President Trump orders release of government files on alien life and UFOs
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- President Donald Trump has ordered U.S. government agencies to release files related to alien life and unidentified flying objects. It’s unclear what information the records contain or when they’ll be made public.
The directive marks one of the most significant steps toward government transparency on extraterrestrial research, an issue that has long drawn speculation from both scientists and conspiracy theorists.
In a 2024 report, the Pentagon said it found no evidence of alien life, though it acknowledged investigating numerous unidentified aerial phenomena.
The renewed spotlight on extraterrestrials comes after former President Barack Obama made waves over the weekend when he told a podcaster that aliens “are real but I haven’t seen them.” Obama later clarified that he was referring to the statistical likelihood of life existing elsewhere in the universe, not confirmed encounters.
Meanwhile, astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson said talk of a government cover-up no longer holds up given the number of people who have publicly claimed to see or study UFOs.
“Well, just consider how many people have paraded in front of Congress in the past three years,” Tyson said. “If insiders are saying they’ve met aliens, how much of a cover-up is that? By the time you roll out an alien, it’ll be anticlimactic, because everyone would have already confessed to having seen one.”
The White House has not announced a timeline for the document release.
