert Salas

Much of the UFO discussion remains speculative, largely due to the deliberate suppression of information. Looking back at UFO disclosure in history, government cover-up and secrecy tend to be the rule, not the exception. It’s been well-documented that government narratives in the last century have emphasized that UFOs are of no significance, while covert elements within different branches of the military-intelligence apparatus have secretly studied this phenomena in manners that are just beginning to come to light. A 1949 FBI memo revealed that the FBI destroyed thousands of UFO reports, supposedly due to a lack of filing space. The UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) claimed to have destroyed all of their UFO reports during World War II. A previously secret 2009 MoD memo announced a policy of destroying future UFO reports.

Those seeking the truth are often misled, debunked, threatened, or discredited for valid inquiries. Meanwhile, Wilbert B. Smith, engineer and head of the Canadian government’s first study on UFOs, concluded in a declassified 1950 memo that US authorities consider UFO phenomena to be “of tremendous significance,” and that UFOs are the “most highly classified subject in the US government.” Luis Elizondo, whistleblower and former head of the secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), even asserted that only three presidents have been fully briefed on the matter.

In a democracy, the decision on where to draw the line between a citizen's right to know and the government's national security obligations is especially relevant to the UFO conversation. There are legitimate reasons to keep this information secret. If the government disclosed the existence of some of the advanced technologies that witnesses have encountered, it could have serious political and economic ramifications.

We soon established that they were not missiles ... Foreign scientists flew to Greece for secret talks with me. A world blanket of secrecy surrounded the UFO question because the authorities were unwilling to admit the existence of a force against which we had no possibility of defense.

Dr. Paul Santorini, Greek physicist and engineer credited with developing the proximity fuse for the Hiroshima atomic bomb, two patents for the guidance system used in the U.S. Nike missiles, and a centrimetric radar system

See UFO Interference with Nuclear Missiles for more.

By taking control of the UFO narrative early on, covert elements within our government along with private sector interests positioned themselves to leverage any secrets they might uncover while investigating the phenomena. While this information control has clear benefits to a nation state seeking an edge over its adversaries, it also created a situation where these interests could more easily manipulate the general public using secrets and perhaps secret technologies.

Mainstream media narratives about the UFO topic often serve as limited hangouts, a tactic used in the intelligence community to reveal parts of the truth in order to effectively conceal a greater truth. This strategy is commonly used by authority figures to influence public narratives.

Air Force officers have even infiltrated the UFO community, feeding researchers “lies and half-truths” to further steer them away from top secret technologies.

I am convinced there is a small body of valid (UFO) information, and that there is a body of information ten times as big that is total disinformation put out by the sources to confuse the whole issue.

Edgar Mitchell, astronaut and sixth man to walk on the moon

An important consideration regarding government secrecy is the strong possibility that there are deeply classified black budget programs involving ET technology.

According to Navy astronaut Edgar Mitchell, these programs involve rogue private organizations that operate top secret projects with black budget federal funding. These programs operate without any oversight, and are set up structurally to maintain secrecy. If there are cover-ups happening now, they likely won’t be uncovered for years.

Did you know...

A 2019 leak revealed a document containing a letter from Navy Lt. Commander Willard Miller on his knowledge of UFOs. What was also documented was a top secret conversation in 2002 between astrophysicist and consultant for the Pentagon UFO program Dr. Eric Davis and Director of Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) Admiral Thomas R. Wilson. They discuss the existence of deeply classified black budget programs dealing with technology “not of this earth,” specifically a reverse engineering program (the process of studying previously unknown technology and unlocking its secrets for replication). It was suggested that this program was run by an aerospace technology defense contractor, covert elements within intelligence agencies, and anonymous government officials working in different departments and levels.

It was also revealed that even the DIA Director Admiral Wilson was denied access and deemed irrelevant to the nature of their program. This included anyone in the White House, Congress, and any other US government personnel unless they met the special criteria of the “watch committee,” or gatekeepers, who consisted of a “security director (NSA-retired, counter-intelligence expert), program manager, and corporate attorney.” They did not disclose the criteria to Admiral Wilson, and his need to know authorization was not granted.

According to the leaked document, these “gatekeepers” formed out of necessity to protect themselves following an audit investigation that drew unwanted attention to the program. A back and forth with the investigator and his Pentagon chief over program transparency ensued. They threatened to blow the program’s cover, so the investigator was officially briefed, given a tour, and shown their program.

Yet following that, the program managers reached a formal agreement with the Special Access Program Oversight Committee (SAPOC) to prevent that from happening again. The agreement established extremely strict criteria for the circumstances under which anyone could get access in the future. The contractor committee (the program director, security director and attorney) set the criteria. No US government officials could gain access unless they met the criteria.

Note: This conversation took place at the EG&G Special Projects building parking lot in Nevada. EG&G is a service used to transport employees to remote government locations in Nevada and California. Notably, the EG&G Special Projects division built and operated Area 51. EG&G’s clients include the CIA, NASA, US Space Command, Department of Defense, Department of Homeland Security, and more.

Former Nevada Senator Harry Reid, a longtime UFO disclosure advocate, revealed in 2021 that he’s been informed for decades that Lockheed Martin, an American aerospace defense contractor, is in possession of fragments recovered from the U.S. crash site of a UFO. However, he was unable to further investigate the matter because he was not given classified approval from the Pentagon.

For further exploration, watch leading UFO researcher Richard Dolan’s in-depth analysis on the leaked document.

Such action seems inconsistent with a government that officially downplays the existence of true UFOs, and officially states that there is no threat to national security. In the case of UFO phenomena, the question must be asked: what would give an un-elected government official the right to keep this information to himself, thereby depriving the rest of the world of possible knowledge of almost inconceivable magnitude and consequence?

— Independent journalist and aviation historian Don Berliner, excerpt from UFO Briefing Document which was presented to Congress (full text version here)

Another piece of the government cover-up puzzle are the intriguing accounts of Col. Lieutenant Colonel Philip J. Corso, former head of the Foreign Technology Desk in the US Army and a member of President Eisenhower‘s National Security Council from 1953–1957. A year before his death, he came forward to share his astounding knowledge and involvement in covert government operations regarding UFO phenomena in his book Day After Roswell. According to his testimony, he helped spearhead the Army’s reverse-engineering project on recovered material from the infamous 1947 Roswell crash, which accelerated the development of sophisticated technologies commonly used today (see Roswell Crash Cover-Up and Reports of Incredible Technology for more).

Read our summary of key excerpts from Day After Roswell, where you can read more about how he came into contact with the Roswell material and his direct involvement in top secret investigations and covert operations.

On September 26, 1947, General Twining gave his report on the Roswell crash and its implications for the United States to President Truman and a short list of officials he convened to begin the management of this top-secret combination of inquiry, police development, and “ops.” This working group, which included Adm. Roscoe H. Hillenkoetter, Dr. Vannevar Bush, Secretary James Forrestal, Gen. Hoyt Vandenberg, Dr. Detlev Bronk, Dr. Jerome Hunsaker, Sidney W. Souers, Gordon Gray, Dr. Donald Menzel, Gen. Robert M. Montague, Dr. Lloyd V. Berkner, and Gen. Nathan Twining himself, became the nucleus for an ongoing fifty-year operation that some people have called “Majestic-12.”

The group agreed that these were the requirements of the endeavor they would undertake. They would form nothing less than a government within the government, sustaining itself from presidential administration to presidential administration regardless of whatever political party took power, and ruthlessly guarding their secrets while evaluating every new bit of information on flying saucers they received. But at the same time, they would allow disclosure of some of the most far-fetched information, whether true or not, because it would help create a climate of public attitude that would be able to accept the existence of extraterrestrial life without a general sense of panic.

“It will be,” General Twining said, “a case where the cover-up is the disclosure and the disclosure is the cover-up. Deny everything, but let the public sentiment take its course. Let skepticism do our work for us until the truth becomes common acceptance.”

— Col. Corso, excerpt from Day After Roswell (for more, explore: WantToKnow.info Full Summary of Day After Roswell, Roswell Crash Cover-Up and Reports of Incredible Technology for more).

Did you know...

MJ-12, or Majestic-12, was a code name for the secret committee of scientists, military leaders, and officials tasked to investigate alien spacecraft and technology. Despite claims that the existence of the MJ-12 was a hoax, a group of respected researchers and scholars has put together a comprehensive website of government documents and memos that confirm the existence of MJ-12.

Master Sergeant Dan Morris was a retired Air Force Master Sergeant who worked on extraterrestrial projects for many years. After leaving the Air Force, he was recruited into the top-secret National Reconnaissance Organization, or NRO, where he was specifically involved in extraterrestrial-connected operations. According to the National Security Archive, the mission of the NRO was to synchronize “the space and aerial overflight operations of the Air Force and the CIA” and “institute a uniform security control system to protect information about those systems.” In 1962, the NRO added the Navy reconnaissance satellite program, which collected signals emitted by foreign radars. The existence of the NRO remained an official secret until 1992.

I had a clearance 38 levels above top secret, which is cosmic top-secret… it is the top of all of those clearances. It is for UFOs, and aliens, etc. No president has had that level, has ever been cleared for that level. Eisenhower was the closest. I became part of a group that would investigate, gather the information, and in the beginning it was still under the Blue Book, Snowbird and different covert programs. I would interview people who claimed they had seen something, and try to convince them they hadn't, or that they were hallucinating. If that didn't work, another team would give all the threats – threaten them and their family. They would be in charge of discrediting them, making them look foolish. Now, if that didn't work, there was another team that put an end to that problem, one way or another. So, there would be cover stories deliberately put out and then de-bunked. Disinformation has been going on for 50 years.

— Excerpt of testimony from US Air Force, NRO (National Reconnaissance Office), Master Sergeant Dan Morris (read full testimony on pg. 268 of the full Disclosure Project briefing document).

Many are calling for formal congressional oversight of these rogue private organizations, and their partnership with covert elements within our government. This is especially important, as the public and scientific community have been misled and discredited for their valid inquiries into UFO matters.

While concrete evidence continues to be dug up from all sorts of nooks and crannies, we provide details into three compelling summaries of events that indicate a government cover-up. Skip down below to read a more in-depth look.

Roswell Cover-Up
Condon Report Cover-Up
Rendlesham Incident Cover-Up

There's a big difference between saying "the government must have a lot of data" and saying "the government knows what this is."

The place where I end up is, parts of the government must have a lot of data that should be turned over to the scientific community. What are they afraid of? We know there is data. All of us who have investigated this have spoken to pilots and radar operators who said that after a sighting, a couple of people in blue jeans showed up with some identification from somewhere and confiscated the tapes or the film, and they took it somewhere and no one ever saw it again. There's enough of that now that we know that data went somewhere.

— Jacques Vallée, scientist and co-developer of NASA’s map on Mars. Excerpt from MSNBC, "Sleuths study ancient UFOs


Roswell Crash Cover Up

In July of 1947, something crashed in the high desert of Roswell, New Mexico. A few days later, the U.S. Army Air Forces shocked the country by issuing a press release that the Roswell Army Air Field had “captured” a flying saucer that crashed nearby. Within hours, however, the statement was quickly retracted and reclassified as a weather balloon. As a result, the press lost interest and the story was buried for the next thirty years. Then, in 1978, Major Jesse Marcel, the Air Force intelligence officer tasked with investigating the wreckage, broke the silence by publicly stating that what crashed outside of Roswell in 1947 was not a weather balloon.

Compelling information released decades after the incident, particularly from government officials directly involved in the incident, strongly suggests that the infamous 1947 Roswell crash in New Mexico was a cover-up. Below, we provide the best, most reliable documentation of what really happened during that time.

When New Mexico rancher Mac Brazel reported on a pile of strange debris on his ranch about 80 miles northwest of Roswell, Major Marcel’s responsibility was to retrieve the wreckage and debris to investigate the matter. He concluded that the debris was not from this earth and the material from the recovered wreckage was quite peculiar. It had strange markings and was thin and light, yet tough and unburnable. For verification, view a typed transcript (or view original scanned documents) of the groundbreaking interview Major Marcel did with journalist Bob Pratt in 1979.

Despite this bombshell revelation, the Air Force changed the official story yet again in 1997 with the release of "The Roswell Report: Case Closed." In this report, they determined that Project Mogul was responsible for the 1947 events. It was explained that the top secret Mogul balloon was used to acoustically detect Soviet nuclear weapons explosions.

However, Major Marcel, the man who investigated the wreckage, was highly trained in radar tracking materials and equipment, which were the dominant parts of Project Mogul’s balloon devices. Major Marcel had worked on top secret special weapons projects, and received his diploma in radar technology from the Army Air Forces Command. Notably, he was also the intelligence officer for the 509th Bomb Wing stationed at Roswell's Army air base, the only nuclear-equipped jet squadron in the world.

Did you know...

A declassified memorandum to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover reveals that a special agent with the FBI said he received information from an Air Force investigator about flying saucers and human-shaped bodies found in New Mexico. Another FBI document shows that Hoover wanted "full access to discs recovered" at Roswell just days after the Roswell crash.

It’s important to note that Stanton Friedman, a respected nuclear physicist who worked for top American companies, began investigating the Roswell investigation. After speaking with Major Marcel and at least 40 other people directly involved, he became convinced that a flying saucer did explode, and that Roswell is an outcome of a long-term cover-up. He even reported that many people were told by the US military that if they talked about what they saw, they would be killed along with their families.

Frankie Dwyer was a twelve-year-old schoolgirl in July of 1947, and her encounter with the bullying and threatening military officer haunts her to this day. Frankie's father was a crew chief with the Roswell Fire Department. At the time of the incident, Frankie had … stopped at the fire station. A highway patrol officer by the name of Robert Scroggins came into the station with a mischievous look on his face. "Hey, guys! Want to see something?" Scroggins reached into his pocket and took out something that he wadded up in his hand. He then held his hand out about a foot over a nearby table and opened it. Something silvery fell from his hand to the surface of the table without a sound. Then, as if by magic, it spread out like quicksilver into a small, thin, irregular sheet of something in one or two seconds. It could not be cut with scissors, scratched, burned, or permanently creased. No one there could figure out what it was.

A day or two later, Frankie Dwyer was at home with her mother tending to chores when there was a hard knock on the door. Opening the door revealed a tall man with wide shoulders and a dark complexion dressed in an MP uniform. He was looking for Frankie Dwyer. After Mrs. Dwyer introduced her daughter to the ominous MP, two other MPs escorted Mrs. Dwyer into another room. With a thick New York accent, the first MP started to question Frankie about the incident at the fire station and wanted to know what she had actually seen. Satisfied that the twelve-year-old had seen plenty, he took out his billy club and started pounding it into his open palm as he tried to pound home his reason for the visit. "You did not see anything. You got that? If you say anything, not only will you be killed, but the rest of your family will be killed too. There's a big desert out there. No one will ever find you."

— Excerpt from Witness to Roswell:Unmasking the Government's Biggest Cover-up, written by Thomas J. Carey, U.S. Air Force veteran who held a Top Secret security clearance

The intense secrecy around the Roswell incident would keep Lt. Walter G Haut, the man who issued the original press release, in silence until his death. Lt. Haut left a sworn affidavit to be released only after his death, which was published in Witness to Roswell: Unmasking the Government's Biggest Cover-up, a book written by long-time Roswell researcher and US Air Force Veteran Thomas J. Carey. Carey held a Top Secret security clearance and became a long-time researcher into the Roswell incident.

Lt. Haut’s affidavit would reveal that Major Marcel was very upset that the pieces of the wreckage he brought back were replaced with a weather balloon and a radar kite. The affidavit also asserts that the weather balloon claim was indeed a cover story, and that the real object had been recovered by the military. Furthermore, his affidavit also describes not just seeing the craft, but also witnessing alien bodies. Read the full affidavit here, which has been verified by Lt. Haut’s daughter.

There have been many accounts of witnessing alien bodies by those allegedly involved in the incident. Some of these accounts appear credible, while others may reflect fabrication or government misinformation. One of the most interesting accounts involved was Sergeant Frederick Benthal, who was an Army Air Force photographer in Washington, DC when he was given sudden orders to fly to the Roswell base. At the desert site, he was taken to a dark tent where he and a few others took photographs of small nonhuman bodies with “dark complexions, thin and with large heads.” However, his picture-taking was heavily supervised by an officer who did not want Benthal to make sustained observation of the aliens. Because it was so dark in the tent, the flash bulbs gave off a blinding light when pictures were snapped.

Before he left the site, his camera and film were confiscated. He was told by a Lieutenant Colonel Marine officer that they did not know what they photographed. Like many other military officers, Benthal would be transferred out of the Roswell base after their duties were completed. He was reassigned to Antarctica “to study the effects of cold on pieces of equipment.”

Perhaps the most incredible testimony about the Roswell cover-up was from Colonel Philip J. Corso, former head of the Foreign Technology Desk in the US Army and a member of President Eisenhower‘s National Security Council from 1953–1957. A year before his death, he came forward to share his astounding knowledge and involvement in covert government operations regarding UFO phenomena in his book Day After Roswell, where he would corroborate the testimonies of Maj. Jesse Marcel and other witnesses who were sworn to secrecy about what they saw that day.

Read our full summary of his shocking investigations and encounters with alien bodies and technologies recovered from Roswell. According to his testimony, Col. Corso helped spearhead the Army’s reverse-engineering project on recovered material from the infamous 1947 Roswell crash, which accelerated the development of sophisticated technologies commonly used today. In his book, he extensively discusses the top secret conversations and investigations by military and government officials, which largely focused on studying and exploiting the technology they recovered at Roswell, that was vastly superior to anything human made.


Condon Report Cover-Up

The Roswell crash was one of many UFO incidents investigated by Project Blue Book. The end of Project Blue Book involved the Condon Report, which was an investigation from 1966-1968 that heavily influenced public policy and understanding of the phenomena for years. The final report from the Condon Committee was written by committee chair Dr. Edward Condon, an American nuclear physicist. In the investigation's conclusions, Condon writes:

Our general conclusion is that nothing has come from the study of UFOs in the past 21 years that has added to scientific knowledge … The question remains as to what, if anything, the federal government should do about the UFO reports it receives from the general public. We are inclined to think that nothing should be done with them in the expectation that they are going to contribute to the advance of science.

— Excerpt from Condon Report conclusions

However, the Condon Report failed to conduct or document interviews with principal witnesses, including critical military officials who witnessed the presence of unidentified aerial objects around nuclear missile sites (See UFO Interference with Nuclear Missiles for more). The Air Force was not asked to release information on classified UFO incident reports for the study. Meanwhile, behind closed doors, the Air Force understandably considered the disabling of 10 nuclear missiles by UFOs to be one "of grave concern” (pg. 8 of declassified government document collection).

Former Air Force Captain Robert Salas, a missile launch officer and Titan 3 missiles engineer, has extensively written about his personal experiences regarding cover-ups of UFO activity at nuclear bases. WantToKnow.info founder Fred Burks had the privilege of spending some time with Capt. Salas, who gave us permission to post his fascinating and personal, in-depth research into the Air Force cover-up.

In his research, Capt. Salas mentions Lt. Col. Lewis Chase, a high-ranking officer who experienced his own mysterious UFO encounter over the Gulf Coast in 1957. Chase had been involved with the handling of "special contacts" for UFO matters that the Air Force established at some of their military bases. These contacts were called Base UFO Investigators and attended a meeting with Major General Otto Glasser, Assistant Deputy Chief of Staff of the Air Force. He writes a report of this meeting, with parts of it quoted below:

Much effort was expended in explaining the methods that have been used to discount approximately 95% of the UFO sightings to date, i.e., optical mirage, stars, satellites, temperature inversion, etc. No time was devoted to the 5% of sightings on the Project Blue Book list that remain admittedly unexplained to date. Although the University study [Condon Committee] has approximately 8 months to run, and barring any dramatic events, the conclusions in the initial formal report will most likely read as follows: a. There is no evidence to support a hypothesis that extraterrestrials have visited earth. b. Certain events have occurred that are difficult to explain due to lack of conclusive data and/or instrumentation and state of the art investigative procedures.

— Excerpt from Lt. Col. Chase’s trip report


Rendlesham Incident

The military has nothing to do with it, other than the cover-up, but I can tell you, there is some type of superior intelligence that can change size, change shape, do funny things. What I saw, I'm firmly convinced, didn't have anything that we know or could relate to, inside it. Maybe they're not a being as we know, maybe they're an entity that just has intelligence, and we just can't relate to it.

Col. Charles Halt, former deputy base commander of RAF Bentwaters and retired US Air Force officer

Over the course of a few days starting December 27, 1980, unusual lights and other phenomena were observed by military officers in the Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk, England between the Royal Air Force bases of Bentwaters and Woodbridge. Although it was not confirmed nor denied the presence of nuclear weapons in the weapons storage area for national security purposes, it is likely that RAF Bentwaters stored tactical nuclear bombs in their Weapons Storage area.

Similar to many UFO encounters at military bases, officers kept quiet and the British government did not investigate the incident in any depth. Yet unlike other one-time UFO encounters, what happened in the Rendlesham Forest was a series of events over consecutive nights.

Colonel Charles Halt, now retired US Air Force officer, was the former deputy base commander of RAF Bentwaters during this encounter. Below is the text of Col. Halt’s 1981 report to the UK’s Ministry of Defense (MoD). This report was released under the US Freedom of Information Act in June 1983 by the US Air Force to Robert Todd of the pressure group Citizens Against UFO Secrecy (CAUS). See full memo here. To read the incredible witness statements by other officers, click here.

1. Early in the morning of 27 Dec 80 (approximately 0300L) two USAF security police patrolmen saw unusual lights outside the back gate at RAF Woodbridge. Thinking an aircraft might have crashed or been forced down, they called for permission to go outside the gate to investigate. The on-duty flight chief responded and allowed three patrolmen to proceed on foot. The individuals reported seeing a strange glowing object in the forest. The object was described as being metallic in appearance and triangular in shape, approximately two to three meters across the base and approximately two meters high. It illuminated the entire forest with a white light. The object itself had a pulsing red light on top and a bank(s) of blue lights underneath. The object was hovering or on legs. As the patrolmen approached the object, it maneuvered through the trees and disappeared. At this time the animals on a nearby farm went into a frenzy. The object was briefly sighted approximately an hour later near the back gate.

2. The next day, three depressions 1.5 inches deep and 7 inches in diameter were found where the object had been sighted on the ground. The following night (29 Dec 80) the area was checked for radiation. Beta/gamma readings of 0.1 milliroentgens were recorded with peak readings in the three depressions and near the center of the triangle formed by the depressions. A nearby tree had moderate (0.05–0.07) readings on the side of the tree toward the depressions.

3. Later in the night a red sun-like light was seen through the trees. It moved about and pulsed. At one point it appeared to throw off glowing particles and then broke into five separate white objects and then disappeared. Immediately thereafter, three star-like objects were noticed in the sky, two objects to the north and one to the south, all of which were about 10 degrees off the horizon. The objects moved rapidly in sharp, angular movements and displayed red, green and blue lights. The objects to the north appeared to be elliptical through an 8-12 power lens. They then turned to full circles. The objects to the north remained in the sky for an hour or more. The object to the south was visible for two or three hours and beamed down a stream of light from time to time. Numerous individuals, including the undersigned, witnessed the activities in paragraphs 2 and 3.

(Signed)
Charles I. Halt, Lt Col, USAF
Deputy Base Commander

Even more compelling, Col. Halt preserved a copy of a tape recording of the second night of the UFO sighting. Most of the recording, they investigate what appear to be landing marks on the ground by the craft on its earlier visit. At 12:25, they begin observing UFO sightings.

Ian Ridpath, the first journalist to investigate the Rendlesham incident after it hit the headlines in 1983, was given a copy of the tape that Col. Halt made, which was created by placing a microphone in front of a loudspeaker that was playing the original tape. Thus, there are a few times where background noises can be heard, including his daughter playing piano for a brief moment.

Listen to/download the recording here (UFO sighting begins around 12:25).
Read the full transcript here.

Claims that the incident was a prank, or even that the UFO sighting was caused by lights on a police car, fail to account for the bizarre details of the incident. MoD official Simon Weeden, the first to investigate Col. Halt's memo, investigations into the incident were found to be of no significance, and that none of the radar stations reported anything unusual on their logs during the incident. However, Col. Halt was able to gather statements from radar operators at RAF Bentwaters once they retired. Col. Halt would be told that every time a UFO was reported by one of the radar operators, they would be “de-certified.


Reports of Incredible Technology

Initially I think there was justification in that leadership officials thought people weren’t ready to handle it. We are well past that now. It’s not just military. It’s a cabal of organizations primarily for a profit motive. Think of what that could mean in terms of space travel with control of UFO machinery, technology. There’s a lot of money involved.

— Astronaut Edgar Mitchell, excerpt from Bloomberg, "UFO Cover-Ups Must End, Moonwalker Edgar Mitchell Says"

Defense contractors keep advanced technologies secret for commercial reasons. Militaries keep advanced technologies secret to stay ahead of foreign adversaries. If the Pentagon and its contractors have recovered UFOs and successfully reverse-engineered some of what they found, they could be in possession of technologies capable of changing the world. But they are unlikely to release any information about these technologies voluntarily.

Whistleblower David Grusch recently described the unusual characteristics of a downed UFO in the government’s possession. At a private event, Grusch told a crowd of finance and intelligence professionals that this craft was 40 feet long when measured from the outside, but on the inside it was the size of a football field.

Imagine a technology that can do 6-to-700 g-forces, that can fly at 13,000 miles an hour, that can evade radar and that can fly through air and water and possibly space … And oh, by the way, has no obvious signs of propulsion, no wings, no control surfaces and yet still can defy the natural effects of Earth's gravity. That's precisely what we're seeing.

— Luis Elizondo, whistleblower and former head of the secretive Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP), excerpt from CBS News, "UFOs regularly spotted in restricted U.S. airspace"

In 2018, former director of the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) Luis Elizondo said that UFOs warp space-time, implying that we may have been visited by extraterrestrial time travelers. In a fascinating interview, Elizondo discusses a pilot who had a close encounter with a UFO that likely involved the warping of space time: “You know, Lue, it’s really bizarre. It felt like I was there for only five minutes, but when I looked at my watch 30 minutes went by, but I only used five minutes’ worth of fuel. How is that possible?”

Under AATIP, it was claimed by Luis Elizondo and program contractors that materials recovered from UFOs may have "otherworldly origins and useful applications for the military.” Steve Justice, an employee of Lockheed Martin’s Skunkworks program, also alleged that these materials have been documented back to the ‘90s.

Declassified Pentagon documents reveal the existence of these materials, with one of them categorized as a “metamaterial.” Watch an in-depth analysis about metamaterials and emerging UFO science from leading UFO researcher Richard Dolan, which features images and compelling scientific explorations. According to Dolan, Hal Puthoff, scientist and director of Stanford Research Institute, has studied metamaterials extensively and has made it clear that they are “not of human design.” Puthoff was the creator of the CIA’s own revolutionary psychic spy program. His innovative research company EarthTech greatly contributed to the Defense Intelligence Agency’s research into breakthrough science conducted by the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP).

In 2007, engineer Boyd Bushman said that he had worked for Lockheed Martin in Area 51 and that anti-gravity technology existed there. Interestingly enough, Bushman wasn’t the only one working for Lockheed Martin that has spoken out.

Don Phillips, a retired Air Force pilot and special aircraft engineer, came forward to discuss his personal experience with UFOs as a pilot, along with his experiences as a contractor for Lockheed Martin’s secret weapons and technology unit, Skunkworks, which was kept secret until 2014. He worked on secret projects for the CIA and other government agencies as part of an “unseen” and “hidden” industry.

In the Disclosure Project, Phillips described reverse engineering programs and certain technologies that have been developed because of ETs: computer chips, lasers, night vision, and bulletproof vests. His testimony starts on pg. 281 of the Disclosure Project.

When I was working with the Skunkworks, we signed an agreement with the National Security Agency and the National Security Council, as well as the CIA. And we kept very quiet about this. Anti-gravitational research was going. ... We know that there were some captured craft from 1947 in Roswell, New Mexico. And, yeah, they were real. And, yes, we really did get some technology from them. And, yes, we really did put it to work. ... There was no question that there are peoples, or beings, from outside the planet. Are these ET people hostile? Well, if they were hostile, with their weaponry they could have destroyed us a long time ago. ... We got these things that are handheld scanners that scan the body and determine what the condition is. We can also treat from the same scanner. Are these things real? Well, I can tell you personally that we've been working on them. And we have ones that can cure cancer. Yes, diagnose and cure. People whose financial interests could be damaged by the release of certain technologies keep these out of view. ... One of the purposes for founding this technology corporation that I did in 1998 was to bring forth these technologies that can help get rid of the toxins – that can clean the air, that help get rid of the need for so much fossil fuel. Yes, it is time.

— Lockheed Martin Skunkworks contractor and former US Air Force pilot Don Phillips (watch full video testimony or read full transcript)

Some of these advanced technologies were confirmed by Colonel Philip J. Corso, former head of the Foreign Technology Desk in the US Army and a member of President Eisenhower‘s National Security Council from 1953–1957. Col. Corso describes how he was in charge of developing advanced war technologies from the artifacts recovered from the 1947 Roswell crash in 1961. A year before his death, he came forward to share his astounding knowledge and involvement in covert government operations regarding UFO phenomena in his book Day After Roswell.

[General] Twining was suggesting to the commander of the Army Air Force that were the air force .. to attempt to exploit the technology that had quite literally dropped into its lap, it had to do so separately and independently from any normal weapons-development program. The descriptions of the supersecret projects at Nellis Air Force Base or Area 51 in the Nevada desert seem to fit the profile of the kind of recommendation that General Twining was making, especially the employment of the “skunk works” group at Lockheed in the development of the Stealth fighter and B2 bomber.

— Col. Corso, excerpt from Day After Roswell (for more, explore: WantToKnow.info Full Summary of Day After Roswell, Roswell Crash Cover-Up and Reports of Incredible Technology for more).

According to his testimony, Col. Corso tells how he spearheaded the Army's reverse-engineering project that led to today's integrated circuits, fiber optics, lasers, bulletproof vests, and more. Secretly, they would “seed” ET technology to American industry giants, mixing human technology with ET technology, without telling those companies where it came from.

Read our full summary of his book, Day After Roswell.

In 1961, regardless of the differences in the Roswell story from the many different sources who had described it, the top-secret file of Roswell information came into my possession when I took over the Foreign Technology desk at R&D [Research and Development]. My boss, General Trudeau, asked me to use the army's ongoing weapons development and research program as a way to filter the Roswell technology into the mainstream of industrial development through the military defense contracting program. Today, items such as lasers, integrated circuitry, fiber-optics networks, accelerated particle-beam devices, and even the Kevlar material in bulletproof vests are all commonplace. Yet the seeds for the development of all of them were found in the crash of the alien craft at Roswell.

— Col. Corso, excerpt from Day After Roswell

The Disclosure Project, a nonprofit research organization advocating for the disclosure of alleged classified UFO information, has documented fascinating testimonies from top scientists and military-intelligence officers who reveal their knowledge of advanced technologies.


Investigating Abductions and Encounters

That is, UFOs are in fact observed, filmed on camera at the same time that people are having their abduction experiences. People, in fact, have been observed to be missing at the time that they are reporting their abduction experiences. They return from their experiences with cuts, ulcers on their bodies, triangular lesions, which follow the distribution of the experiences that they recover, of what was done to them in the craft by the surgical-like activity of these beings.

— Dr. John Mack, excerpt from PBS, "Psychiatrist John Mack on alien abductions

UFO encounters range from beautiful and transcendent to intensely negative and traumatizing. Some of these encounters involve abductions. In UFO Abduction Reports: The Supernatural Kidnap Narrative Returns in Technological Guise, UFO researcher and folklorist Thomas E. Bullard identified eight distinct events within many abduction accounts.

Alien abductions draw much controversy in an already controversial field of study. Reports of abduction experiences are greatly varietal, suggesting the possibility that more than one phenomenon is in play. Below, we present a few perspectives.

Dr. John E. Mack was a professor of psychiatry at The Cambridge Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and founding director of the Center for Psychology and Social Change. A 1977 Pulitzer Prize winner for his biography of Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. Mack studied the subject of UFO abductions later in his career. He came to some astonishing conclusions:

We can continue to try to make the phenomenon fit the world as we have known it ... or we can acknowledge that the world might be other than we have known it. Then we are free to see where our thinking leads us.

I will stress once again that we do not know the source from which the UFOs or the alien beings come (whether or not, for example, they originate in the physical universe as modern astrophysics has described it). But they manifest in the physical world and bring about definable consequences in that domain.

— Dr. John Mack, excerpt from his book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens

In the 1990s, Mack began talking with people who claimed to have had UFO abduction experiences. He was initially skeptical of these claims, but the more people he talked to, the more convinced he became that something incredible was going on. In his 1994 book Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens, he wrote that “the abduction phenomenon has important philosophical, spiritual and social implications.” His documentary film Touched by an Alien told the powerful stories of UFO experiencers. Though Mack passed away in 2004, he left behind a legacy in the form of the John E. Mack Institute.

After working with hundreds of UFO experiencers, Mack concluded in Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens that a common theme in abduction stories was that abductees emerged from their experiences with a “commitment to changing their relationship to the Earth, of living more gently on it or in greater harmony with the other creatures that live here” after being warned by aliens that humans are destroying their planet.

Another recurrent story Mack noticed in abductees was that they reported a hybrid species is being developed to replace or join humankind. In his book, he stated that the “future role that the hybrid offspring are being prepared to play represents one of the most puzzling aspects of the entire abduction phenomenon.” For a glimpse into how strange these stories can be, watch a documentary on alleged alien reproduction programs. A particularly compelling perspective that this documentary emphasizes is that many women who had mysterious miscarriages also had clear memories of alien abduction experiences.

In the years that I have been investigating the alien encounter phenomenon I have been impressed with many of the ambiguities and paradoxes it contains. Sometimes the contact seems physically real, but not always. Sometimes there is physical evidence, but not always, and it is often rather elusive. This has forced me — I’m not alone in this — to become more sophisticated about how we understand or think about reality.

For many scholars, including psychiatrists, philosophers and theologians, reality does not fall neatly into two categories, viz. physical or mental, external or internal. There are other dimensions of reality and phenomena can be both. Several write of a third domain, “one that draws upon the psychological and physical, but that is reducible to neither” (Tulane Professor of Philosophy, Michael Zimmerman).

— Dr. John Mack, "Dr. Mack Responds to Psychology Today Article"

Thousands of people or more have gone through the process of navigating an abduction experience. One of the most controversial parts of this phenomenon is that it often relies on memories recovered from hypnosis. A reputable doctor wrote in the prestigious Lancet that John Mack’s use of hypnosis to uncover abduction stories was potentially “cementing and constructing false memories.” Yet even if memories recovered by hypnosis differ from consensus reality, the abduction experience often seems to have some value for the experiencer. And Mack’s research suggests that many abduction stories do appear to be supported by material evidence.

Abduction Encounters for Psychological Warfare Purposes and Military Abductions (MILAB)

I am today transmitting to the National Security Council a proposal … in which it is concluded that the problems connected with unidentified flying objects appear to have implications for psychological warfare as well as for intelligence and operations. I suggest that we discuss at an early board meeting the possible offensive or defensive utilization of these phenomena for psychological warfare purposes.

1952 declassified CIA memo written by Walter B. Smith, former CIA director

There is strong evidence that the CIA explored using the UFO phenomenon in psychological warfare as early as 1952. And in his book Forbidden Science - Volume Four, the esteemed scientist and co-developer of NASA’s map on Mars Dr. Jacques Vallee wrote that he “secured a document confirming that the CIA simulated UFO abductions in Latin America (Brazil and Argentina) as psychological warfare experiments.” Vallee also speaks of a conversation he had with Dr. Ron Blackburn, a retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel who was then working at the Lockheed Martin’s secret weapons and technology unit, Skunk Works, which was kept secret until 2014.

“I’m convinced the government is working on UFOs,” [Dr. Ron Blackburn] told me. “What are the chances some witnesses are being fooled by special effects developed by psychological warfare?” I countered. “They’re pretty good,” he admitted. “Suppose you shine a weak infrared laser into people’s eyes; it won’t hurt them but may induce a hallucinatory state. Experiments have been done where you send a microwave beam through someone’s brain; you pick up the transmitted energy pattern. You can influence people this way, even make them hear things. Holograms have been used too.

— Jacques Vallee, excerpt from "The CIA Simulated UFO Abductions In Latin America As Psychological Warfare Experiments"

Dr. Helmut Lammer is a scientist at the Austrian Space Research Institute, Department for Extraterrestrial Physics of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in Graz, Austria. Lammer reviewed hypnosis transcripts of abductees and found a possible link between their alien abduction experiences and the experiences of survivors from the CIA’ s top secret MKUltra program. This program ran from 1953 to 1973. Its existence was revealed in 1975 by landmark congressional hearings into the activities of national security agencies.

Declassified CIA documents prove that the MKUltra program hypnotized young women and trained them to plant bombs and shoot people with guns while in the hypnotized state. Ordinary people became super spies programmed to carry out assassination, terrorist acts, sexual favors, and more without conscious knowledge of what they were doing. The main focus of the program was summarized in a January 1952 CIA memo, "Can we get control of an individual to the point where he will do our bidding against his will and even against fundamental laws of nature, such as self-preservation?”

In Lammer’s book MILABS: Military Mind Control and Alien Abduction, he explores how military personnel are often recalled by those claiming to have been abducted by aliens. These people report that they were taken to hospitals and/or military underground facilities. Read his research here:

From Alien Abductions Via MKUltra to an Implanted Cyber-Situation
Project MILAB: Alien/Military Abduction Agenda

UFO researcher and UFO sighting tour guide Melinda Leslie has also extensively studied the MILAB issue. In the support groups she leads for those who believe they’ve been abducted, she alleges that more than three dozen people have claimed to have been abducted by aliens, and then re-abducted by military personnel for interrogation and physical examinations. In a comprehensive presentation, she discusses both ET and covert-ops military abduction experiences, including her own personal stories and other cases of people being abducted by aliens and covert military personnel.

Are UFO abductions physical or psychic? Are they being carried out by extraterrestrials or by agents of the military-intelligence complex? There are no clear answers to these and other questions raised by the huge number of people who have had abduction experiences. But these experiences point us to a deeper understanding of UFOs and related phenomena.


Final Thoughts

In outer space, you develop an instant global consciousness, a people orientation, an intense dissatisfaction with the state of the world, and a compulsion to do something about it. From out there on the Moon, international politics look so petty.

— Edgar Mitchell, astronaut and sixth man to walk on the moon

There is no consensus about UFOs within the UFO research community. Our understanding of these mysterious matters continues to evolve, and remains largely speculative. Yet the implications of these phenomena will radically change the way we relate to our larger place in the universe.

In the absence of anything definitive about what all of this means, we invite you to suspend certainty, stay curious, and question any narrative that promotes fear and division. Explore our resources below to see how you can seek support and get involved.

You are not alone as you navigate these complex topics. Feel free to reach out to us at any time if you have any concerns, questions, or feedback.


Resources

The New Paradigm Institute is a project dedicated to advocating for the public release of information held by the government surrounding the issue of UFOs and UAPs. Consider exploring their site to stay updated about recent press releases, news stories, podcasts, and ways to take effective action.

Unhidden is a charity dedicated to decreasing the stigma associated with discussing UAPs, non-human intelligences, and the possibility that evidence is being covered up by governments. They have a Medical Advisory Board composed of doctors and clinical psychologists, and provide mental health support regarding these phenomena.

The Black Vault document archive contains over 3 million pages of US government documents obtained by John Greenewald, Jr., primarily through Freedom of Information Act requests. The site’s UFO section contains a massive number of documents.

Eyes Only: The Story of Clifford Stone and UFO Crash Retrievals is a book written by Sergeant Clifford Stone of the US Army. He spent 22 years in the US Army in covert government operations tasked with recovering UFO or ET craft, bodies, and artifacts. Since his retirement from the Army, he has devoted his time to a diligent Freedom of Information Act search of government archives. Read Stone's full book here, and read his full Disclosure Project testimony starting on pg. 238 of The Disclosure Project Briefing Document.

WantToKnow.info's older UFO Information Center is still accessible. While it is less comprehensive, it is a great place for those who don't necessarily want to go deep yet still want to learn basic information regarding UFO phenonema.


UFO Sightings and Footage

United States Coast Guard photographer Shell R. Alpert took a photograph through a window screen that allegedly showed unidentified flying objects at the Salem, Massachusetts, Air Station on July 16, 1952.

There are many questionable UFO photos and videos online, along with many illustrations and animations depicting UFOs. We compiled a concise list of real footage below to get you started.


Strange Events and Speculative Phenomena

Every other culture in history except this one, in the history of the human race, has believed there were other entities, other intelligences in the universe. Why are we so goofy about this? Why do we treat people like they’re crazy, humiliate them, if they’re experiencing some other intelligence?

— Dr. John Mack, excerpt from Vanity Fair, "Alien Nation: Have Humans Been Abducted by Extraterrestrials?"

Below, we introduce a variety of fascinating perspectives regarding strange events in history and other unusual phenomena and interesting theories.

  • 6-min video clip on the incredible mystery of crop circles
  • Esteemed scientist and co-developer of NASA’s map on Mars Jacques Vallee’s top-ten list of pre-20th-century unexplained aerial objects
  • WanttoKnow.info founder Fred Burks provides deep speculation on the UFO presence on our planet and its implications. Though this is a speculative essay in which the sources provided are not as reliable as those usually used on the website, plentiful links are provided to explore some of the fascinating theories proposed. Don't miss this inspiring essay which calls on each of us to join in transforming our beautiful planet: Meaning of Life Questions: A Speculative Look at the Big Picture of Life in the Universe
  • An intriguing essay was written by Wilbur Smith, engineer and head of the Canadian government’s first study on UFOs. He was deeply involved in new energy explorations in the 1950s. He is most known for his quote from a declassified memo which states, "Flying saucers exist. The matter is the most highly classified subject in the US Government, rating higher even than the H-bomb." He wrote the below astounding description of alternate dimensions and deep forces of the universe: The New Science

News Articles Archive

WantToKnow.info has summarized over a thousand news articles on issues related to UFO phenomena.

UFOs
Most Important | Date of Article | Date posted on WantToKnow

Government Secrecy
Most Important | Date of Article | Date posted on WantToKnow

Nature of Reality
Most Important | Date of Article | Date posted on WantToKnow


Free Videos on UFOs

Best UFO Information Videos (available for free viewing)

The History Channel has come out with the best, most powerful evidence yet on the existence of UFOs. Don't miss their astounding documentary at the first link below. One of the most popular shows ever presented on the Sci-Fi channel was the riveting documentary Out of the Blue, which mixes interviews with astronauts, generals, and other high-ranking military and government officials with remarkable footage of UFOs taken from around the world. Another excellent video is the National Press Club Video in which 22 government and military witnesses testify to their personal experiences in the UFO cover-up. Finally, Walt Disney Television produced a most unusual special titled Alien Encounters which alleges a major government cover-up of UFOs.

https://www.personalgrowthcourses.net/video/ufos/ufos... - History Channel's UFOs on the Record

https://www.WantToKnow.info/060602ufosvideosfootage - SciFi Channel's amazing Out of the Blue

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=national+press+club... - National Press Club video

https://www.WantToKnow.info/ufos/ufos_video_disney - Disney's Alien Encounters