President Trump’s and former President Obama’s recent comments on “aliens” are not without precedent, and they also confirm what voices and whistleblowers from the intelligence community have been saying for some time: the US government has classified information and programs concerning unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP) and so-called nonhuman intelligences.
Although the questions of whether and what US presidents know about UAP is typically regarded as subjects of speculation, it is a matter of historical record that many postwar presidents commented and took action on the phenomena. In 1947, Lyndon Johnson, then a junior congressman from Texas, made the first congressional inquiry to the DoD about UAP, following dozens of reported sightings that year. In 1952, Harry Truman’s administration demanded answers from the US Air Force about multiple UAP observed and tracked by civilian and military airport personnel and aviators over Washington, DC. According to the CIA’s own official history of its engagements with UAP, Lyndon Johnson’s administration requested records and information from the CIA on UAP. And as though all this weren’t enough, Gerald Ford called for congressional hearings on UAP in 1966, when he was House Minority Leader, following multiple, well-documented sightings in his home state of Michigan; and in 1976, Jimmy Carter made, prior to his election, a campaign promise to publicly share all information about UAP held by the government. Finally, Bill Clinton inquired into the alleged 1947 Roswell, New Mexico crash while president in the 1990s—and stated in recent years that he was never able to get to the bottom of the matter.
Why do presidents show an interest in and occasionally acknowledge UAP? The short answer is that, apart from the abundant data and witness reports attesting to the reality of the phenomena, components of the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community have long engaged in efforts to detect, track, and study UAP. Presidents are, to greater and lesser degrees, apprised of those efforts and the intelligence they collect, but that information is likely deemed, as President Trump acknowledged today, classified.
At the Sol Foundation, we pursue the kind of academic and scientific inquiry into UAP that statements like Obama’s and Trump’s make more relevant by the day. Our publications and public education work have helped establish the facts about the US government’s history of knowledge and engagement with UAP and define their significance for science, society, and humanity.