NASA Administrator Says Declassified UAP Files Show Years of Unexplained Sightings, Not Evidence of Alien Craft

The Trump administration's PURSUE program released its second wave of declassified UAP documents on Friday, directing federal agencies to search internal databases for decades-old reports of unexplained aerial activity. NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman said the effort represents a significant shift in how government agencies approach such records, which he said had historically received little formal attention.

Isaacman said the released material includes infrared footage from 2023 that appears to show a U.S. F-16 shooting down a diamond-shaped object over Lake Huron, along with reports of unidentified aerial objects observed near military operations in Iran, Syria, Iraq, Greece, and other parts of the Middle East. The files also contain astronaut accounts from the Apollo and Gemini eras describing unexplained lights and objects observed in space.

"What's being surfaced isn't crashed ships or alien bodies, but real unexplained phenomena," Isaacman said. He said the biggest finding was not evidence of extraterrestrial life but the degree to which federal agencies had previously left such records unexamined. He characterized the disclosure effort as "citizen science," saying the administration was releasing the data for public analysis.