Government and military
Hearings, briefings, letters and laws, from the 1966 House hearing to the 2025 task force. 122 events, newest first.
Government19 Jun 2019
Senate Intelligence vice chairman Mark Warner and two other senators received a classified Pentagon briefing on Navy pilot encounters with unidentified aircraft. His office said unexplained interference with naval pilots was a safety concern; the Navy confirmed the briefing but gave no details.
Photo: U.S. Senator Mark Warner, Public domain
Sightings23 Apr 2019
A fireball at about 9:07 pm, recorded by Costa Rican seismological cameras, dropped stones on Aguas Zarcas. One piece punched a grapefruit-sized hole in a house roof and another hit a dog house; the stones were classified as a CM2 carbonaceous chondrite.
Photo: Csavil, CC BY-SA 4.0
GovernmentFeb 2018
Answering a written question from lower-house lawmaker Seiji Osaka, the cabinet said it had never confirmed UFOs thought to come from beyond Earth and had made no special study of how to respond if one entered Japanese airspace. The question also cited the U.S. Pentagon's UFO program.
Photo: Cabinet Public Relations Office, Cabinet Secretariat of Japan, CC BY 4.0
Military18 Dec 2017
Two days after the New York Times revealed AATIP, retired Navy Cmdr. David Fravor told ABC News about chasing a wingless, roughly 40-foot white object off California in 2004, saying he thought it 'was not from this world.' He later repeated his account under oath to Congress in 2023.
Photo: U.S. House Committee On Oversight and Accountability, Public domain
MediaAug 2017
To The Stars Academy's August 2017 SEC filing lists Christopher Mellon, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence and Senate Intelligence Committee staff director, on its advisory board. He was presented with the team at its October launch.
Photo: Max Moszkowicz, CC BY 3.0
Sightings10 Nov 2016
A metal cylinder about 4.5 m long fell on a jade-mining site in Hpakant, Kachin State, and a smaller piece with Chinese writing pierced a house roof; no one was hurt. State media said it might be satellite or missile parts, and experts linked it to a Chinese Long March 11 launched the day before.
Photo: Arezarni, CC BY-SA 3.0
Whistleblowers29 Apr 2013
Activist Stephen Bassett's Paradigm Research Group staged a five-day mock hearing at the National Press Club, with six former members of Congress, reportedly paid $20,000 each, hearing witnesses on UFOs. It was not an official proceeding; one panelist called it a pseudo-hearing.
Photo: ajay_suresh, CC BY 4.0
GovernmentNov 2011
Answering 'We the People' petitions seeking UFO disclosure, Phil Larson of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy wrote that the government had no evidence of life beyond Earth or of extraterrestrial contact, and no credible information that such evidence was being hidden.
Photo: U.S. Government, Public domain
Government24 Jun 2009
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid wrote to Deputy Defense Secretary William Lynn asking for a restricted special access program for parts of the DIA aerospace study he called AATIP, citing sensitive findings. A November 2009 DIA review found no justification for the protection.
Photo: United States Congress, Public domain
Skinwalker Ranch2007
Former Senate leader Harry Reid later said he asked Ted Stevens and Daniel Inouye, who ran the defense appropriations subcommittee, to fund a study of aerial phenomena. He said they agreed to unpublicized money in the defense bill, and that the Pentagon put the study out to bid, which Bigelow won.
Photo: Office of United States Senator Ted Stevens (R- Alaska), Public domain
Government22 Oct 2002
Former White House chief of staff John Podesta appeared at a Washington news conference with a Sci-Fi Channel-backed coalition seeking release of government UFO records. He said he was personally skeptical but that it was time to open the books.
Photo: NHD-INFO [1], CC BY 2.0
Military6 Jun 2002
U.S. early-warning satellites saw a small asteroid explode over the Mediterranean with an estimated 20 to 30 kilotons of energy. Brig. Gen. Simon Worden later told a House subcommittee that a similar blast over India or Pakistan, then in a nuclear standoff, could have been mistaken for an attack.
Photo: US Air Force, Public domain
Whistleblowers9 May 2001
Steven Greer's Disclosure Project presented about 20 former military, government and security workers at the National Press Club who said they had witnessed UFO evidence, and called for congressional hearings. Their claims of a secret program were not substantiated.
Photo: Emadmoussa, Public domain
Government14 Oct 1997
Lord Hill-Norton tabled written questions in the House of Lords on the 1980 Rendlesham Forest reports, including the Halt memo and its radiation readings. The government replied that the MoD had judged the memo of no defence significance and would neither confirm nor deny nuclear storage claims.
Photo: Anefo (photographer unknown), CC0
Media1992
Nuclear physicist turned UFO lecturer Stanton Friedman and Don Berliner published Crash at Corona (Paragon House), arguing the U.S. military recovered a crashed UFO in New Mexico in 1947 and hid it. Air Force reports in the 1990s instead tied the Roswell accounts to balloon projects.
Photo: AllenS, Public domain
Media1991
Bob Brown and Wendelle Stevens started the International UFO Congress, an annual convention mixing researchers, witnesses and enthusiasts. Held for years in Laughlin, Nevada, it drew nearly 1,000 people by 2009 and moved to the Phoenix area in 2011.
Photo: Stan Shebs, CC BY-SA 3.0
Sightings1990
New residents of the house where Ed Walters lived when he took his famous Gulf Breeze UFO photos found a model of foam plates resembling the object. A Pensacola News Journal reporter used it to closely recreate the photos; Walters said the model was planted.
Photo: Tbrighamphd, CC0
Close encounters6 Apr 1987
Random House published Budd Hopkins' Intruders, built on hypnosis sessions with an Indianapolis woman called 'Kathie Davis' and describing claims of alien-human interbreeding. Skeptic Philip Klass argued in the Skeptical Inquirer that leading questions under hypnosis shaped the accounts.
Photo: Carol Rainey, CC BY-SA 4.0
Media1980
Sunn Classic Pictures released Hangar 18, directed by James L. Conway, a drama in which the Air Force hides a crashed saucer at a Texas base while the White House chief of staff keeps it quiet before an election. Its title echoes a claim made at a 1974 symposium about a stored crashed craft.
Government18 Jan 1979
The Earl of Clancarty moved a House of Lords debate calling for an intra-governmental study of UFOs. Replying for the government, Lord Strabolgi said reports had ordinary explanations, denied any cover-up and saw no case for an official study. The motion was withdrawn.
Government1 Feb 1978
NASA's Information Sheet 78-1 said NASA would answer public UFO inquiries sent to the White House but ran no UFO research program, and would analyze only bona fide physical evidence from credible sources, following its December 1977 reply to the President's science adviser.
Photo: Vargklo at English Wikipedia, Public domain
GovernmentDec 1977
On July 21, 1977, Frank Press, science adviser to President Carter, wrote to NASA Administrator Robert Frosch proposing a panel to check for significant new UFO findings since the Condon Report. About five months later NASA answered that neither a research effort nor a symposium was justified.
Photo: NASA, Public domain
Media15 Nov 1977
Steven Spielberg's film Close Encounters of the Third Kind had its premiere in New York. Its title uses a term coined by Northwestern University astronomer J. Allen Hynek, who was credited as a technical adviser. The Library of Congress added the film to the National Film Registry in 2007.
Photo: Sanjay Acharya, CC BY-SA 4.0
Government21 Nov 1974
The House and Senate overrode President Ford's veto to enact amendments tightening the Freedom of Information Act. UFO researchers later used the law in suits such as Ground Saucer Watch's, which led the CIA to release hundreds of UFO documents in 1978.
Government26 Mar 1974
Physicist Edward U. Condon, a Manhattan Project veteran who was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1947-1949, died in Boulder, Colorado.
Photo: National Institute of Standards and Technology, Public domain
