I have seen with my own eyes non-human craft, and non-human beings.
— Jay StrattonDirector UAP Task Force
All Quotes: By Date
2025
2024
There are things that cannot be explained. There are phenomena that have been witnessed by multiple people that are just inexplicable by the science available to us.
— H.R. McMasterGeneral, National Security Advisor
60+ years ago I was provided highest level classifications to lead DOD work on nuclear weapons & anti-missile defense. Informally briefed on “otherworld technologies” by CIA’s Richard Bissel (who had been in charge of Skunkworks, Area 51, Los Alamos, etc.) but sworn to secrecy.
— Harald MalmgrenAdvisor to Presidents and many global leaders
My colleague, retired Army Colonel Karl Nell said with 100% certainty that the world is being visited by higher level, non-human intelligence. I know he is correct with complete certainty.
— Tim GallaudetRear Admiral
Non-human intelligence exists. Non-human intelligence has been interacting with humanity. This interaction is not new and has been ongoing.
— Karl NellArmy Colonel
The movement and the tracking that these new navigation systems picked up was something that no country, including the United States, on this Earth has… There’s tangible evidence of something’s going on…
— Stephen LynchHouse Oversight Committee
2023
This is technology we’re still trying to learn about, and it could give us an advantage in any military conflict. So that’s a good reason to not disclose the nature of the technology. We don’t want to release and disclose all of the technology we have recovered. However, I think it’s about time that we do disclose we are in contact with non-human intelligence. That’s what needs to be put out there in the public.
— Tim GallaudetRear Admiral
[…] as a transparency measure, for the government to obtain any recovered UAP material or biological remains, that may have been provided to private entities in the past, and thereby hidden from Congress and the American people. We are lacking oversight opportunities and we are not fulfilling our responsibilities.
— Mike RoundsUS Senator (R)
[…] the United States was in possession of a craft of unknown origin and had successfully gained access to its interior. […] This craft had a streamlined configuration suitable for aerodynamic flight but no intakes, exhaust, wings, or control surfaces. In fact, it appeared not to have an engine, fuel tanks, or fuel.
— James LacatskiFormer Head of AAWSAP
There is a lot of unidentified aerial phenomena out there. That’s true. And they’ve got pilot reports, there’s various other sensors out there, and some of it is difficult to explain… some [UAP are] really kind of weird and unexplainable.
— Mark MilleyChairman Joint Chiefs of Staff
I was informed in the course of my official duties of a multi-decade UAP crash retrieval and reverse engineering program to which I was denied access.
— David GruschAir Force Intelligence Officer
A number of these [whistleblowers] believe and have stated — and we believe them now — that they have seen something. And we are investigating.
— Dr. Sean KirkpatrickDirector, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
For decades, many Americans have been fascinated by objects mysterious and unexplained and it’s long past time they get some answers. The American public has a right to learn about technologies of unknown origins, non-human intelligence, and unexplainable phenomena. We are not only working to declassify what the government has previously learned about these phenomena but to create a pipeline for future research to be made public. I am honored to carry on the legacy of my mentor and dear friend, Harry Reid and fight for the transparency that the public has long demanded surround these unexplained phenomena.
— Chuck SchumerUS Senator (D)
Senate Majority Leader
His [Grusch] assertion concerning the existence of a terrestrial arms race occurring sub-rosa over the past eighty years focused on reverse engineering technologies of unknown origin is fundamentally correct, as is the indisputable realization that at least some of these technologies of unknown origin derive from non-human intelligence.
— Karl NellArmy Colonel
We see these [‘metallic orbs’] all over the world, and we see these making very interesting apparent maneuvers.
— Dr. Sean KirkpatrickDirector, All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office
The creation of a whistleblowers program specifically, that allows people from within – and I’m going to say this – who have been working on the reverse-engineering programs, reverse engineering of objects, so that they can come in and break their oaths, but specifically just to talk to congress and give that information in classified settings. The most recent one that happened was just last weekend and it created quite a hornets nest in Washington.
— Garry NolanStanford Professor
There are phenomena out there [and] those Navy pilots know that they saw something, you’ve seen it on TV.
— Bill NelsonNASA Administrator
I don’t believe we’re alone in the universe[…] There is something going on that is not being disclosed to us.
— Steven SpielbergAmerican Film Director
On a clear, sunny day in April 2014, two F/A-18s took off for an air combat training mission off the coast of Virginia. The jets, part of my Navy fighter squadron, climbed to an altitude of 12,000 and steered towards Warning Area W-72, an exclusive block of airspace ten miles east of Virginia Beach. All traffic into the training area goes through a single GPS point at a set altitude — almost like a doorway into a massive room where military jets can operate without running into other aircraft. Just at the moment the two jets crossed the threshold, one of the pilots saw a dark gray cube inside of a clear sphere — motionless against the wind, fixed directly at the entry point. The jets, only 100 feet apart, zipped past the object on either side. The pilots had come so dangerously close to something they couldn’t identify that they terminated the training mission immediately and returned to base.
— Ryan GravesLieutenant, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot
Advanced objects demonstrating advanced technology are routinely flying over our restricted or sensitive airspace posing a risk to both flight safety & national security.
— Marco RubioUS Senator (R)
We are not alone. Washington needs to release the unredacted files. Let the people decide.
— Tim BurchettUS Congressman
What are UAP, and why are we hearing more about them? I passed legislation requiring more reporting and analysis of unidentified sightings. Now we have much more data about balloons, drones, and other aerial phenomena so we can better protect our skies. This congressionally-mandated report released last month highlights why it’s so important to reduce stigma for reporting unidentified sightings, and why AARO, the office I helped create, is protecting our safety by rigorously investigating those reports.
— Kirsten GillibrandUS Senator (D)
Committee on Armed Services
In my opinion, I’ve seen enough evidence inside the anomalous bucket to consider that there is another entity, a consciousness, there is something there that is other.
— Ryan GravesLieutenant, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot
The American public can reasonably expect to get some answers to questions that have been burning in the minds of millions of Americans for many years. If nothing else, this [legislation] should either clear up something that’s been a cloud hanging over the Air Force and Department of Defense for decades or it might lead in another direction, which could be truly incredible. There’s a lot at stake.
— Christopher MellonDep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
2022
Even before this ‘whistleblower’ legislation was signed into law, credible individuals were providing Congress information alleging that the US government has recovered extraterrestrial technology. This process began in 2019 when I brought astrophysicist Dr. Eric Davis to Capitol Hill to meet with staff from the Senate Intelligence and Armed Services committees. Dr. Davis, author of the famous Wilson-Davis memo, provided specific information lending credence to sensational reports that an official US government program is actively seeking to exploit recovered technology that was fashioned by some other species or perhaps advanced AI machines.
— Christopher MellonDep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
There are so many of us now on the intel committee and armed services that we’re going to stand by the service members who documented this stuff. They have video. They have radar. They have heat sensors. They have everything.
— Kirsten GillibrandUS Senator (D)
Committee on Armed Services
If UAP do indeed represent a potential threat to our security, then the capabilities, systems, processes, and sources we use to observe, record, study or analyze these phenomena need to be classified at appropriate levels. We do not want potential adversaries to know exactly what we’re able to see or understand or how we come to the conclusions we make. Therefore public disclosures must be carefully considered on a case by case basis…
— Scott BrayDeputy Director Navy Intelligence
Allies have seen these. China has created its own version of a UAP task force, so clearly a number of countries have seen objects in their airspace that they can’t identify.
— Scott BrayDeputy Director Navy Intelligence
[Congressional staffer]: Can you provide us a specific example of an object that can’t be explained as having been human made or natural?
[Bray]: I mean the example that I would say is still unresolved, that I think everyone understands quite well is the 2004 incident from [the USS] Nimitz [aircraft carrier]. We have data on that, and it simply remains unresolved…
— Scott BrayDeputy Director Navy Intelligence
It’s clear that the majority, that many of the observations that we have are physical objects from the sensor data… We haven’t had a collision. We have had at least 11 near misses.
— Scott BrayDeputy Director Navy Intelligence
2021
There’s always the question of ‘is there something else that we simply do not understand, that might come extraterrestrially?‘
— Avril HainesDirector National Intelligence
Well I don’t believe they are coming from foreign adversaries. Why if there were that would suggest they have a technology that is in a whole different sphere than anything we understand, and frankly China and Russia just aren’t there, and neither are we by the way…
— Mitt RomneyUS Senator (R)
Former Presidential Nominee
[Reading the classified UAP report as a Senator], the hair stood up on the back of my neck… [The pilots] know they saw something.
— Bill NelsonNASA Administrator
Now that I’m here at NASA, I’ve turned to our scientists and I’ve said, ‘Would you, looking at it from a scientific standpoint, see if you can determine what it is, so that we can have a better idea.
— Bill NelsonNASA Administrator
[Rogan]: [What about the] possibility that we have obtained this extraterrestrial craft and are in the process of trying to back engineer it?
[Mellon]: That’s a really ticklish question for me and awkward. And if I were to say ‘Yep, it’s true’ nobody would believe me. If I really knew, I couldn’t say yes. And it’s hard to give good answers to that question. I think it’s plausible. I don’t think people should rule that out. There’s enough information to say that may have happened. We may have recovered some debris… It would be so deeply squirreled away you wouldn’t be able to bring in the best scientists, you wouldn’t be able to bring in world class scientists, you would have a few people available in some aerospace company and they would be hamstrung in their ability to test and examine the material and so forth. It would just be locked away somewhere.
— Christopher MellonDep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
I will tell you, I have never said this before, but I have been told by multiple people who have credentials and access, that there is some truth to these stories [about Roswell]. So I don’t discount this when people say this, I have had people who had substantial scientific or military credentials, that they believe it is true. So I encourage people on the Hill to pursue it.
— Christopher MellonDep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
Both countries [China and Russia] have active UFO groups… They certainly have had their own incidents over the years… France has had an official UFO investigative group for decades. This is very much a global phenomenon.
— Christopher MellonDep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
The most compelling case is the [USS] Nimitz case. Because you have so many witnesses and so many sensors and the FLIR is part of that, but you have to look at the whole case. You have to talk to all the pilots involved [Commander Fravor and Lt. Dietrich and their backseat Weapons Systems Officers], which I have done. You have to talk to the radar operators on the [USS] Princeton [Kevin Day and Gary Voorhis]. There’s also radar operators up on the E2C Hawkeye which was up there monitoring this… Then you have this third F/A-18 [pilot Lt. Underwood] that goes up and takes that [FLIR] video. So there is a lot of different information from a lot of different sources and the thing is, it is all perfectly congruent. It all hangs together. No one is contradicting someone else’s story. And what people are seeing is what the sensors are reporting. So that case overall is the most compelling to my mind.
— Christopher MellonDep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
I don’t know what it is, but any time you have legitimate pilots describing something that doesn’t seem to conform to the laws of physics that govern aviation and is in US airspace, I think It’s something we need to get to the bottom of… If there is a foreign government that had these kinds of capabilities, I think we would see other indications of advanced technology. I can’t imagine that what has been described or shown in some of the videos belongs to any government that I’m aware of… I have no idea what it is but I think we should figure it out.
— Martin HeinrichUS Senator (D)
What is true, and I’m actually being serious here, is that there are, there’s footage and records of objects in the skies, that we don’t know exactly what they are. We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern. And so, you know, I think that people still take seriously trying to investigate and figure out what that is.
— Barack ObamaUS President (D)
There is something there measurable by multiple instruments, yet it seems to move in directions that are inconsistent with what we know of physics or science more broadly. That to me poses questions of tremendous interest…
— Adam SchiffUS Congress (D)
Chair House Intelligence Committee
If there is some recovered debris say, it is so deeply buried and squirreled away that it’s outside of those normal oversight processes and that’s why there is a problem in this area.
— Christopher MellonDep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
I am saying most of [the evidence] hasn’t seen the light of day.
— Harry ReidUS Senator (D)
Senate Majority Leader
So it’s not us, that’s one thing we know. I could say that with very high degree of confidence in part because of the positions I held in the department…
— Christopher MellonDep. Asst. Secretary of Defense for Intelligence
I was told for decades that Lockheed had some of these retrieved materials. And I tried to get, as I recall, a classified approval by the Pentagon to have me go look at the stuff. They would not approve that. I don’t know what all the numbers were, what kind of classification it was, but they would not give that to me. That’s why I wanted AATIP [to get Special Access Program status] to take a look at it. But they wouldn’t give me the clearance.
— Harry ReidUS Senator (D)
Senate Majority Leader
I actually wanted to get this information out and declassify it before I left office but we weren’t able to get it down into an unclassified format that we were able to talk about quickly enough.
— John RatcliffeDirector National Intelligence
All over the world. There have been sightings all over the world.
— John RatcliffeDirector National Intelligence
Usually we have multiple sensors picking up these things… There are a lot more sightings than have been made public… Objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or in satellite imagery, that engage in actions that… we don’t have the technology for, or traveling at speeds that exceed the sound barrier without a sonic boom… Technologies that we don’t have and, frankly, that we are not capable of defending against.
— John RatcliffeDirector National Intelligence
I talk over the following weeks with other anonymous insiders. To protect their identities, I cannot reveal much of the astonishing detail of what they told me but I am left in no doubt that they all assert that the US military, almost certainly the US Air Force, is in possession of retrieved non-terrestrial — alien — technology. Intriguingly, what I am told matches the claims made in the Admiral Wilson memo, that a private aerospace company now exercises control over this alien technology.
— Ross CoulthartInvestigative journalist
Author of In Plain Sight
We have crash retrievals and they have been analyzed and unfortunately our laboratory diagnostic technologies and our material sciences and the understanding of physics that we had were not advanced enough to be able to make heads or tails of what it is, of what they had their hands on.
— Dr. Eric DavisAstrophysicist
Consultant to AATIP, Pentagon UAP study program
At some point, the information about ‘alien’ stuff and true US national defence information crosses paths. Patriots with clearances do not want to be traitors to their country or their way of life. For instance, if I told you the exact electromagnetic signature of a high-match UFO that US sensors search for, but don’t attack, and you put it in a book, the Soviets/Chinese would manufacture a bomber with sigint/elint countermeasure equipment that generated that exact signature.
— Bob FishDefense communications intelligence
This thing was going berserk, like making turns. It is incredible the amount of g-forces that it would have put on a human. It made a maneuver like they were chasing it straight on, it was going with them, then this thing stopped turning, just gone. In an instant. The [FLIR] video you see now, that’s just a small snippet in the beginning of the whole video.
— Jason TurnerPetty Officer
USS Princeton
[It went] right back up to 28,000 feet… At that point you’ve got your other aircraft launching off the carrier, and all these other intercepts were happening. Before I knew it, I had these objects raining out of the sky. Choo choo choo choo choo, it was raining UFOs. I am telling you it was the most humbling experience of my life.
— Kevin DaySenior Chief, US Navy
Lead radar operator USS Princeton
It was there… then it rifled out of sight in a split second. It was as if the object was shot out of a rifle. There was no gradual acceleration or spooling up period, it just shot out of sight immediately. I have never seen anything like it before or since. No human could have withstood that kind of acceleration.
— Jim SlaightLt. Commander, US Navy
Weapons System Officer
There was something in the water… There was churning… We were all clamoring to get on the radio. ‘Do you see, in the water, what the f* is that?.’ No windows. No flight surfaces. Smooth. White. No intakes. No smoke trails. It looked like a giant Tic Tac. Maybe 40 feet. Large enough to scare the crap out of me. It was so unnerving because it was so unpredictable. High g[-force turns], rapid velocity, rapid acceleration, so you’re thinking ‘How can I possibly fight this?’…
[Commander Fravor] had that fighting instinct, so it wasn’t surprising his actions on that day. This object seemed to recognize that we were there and went from low altitude to maneuvering in an erratic very rapid manner. The hair on the back of my neck is standing up. I am thinking I am going to be watching a disaster.
— Alex DietrichLieutenant, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot
[The Aegis SPY-1 radar] eliminated the possibility that it could have been friendly aircraft of some kind, enemy aircraft of some kind. Nothing really fit… I was just chomping at the bit. I really wanted to intercept these things… All of a sudden this object drops 28,000 feet down to the surface, and I figured it out later, it was 0.78 seconds. [24,000 miles per hour, more than 30x speed of sound]. Captain said ok let’s go intercept one and I said hell yeah.
— Kevin DaySenior Chief, US Navy
Lead radar operator USS Princeton
We were off the coast of San Diego, USS Nimitz carrier strike group was getting ready to go on deployment. At around the evening of the tenth of November 2004, all these contacts were popping up on my radar coverage right off Catalina Island right by Los Angeles. At first there were ten or twelve objects. Watching them on the display was like watching snow fall from the sky. Their relative position didn’t change from each other moving real slow, 28,000 feet at 100 knots, which is extremely weird. Usually things that high don’t travel that slowly because they’ll fall out of the sky…
— Kevin DaySenior Chief, US Navy
Lead radar operator USS Princeton
2020
The Unidentified Flying Objects have asked not to publish that they are here, humanity is not ready yet […] There is an agreement between the U.S. government and the aliens. They signed a contract with us to do experiments here […] They have been waiting until today for humanity to develop and reach a stage where we will understand, in general, what space and spaceships are.
— Haim EshedFormer Israeli Space Security Chief
They came in like this and went out like this [makes a v]. There would be no way to make a complete reversal or 90 degree turn at 12,000 miles [per hour] or greater without making the occupants juice on the wall. That kind of really shook us up… Nothing could have gotten to that degree of scientific progress without some of the intermediate steps becoming public knowledge. We just knew that they were not from this planet.
— William NashPan American pilot, former fighter pilot
[In 1952 over Washington, DC], I am convinced they are solid objects. I am convinced that they are probably from another planet or outer space somewhere. I have always felt that way since that night.
— Albert M ChopPress Spokesman for Project Blue Book
Probably what we saw [in 1952 over Washington, DC] was from somewhere else. Look the Air Force is a very deadly being when it comes to intercepting an unknown. If it proves hostile we are going to shoot it down. Other than that, no problem.
— William ColemanColonel, US Air Force
Public Spokesman for Project Blue Book
Nothing accelerates that fast… I doubt that we have developed that technology.
— David FravorCommander, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot and Black Aces Squadron Commander
I’m glad the Pentagon is finally releasing this footage, but it only scratches the surface of research and materials available.
— Harry ReidUS Senator (D)
Senate Majority Leader
After looking into this, I came to the conclusion that there were reports — some were substantive, some not so substantive — that there were actual [UAP] materials that the government and the private sector had in their possession… It is extremely important that information about the discovery of physical materials or retrieved craft come out.
— Harry ReidUS Senator (D)
Senate Majority Leader
We have things flying over our military bases and places where we’re conducting military exercises and we don’t know what it is and it isn’t ours…
— Marco RubioUS Senator (R)
I won’t talk to you about what I know about [Roswell], but it’s very interesting… [Asked by his son to declassify it]… Well, I’ll have to think about that one.
— Donald TrumpUS President (R)
[Coulthart]: Are you able to confirm to me that the US has been trying to develop recovered alien technology?
[Kobitz]: Yes, I can say that’s so.
— Nat KobitzDirector of US Navy Science and Technology Development
2019
Luis Elizondo’s very brief answer to Tucker Carlson’s question about whether the US government is in possession of recovered, crashed, and landed UFO technology hardware is 1,000% accurate. My national security NDAs prevent me from adding any further comment to this.
— Dr. Eric DavisAstrophysicist
Consultant to AATIP, Pentagon UAP study program
[Tucker Carlson]: Do you think the US government has debris from a UFO right now?
[Elizondo]: Aaah, simply put, yes.
— Luis ElizondoDirector AATIP
Head of Pentagon UAP program
[Commenting on the 2015 GIMBAL video] It is definitely rotating, or changing angle of bank. It appears to have stopped moving quickly across the horizon. I have no idea. I have always been skeptical… but I have never seen anything remotely like what I saw today. I am a lot more convinced now that these vehicles do exist.
— Christopher CookeLt Colonel, US Marines
Pilot
The fact that [the 2015 GIMBAL UAP] was just getting himself on his wingtip [at 90 degrees], with no turn, while staying in the exact same point, isn’t how aircraft work.
— Ryan GravesLieutenant, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot
[Commenting on 2015 Go Fast video]If this were some type of aircraft with a conventional propulsion system, we would definitely see some type of heat signature [on the FLIR video]. Everything we know about propulsion systems is that they create an intense amount of heat.
— Christopher CookeLt Colonel, US Marines
Pilot
Hypersonic vehicles that we work on today want to be above 50,000 feet [not down to sea level]… You don’t see any exhaust plumes [in the FLIR video], and they would show up in this type of [infrared] image. The shape is wrong. The flight regime, the point in the sky it flies to is wrong. How it flies is wrong.
— Steve JusticeDirector, Advanced Systems Development at Skunkworks, Lockheed Martin
The thing that stood out to me the most was how erratic it was behaving. And what I mean by erratic is that its changes in altitude, air speed, and aspect were just unlike things that I’ve ever encountered before flying against other air targets. It was just behaving in ways that aren’t physically normal. That’s what caught my eye. Because aircraft, whether they are manned or unmanned, still have to obey the laws of physics. They have to have some source of lift, some propulsion. The Tic Tac was not doing that. It was going from like 50,000 feet to, you know, 100 feet in like seconds, which is not possible.
— Chad UnderwoodLieutenant, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot
I kind of pull a nose to where he is going to be, he just rapidly accelerates beyond anything that I have ever seen, crosses my nose, and it’s gone. And I’m like ‘woah’… The controller from the [USS] Princeton comes up right as we are doing all this and says ‘Hey sir, you are not going to believe this. That thing is at your CAP [combat air patrol] point.’ You got something that can accelerate and disappear and then show up 60 miles away [> 3,600 mph]. Kind of in awe a little bit because we don’t have that…
— David FravorCommander, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot and Black Aces Squadron Commander
This thing would go instantaneous from one way to another similar to if you threw a ping pong ball against a wall. And we start to kind of orbit because we are going to watch this thing… It is still doing its erratic thing around this disturbance in the water and I say ‘Hey, I am going to go check it out, I am going to go down there’… And all of a sudden it goes [zip] and it kind of turns, now it’s mirroring us, it seems to know we are here… It goes from almost a hover, to a pretty aggressive climb up to our altitude. So now there is a bit of fear because you have no idea what it is. It is actually reacting to what we are doing.
— David FravorCommander, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot and Black Aces Squadron Commander
It’s about 40 feet long. It’s white. It has no wings. It has no rotors. It has no control surfaces. Think of a white Tic Tac.
— David FravorCommander, US Navy
F/A-18 Pilot and Black Aces Squadron Commander
The SPY [radar] guys came down and said ‘Oh we got clutter’… Asked me to reset all the computer systems. Brought it all back up and lo and behold, they’re there still. Then we started getting confirmation from the other ships that they were seeing it too. We were just seeing three tracks. Sometimes they were only going a couple hundred knots, sometimes they were stationary, sometimes they were going really fast. The way they went around us, it looked like they were just monitoring us.
— Gary VoorhisPetty Officer, US Navy
Radar technician USS Princeton
It is hard to conceive of a secret military test program that explains all of these instances. Not just here in the United States but around the world.
— Bryan BenderNational Security Correspondent, Politico
2017
I can’t speak for the US government anymore. My personal belief is that ah, there is very compelling evidence that we ah, we may not be alone, whatever that means.
— Luis ElizondoDirector AATIP
Head of Pentagon UAP program
2016
I think we may have been [visited already]. We don’t know for sure.
— Hillary ClintonUS Senator
2015
Finally my biggest failure of 2014, once again not securing the disclosure of UFO files.
— John PodestaChief of Staff to President Clinton
2014
I did attempt to discover if there were any secret government documents that reveal things, and if there were, they were concealed from me too. I wouldn’t be the first president that underlings had lied to or career bureaucrats have waited out. There may be some career person sitting around somewhere hiding these dark secrets even from elected presidents, but if so they successfully eluded me and I am almost embarrassed to tell you I did try to find out.
— Bill ClintonUS President (D)
2010
At about 11 pm on the evening of September 18, 1976, citizens were frightened by the circling of an unknown object over Tehran at a low altitude. It looked similar to a star, but bigger and brighter… And then I saw it. It was flashing with intense red, green, orange, and blue lights so bright I was not able to see its body… I approached, and I got close to it, maybe 70 miles or so in a climb situation. All of a sudden, it jumped about 10 degrees to the right, in an instant! [6.7 miles]. Ten degrees… And then it jumped 10 degrees, and then again… We now had a good [radar] return on the screen, and it was at 27 miles… At this moment, I thought this was my chance to fire at it. But it — whatever it was — was close to me, my weapons jammed and my radio communications were garbled. We got closer, to 25 miles at our twelve o’clock position. All of a sudden it jumped back to 27 miles in an instant… I was really scared… I attempted to fire, and looked at the panel to confirm my selection of the missile. Suddenly, nothing was working. The weapons control panel was out, and I lost all the instruments, and the radio. The indicator dials were spinning around randomly, and the instruments were fluctuating… [the UAP] started circling around us.
— Parviz JafariGeneral, Iranian Air Force
On April 11, 1980 at 7:15 am…The squad commander… ordered me to take off … to intercept the balloon before it got any closer to our base… Zeroing in on the balloon… I shot a burst of sixty-four 30mm shells, which created a cone-shaped ‘wall of fire’ that would normally obliterate anything in its path… but nothing happened. Then suddenly the object began to ascend very rapidly and head away from the base… I initiated a chase… at a speed of 600 mph and the ‘balloon’ remained about 1,600 feet in front of me… [up to] 36,000 feet. It came to a sudden stop and forced me to veer to the side… It eluded my attack three times, each time at the very last moment. We reached an altitude of 63,000 feet and suddenly the thing stopped completely and remained stationary… I got as close as about 300 feet from it. I was startled to see that the ‘balloon’ was not a balloon at all. It was an object that measured about 35 feet in diameter… It lacked all the typical components of aircraft. It had no wings, propulsion jets, exhausts, windows, antennae, and so forth. It had no visible propulsion system. At that moment, I realized this was not a spying device but a UFO, something totally unknown… Suddenly, I was afraid.
— Oscar Santa Maria HuertasComandante, Peruvian Air Force
On the morning of Number 2, 1982… I noticed… another ‘aircraft’. It didn’t have wings and it didn’t have a tail, only a cockpit! It was an oval shape. What kind of airplane could that be?… I flew directly to a point along the trajectory of its elliptical course. It came toward me and flew right over me, on top of my aircraft, and stopped there, like a helicopter landing but much, much faster, breaking all the rules of aerodynamics. It was very close to my plane, only about 15 feet. I was astonished. I closed my eyes and I froze at this moment without reacting. There was no impact… It then flew off in a flash… One of the other pilots saw the whole thing… Right after landing, all three of us filed detailed, independent written reports about the incident.
— Julio Miguel GuerraCaptain, Portuguese Air Force
The crafts performed in ways not possible by known technology. They were able to remain stationary and hover, even in unusual positions such as vertical and/or banking at 45 degrees or more. They could fly at slow speeds and accelerate extremely fast, faster than any known aircraft, and they remained silent, or made only a very slight noise, even when hovering or accelerating.
— Wilfred De BrouwerDeputy Chief of Staff, Major General Belgian Air Force
Hundreds of people [in 1989] saw a majestic triangular craft with a span of approximately 120 feet, powerful beaming spotlights, moving very slowly without making any significant noise, but, in several cases, accelerating to very high speeds. [In] the following days and months, many more sightings would follow… On one occasion two F-16s registered changes in speed and altitude which were well outside the performance envelope of existing aircraft.
— Wilfred De BrouwerDeputy Chief of Staff, Major General Belgian Air Force
For twenty-one years, from 1983 to 2004, I was the director of the French program to investigate and analyze unidentified aerospace phenomena… The existence of UFOs is without question. UFO’s seem to be ‘artificially controlled objects’ and their physical characteristics can be measured by our detection systems — particularly radar. They display a physics seemingly far different from that which we employ in our most technologically advanced countries. Ground and on-board radar show that their performance greatly exceed our best aeronautical and space capabilities. These capabilities include stationary and silent flights, accelerations and speeds defying the laws of inertia…
— Jean-Jacques VelascoDirector GEPAN
Head of French UAP program
I spoke to former RAF radar operator Nigel Kerr [about Rendlesham]… for three or four sweeps, something did show up, directly over the base. But it faded away… Arguably the most critical piece of evidence… The Defence Intelligence Staff had assessed the radiation readings taken at the landing site and judged them to be ‘significantly higher than the average background,’… about seven times what would have been expected for the area concerned.
— Nick PopeUK Ministry of Defense (Ret.)
I was the senior security officer in charge of Woodbridge base security [Rendlesham]… I held a top-secret US and NATO security clearance… It maneuvered through the trees and shot off at an unbelievable rate of speed. It was gone in the blink of an eye. In my logbook, which I still have, I wrote ‘Speed Impossible.’ I subsequently learned that other personnel based at Bentwaters and Woodbridge, all trained observers, had witnessed this takeoff.
— James PennistonSergeant, US Air Force
2008
I happen to be privileged enough to be in on the fact that we have been visited on this planet and the UFO phenomenon is real. It has been covered up by governments for quite some time now.
— Edgar MitchellApollo 14 Astronaut
Decades ago, visitors from other planets warned us about where we were headed and offered to help. But instead we, or at least some of us, interpreted their visits as a threat, and decided to shoot first and ask questions after… The veil of secrecy must be lifted and it has to be lifted now, before it is too late.
— Paul HellyerCanadian Defense Minister
1998
Of course it is possible that UFOs really do contain aliens as many people believe, and the government is hushing it up. I wouldn’t like to comment on that.
— Stephen HawkingProfessor
Unlike fighters they would almost stop in their forward velocity and change 90 degrees, sometimes in their flight path… We had practically all the fighters we could muster on the base up climbing as high as they could climb with guys that have binoculars with them… they were round in shape and very metallic looking. And they would come over and do the same maneuvers that we make except everyone once in a while one of them goes ‘zip’ [hand motion]. And you just can’t do that in a fighter.
— Gordon CooperMercury & Gemini Astronaut
Let there be no doubt. Alien technology harvested from the infamous saucer crash in Roswell, N.Mex., in July 1947 led directly to the development of the integrated circuit chip, laser and fibre optic technologies, particle beams, electromagnetic propulsion systems, depleted uranium projectiles, stealth capabilities, and many others.
How do I know? I was in charge! I think the kids on this planet are wise to the truth, and I think we ought to give it to them. I think they deserve it.
— Philip CorsoColonel
1997
My position both privately and publicly expressed over the last dozen years or more [about the 1980 Rendlesham forest incident at RAF Bentwaters], is that there are only two possibilities, either: a) An intrusion into our air space and a landing by unidentified craft took place at Rendlesham, as described. Or: b) The Deputy Commander of an operational, nuclear armed, US Air Force base in England, and a large number of his enlisted men, are lying. Either of these simply must be ‘of interest to the Ministry of Defence,’ which has been repeatedly denied, in precisely those terms.
— Lord Hill-NortonAdmiral, UK Chief of the Defence Staff
As a pilot and former Air Force officer, I can definitely say that this craft [Phoenix Lights incident] did not resemble any man-made object I’d ever seen. And it was certainly not high-altitude flares [as stated by the Air Force], because flares don’t fly in formation.
— Fife SymingtonGovernor, Arizona
1996
The possibility of reduced-time interstellar travel either by advanced extraterrestrial civilizations at present or ourselves in the future, is not fundamentally constrained by physical principles.
— Harold PuthoffParapsychologist & Electrical Engineer
The evidence that there are objects which have been seen in our atmosphere, and even on terra firma, that cannot be accounted for either as man-made objects or as any physical force or effect known to our scientists, seems to me to be overwhelming. A very large number of sightings have been vouched for by persons whose credentials seem to me unimpeachable.
It is striking that so many have been trained observers, such as police officers and airline or military pilots. Their observations have in many instances have been supported either by technical means such as radar or, even more convincingly, by interference with electrical apparatus of one sort or another.
— Hill NortonBritish Chief Of Defense Staff
1995
The evidence is overwhelming that the Earth is being visited by intelligently controlled vehicles from off the Earth.
— Stanton FriedmanNuclear Physicist
We already have the means to travel among the stars, but these technologies are locked up in black projects and it would take an act of God to ever get them out to benefit humanity… anything you can imagine we already know how to do.
— Ben RichHead Of The Lockheed Skunk Works
I was testing a P-51 fighter in Minneapolis when I spotted this object. […] It looked like a saucer, a disk. About the same time, I realized that it was suddenly going away from me – and there I was, running at about 300 miles per hour. I tracked it for a little way, and then all of a sudden the damn thing just took off. It pulled about a 45 degree climbing turn and accelerated and just flat disappeared.
— Donald SlaytonMercury Astronaut
1994
For nearly 50 years, the secrecy apparatus within the United States Government has kept from the public UFO and alien contact information.
We have contact with alien cultures.
— Brian O’LearyAstronaut
1993
There was so much [debris at Roswell]. It was scattered over such a vast area [12 football fields]. We found a piece of metal, about a foot and a half or two feet wide, about two to three feet long, felt like it had nothing in your hands. It wasn’t any thicker than the foil out of a pack of cigarettes. The thing that got me is that you couldn’t even bend it, you couldn’t dent it, even a sledge hammer would bounce off of it… All I could do was keep my mouth shut. Being an intelligence officer I was familiar with every, just about all the materials used in aircraft, and in air travel, this was nothing like that. It was not anything from this earth, that I am quite sure of.
— Jesse MarcelMajor US Air Force
Chief Intelligence Officer, Roswell Army Air Field
1990
The phenomenon of UFOs is real. I know that there are scientific organizations which study the problem. It must be treated seriously.
— Mikhail GorbachevSoviet President
1985
We had a job to do, whether right or wrong, to keep the public from getting excited.
— J. Allen HynekAir Force Scientific Consultant
1980
[Tape recording during Rendlesham incident with other soldiers]
— Charles Halt
I see it, too… It’s back again… It’s coming this way… There is no doubt about it… This is weird… It looks like an eye winking at you… It almost burns your eyes… He’s coming towards us now… [panic] Now we are observing what appears to be a beam coming down to the ground… One object still hovering over Woodbridge base… beaming down.Lt Colonel, US AIr Force
Deputy Base Commander, RAF Bentwaters
1979
It followed us during half of our orbit. We observed it on the light side, and when we entered the shadow side, it disappeared completely. It was an engineered structure, made from some type of metal, approximately 40 meters long with inner hulls. The object was narrow here and wider here, and inside there were openings. Some places had projections like small wings. The object stayed very close to us. We photographed it, and our photos showed it to be 23 to 28 meters away.
[…] Many cosmonauts have seen phenomena which are far beyond the experiences of earthmen. For ten years I never spoke on such things. […] It only flew straight, but then a kind of explosion happened, very beautiful to watch, of golden light. This was the first part. Then, one or two seconds later, a second explosion followed somewhere else and two spheres appeared, golden and very beautiful. After this explosion I just saw white smoke, then a cloud-like sphere.
— Victor AfanasyevCosmonaut
December 9, 1979 at around 9:15 am… The object [had] a precise contour, a gray metal color on the top and dark blue below, with no lights or portholes. It went about three meters from the ground, not stabilized, and then rose to the level of the trees [250 meters away], while continuously oscillating, then went down again slightly and stopped. It went up a little once again, always while oscillating; it tilted and accelerated quickly to reach a speed much higher than that of a Mirage III [French fighter jet capable of Mach 2], and disappeared.
— Jean-Pierre FartekCaptain, French Air Force
1978
I believe that these extraterrestrial vehicles and their crews are visiting this planet from other planets which obviously are a little more technically advanced than we are here on Earth.
— Gordon CooperMercury & Gemini Astronaut
1976
An outstanding report: this [1976 Tehran] case is a classic which meets all the criteria necessary for a valid study of the UFO phenomenon. The object was seen by multiple witnesses from different locations… and viewpoints. The credibility of many of the witnesses was high (an Air Force General, qualified aircrews and experienced tower operators). Visual sightings were confirmed by radar. Similar electromagnetic effects were reported by three separate aircraft. There were physiological effects on some crew members (i.e., loss of night vision due to the brightness of the object). An inordinate amount of maneuverability was displayed by the UFOs.
— Roland EvansMajor Colonel, Defense Intelligence Agency
I don’t laugh at people any more when they say they’ve seen UFOs. It was the darndest thing I’ve ever seen. It was big, it was very bright, it changed colors and it was about the size of the moon. We watched it for ten minutes, but none of us could figure out what it was. One thing’s for sure I’ll never make fun of people who say they’ve seen unidentified objects in the sky. If I become President, I’ll make every piece of information this country has about UFO sightings available to the public and the scientists.
— Jimmy CarterUS President
Look, I have a pension to worry about. I have a family to take care of, and they told me to just back away from this entirely or else.
— James IrwinApollo 15 Astronaut
1975
…I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above top secret.
— Barry GoldwaterUS Senator
1974
I looked out the window and saw this white light. It was zigzagging around. I went up to the pilot and said, have you ever seen anything like that? He was shocked and he said, “Nope.” And I said to him: “Let’s follow it!” We followed it for several minutes. It was a bright white light. We followed it to Bakersfield, and all of a sudden to our utter amazement it went straight up into the heavens. When I got off the plane I told Nancy all about it.
— Ronald ReaganUS President
1973
I’ve been asked [about UFOs] and I’ve said publicly I thought they [UFOs] were somebody else, some other civilization.
— Eugene CernanApollo 17 Astronaut
1972
When the long awaited solution to the UFO problem comes, I believe that it will prove to be not merely the next small step in the march of science, but a mighty and totally unexpected quantum leap.
— J. Allen HynekAir Force Scientific Consultant
1968
I believe that the scientific community has been seriously misinformed for twenty years about the potential importance of UFOs.
— James Edward McDonaldAtmospheric Physicist
1966
…I strongly recommend that there be a committee investigation of the UFO phenomena. I think we owe it to the people to establish credibility regarding UFOs and to produce the greatest possible enlightenment on this subject.
— Gerald FordUS President
1965
I’ve been convinced for a long time that the flying saucers are real and interplanetary. In other words, we are being watched by beings from outer space.
— Albert M. ChopDeputy Public Relations Director, NASA
1962
We speak in strange terms […] of ultimate conflict between a united human race and the sinister forces of some other planetary galaxy.
— Douglas MacArthurGeneral
1960
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.
— R.H. HillenkoetterDirector of the Central Intelligence Agency, Vice Admiral US Navy
If we persist in refusing to recognize the existence of the UFOs, we will end up, one fine day, by mistaking them for the guided missiles of an enemy — and the worst will be upon us.
— L.M. ChassinGeneral
NATO coordinator of Allied Air Service
Unknown objects are operating under intelligent control… It is imperative that we learn where UFOs come from and what their purpose is…
— Roscoe HillenkoetterFirst CIA Director
1958
The Air Force had put out a secret order for its pilots to capture UFOs. For the last six months we have been working with a congressional committee investigating official secrecy concerning proof that UFOs are real machines under intelligent control.
— Donald E. KeyhoeMarine Corps Major
1957
No agency in this country or Russia is able to duplicate at this time the speeds and accelerations which radars and observers indicate the flying objects are able to achieve. There are signs that an intelligence directs these objects because of the way they fly. The way they change position in formations would indicate that their motion is directed.
— Delmer FahrneyAdmiral
Head of Navy guided missile program
1956
Unidentified Flying Objects are entering our atmosphere at very high speeds and obviously under intelligent control. We must solve this riddle without delay.
— Delmar FahrneyRear Admiral, USNR
1954
It is my thesis that flying saucers are real and that they are space ships from another solar system. There is no doubt in my mind that these objects are interplanetary craft of some sort. I and my colleagues are confident that they do not originate in our solar system.
— Hermann OberthThe "Father Of Modern Rocketry"
Of course UFOs are real, and they are interplanetary. The cumulative evidence for the existence of UFOs is quite overwhelming and I accept the fact of their existence.
— Hugh DowdingLord, Air Chief Marshall
1952
Sightings of unexplained objects at great altitudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations are of such nature that they are not attributable to natural phenomena or known types of aerial vehicles.
— H. Marshall ChadwellAsst. Director CIA, Scientific Intelligence
I am completely convinced that UFOs have an out-of-world basis.
— Walther RiedelChief Rocket Designer
The least improbable explanation is that these things are artificial and controlled… My opinion for some time has been that they have an extraterrestrial origin.
— Maurice BiotLeading Mathematical Physicist
Not entirely impossible that the objects sighted may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars.
— John SamfordDirector of Intelligence, Major General US Air Force
Since 1947 we have received and analyzed between 1,000 and 2,000 reports… However there have been a certain percentage of this volume of these reports, that have been made by credible observers of relatively incredible things. We can say that the recent sightings are in no way connected with any secret development by any department by the United States.
— John SamfordDirector of Intelligence, Major General US Air Force
1950
I can assure you that flying saucers, given that they exist, are not constructed by any power on earth.
— Harry S. TrumanUS President
1947
The [UAP] phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or fictitious… extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar… [which] lend belief to the possibility that some of the objects are controlled either manually, or remotely.
— Nathan TwiningCommander of Air Materiel Command, Lt. General US Air Force
We must insist upon full access to disks recovered. For instance, in the La case the Army grabbed it and would not let us have it for cursory examination.
— J. Edgar HooverFirst Director Of The FBI
I kept looking for their tails. They don’t have any tails. I thought well something is wrong with my eyes. They seemed to flip and flash in the sun just like a mirror. I’d be glad to confirm it with my hands on a bible because I did see it. Whether it has anything to do with our army or some foreign country, I don’t know.
— Kenneth ArnoldPilot