Pentagon releases new batch of declassified UFO files

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The Pentagon on May 22 released a second batch of videos on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) sightings as part of President Donald Trump’s directive aimed at increasing government transparency around reported UFO sightings.

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The Pentagon on May 22 released a second set of declassified files on what NASA calls Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP), commonly referred to as unidentified flying objects (UFOs). 

More than 60 new files ranging from government documents, military surveillance videos and audio transcriptions of people reporting unexplained orbs, disc and fireballs. 

The review and declassification is being handled by the Department of Defense, with support from the Director of National Intelligence. 

Many of the documents, videos and files are from unresolved cases, some previously released, with no definitive determination on the nature of what was observed. 

As the Pentagon continues to conduct separate reporting on resolved UAP cases, officials say they welcome the application of private-sector analysis, information and expertise. 

Imagery likely derived from an infrared sensor aboard a U.S. military platform. A user uploaded this video to a classified network in June 2024.

The collection also includes a CIA intelligence information report detailing human-intelligence activity in the former USSR. The document notes that its contents are informational rather than fully evaluated intelligence. In section 14, the source recounts witnessing a luminous, bright-green airborne object during the summer of 1973. He described concentric circles forming around the phenomenon over several minutes before it dissipated, noting that the event occurred in complete silence and offering not interpretation of what he observed. 

This file contains 116 pages of documentation from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Program (AFSWP) – the direct, post-World War II successor to the Manhattan Project – and from the U.S. Air Force – relating to a series of sightings and investigation

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Another portion of the file contains 116 pages from the Armed Forces Special Weapons Program, the successor to the Manhattan Project, and the U.S. Air Force, documenting a series of sightings near Sandia, New Mexico, between 1948 and 1950. The records detail 209 reports of "green orbs," "discs," and "fireballs" maneuvering near the military installation, along with investigations into copper powder found at some sites. 

The new video and audio files

Apollo 12 Mission

The three astronauts named by NASA as the prime crew of the Apollo 12 lunar landing mission. Left to right are Charles Conrad Jr., Richard F. Gordon Jr., and Alan L. Bean. (22 Sept. 1969) NASA

The videos include audio of a medical debriefing of the Apollo 12 mission astronaut crew, Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad, Command Module Pilot Richard "Dick" F. Gordon, and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean.  In the audio, the three describe seeing instances of light flashes or "streaks of lights" which they say occurred in the dark as they tried to sleep.

Pentagon releases second set of videos as part of Trump's UFO transparency directive

The Pentagon on May 22 released a second batch of videos on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) sightings as part of President Donald Trump’s directive aimed at increasing government transparency around reported UFO sightings. The videos include audio of a medical debriefing of the Apollo 12 mission astronaut crew, Commander Charles "Pete" Conrad, Command Module Pilot Richard "Dick" F. Gordon, and Lunar Module Pilot Alan L. Bean. In the audio, the three describe seeing instances of light flashes or "streaks of lights" which they say occurred in the dark as they tried to sleep. Another video released shows a United States Air Force National Guard shooting down a UAP over Lake Huron on February 12, 2023 and UFOs in formation over the Persian Gulf recorded in October 2019.

Transcript:

Speaker 1 [00:00:00] A little bit.

Speaker 2 [00:00:02] Listen, we read this paragraph in here about these quotes, coronal discharges that you guys were seeing and that completely stops us. Tell us how this came about and who talked to you about it and what you saw.

Speaker 1 [00:00:19] Somebody reported on one of the earlier flights that... Some guy up, I got the letter or somewhere, they shipped it down to me in the case of that two things where the VHF radio noises which could be discharging from some place in the place, and the other one where, I thought it was a real flight, he said, therefore it's being planted on a spacecraft. It's nice with their eyes closed. They noticed them when they were awake at night, the spacecraft was dark and they thought they were in the spacecraft. But whoever this guy was, you know, that's a perfectly known phenomenon. You can get discharge across your eye from gamma rays or something. So they had a bunch of things that would reach. Hold our eyes and face the moon. You know, when we were orbiting it, because it would be more, you'd get less discharge just facing the moon than away from it. But you don't have to be anywhere near the moon or anywhere. It's a first night at being big. And if you keep your eyes closed and you're awake down there and it's dark and you can think about it, when it happens, you can turn your eyes. You can spin down at one eye. It's not a discharge that you see in both eyes. You can really see it with one eye or the other eye. And you can see what kind it is. We have two kinds. I guess the particle either strikes the eyeball perpendicular or it discharges parallel. And we get either a plant like that or we get a tree. And, uh, and I feel like the design of the baby got a leg or a spleen. And I, for some reason, got a morgue with my left eye and my right eye, but I could tell which eye it was. But I was concentrating on it. I'm trying to tell you the reason you did it, because his, where he's left was always on the left side of the spacecraft. And that's why I've got a twist on the crosshair, and I caught all the right ones in my eye.

Speaker 3 [00:02:12] Yeah. Ha ha ha ha. I thought it was electrical. I flipped out of it. Ha ha.

Speaker 2 [00:02:22] They should have protected you, Dick. They should've all, they should've picked them all up.

Speaker 1 [00:02:27] I may surprise you to hear about this, because we were asked to specifically experiment with this.

Speaker 2 [00:02:48] I remember their conversation about it.

Speaker 1 [00:02:51] They thought it was something, you know, penetrating the spacecraft, by the way. What features ride is the exact phenomenon of all three of them. You can feel the light, you get the black out there, or sometimes it would be up on the street. And I saw them in both eyes, neither eye, and I can't remember if there was one that was more predominant than the other. But I agree with you, it's a phenomenon that you're not seeing with both eyes. It's not something external to you, it's something that's inside you, coming across as that one-on-one. Apparently they know that. Apparently that's a completely known phenomenon.

Speaker 2 [00:03:29] Well, we've been looking for cosmic rays, you know, cosmic rays strikes, and heavy particles, heavy nuclei that go through. You know, we started at Clearback and Mercury taking photographs of the retina to see if you could see streaks across the retinine stuff. We never could find any in there. And so we stopped that up early and well, by the end of the...

Speaker 1 [00:03:52] Your eye is like a fascist healer on your body, and if it's doing anything, you're never going to see it by the time you get a guy back. The only thing you're ever going to be able to see is if you photograph it right after a parkour with a body.

Speaker 2 [00:04:02] Well, probably what it's doing anyway is probably hitting just a single cell, and yeah, that's all it'd have to do, particularly make this flash, you know, you hit a single cell.

Speaker 1 [00:04:12] I saw one night, I was looking at the MVC, a handrail up above, and one ran right off, I don't know where it went, it appeared, you know, right straight along that handrail, I thought, that's, that just, I just had to be looking at that, and I could almost see it in the wheel. That's right. Close your eyes. You open one eye. You can already see it. We didn't believe it at first, but we saw it first tonight, and I thought, hey, I'm just getting spring loaded from that. They said, remember the nation, you wake up at night and you say, well, I think that's

Speaker 2 [00:05:01] Let me ask you one more question about heart. Oh here Okay, were these things random, or did they all seem to be in one direction, like were they always horizontal, or were they at random, they could be at any kind of angle?

Speaker 1 [00:05:25] But the streaks I saw were one that I saw on the horizontal. I was going to say that's interesting. Mine, it seemed to me I had the impression that they were always roughly in the same place. And mine were horizontal. The horizontal streaks were always, if I knew where I was looking, it always seemed like the horizontal streak was a little bit above the center. And it always seem to me it went from right to left. No matter which eye it was in, the discharges were more towards the center, and it would be just like a pin point of light would close again.

Speaker 2 [00:06:02] Like somebody was flashing a light at you.

Speaker 1 [00:06:06] That's right. Yeah, it's not too big of a light. It wouldn't fill your eyes. Hmm. I think it's probably going to air a little bit.

Speaker 4 [00:06:18] Is that about the same for both of you? Is that the same reaction you had, Dick and Al, the way he described it?

Speaker 3 [00:06:28] Look at this, this is about 30 degrees to horizontal, but they were kind of, I didn't notice them from the right or left.

Speaker 4 [00:06:37] That's pretty interesting. But about the same, they seem to appear about the same place, you know?

Speaker 1 [00:06:47] The horizontal ones that I saw were generally above that one. Same way, yeah. It was generally high. I don't know if I can include any other, I can't remember, I just don't remember any of them being down on the floor as part of my vision. Well, I take them. You see, that dick telling you about, you know, with his eyes open, and other things that he'd center his eye on, the lights on the instrument panel. So I used to notice on the boat when I was down there in that sleeping bag, I'd put pitch black down there in the hole and wouldn't make any difference whether the lines were open or closed. And I could lay there for, if you killed time that way, say for a half an hour, and either open or close them and wait and sure enough after a while you'd get one. And then I'd sit there for a while and say, okay, there's a little left eye on the right eye. It'd take you a while to sort it out. But you usually figure out which eye it was in. Now you know what you do, you're supposed to be sleeping on them. Yeah!

Speaker 2 [00:07:48] And there was a comment that...

The NASA medical team considered whether similar phenomena reported by Apollo 11 Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin had been attributable to exposure of the retina by cosmic rays. NASA later determined that the phenomena reported by the Apollo 12 flight crew were internal to the astronauts’ vision rather than external light sources.

Lake Huron incident

Another video released shows a United States Air Force National Guard shooting down a UAP over Lake Huron on February 12, 2023, and UFOs in formation over the Persian Gulf recorded in October 2019.

RELATED: Lawmakers claim UFO 'cover-ups' from Pentagon, military as witnesses head to Congress

What they're saying:

"The Department of War is in lockstep with President Trump to bring unprecedented transparency regarding our government’s understanding of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation — and it’s time the American people see it for themselves," Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said in a statement. "This release of declassified documents demonstrates the Trump Administration’s earnest commitment to unprecedented transparency."

The backstory:

The initial batch was made available by the administration earlier this month, after a promise for more government transparency on the topic that President Donald Trump’s directive aimed at increasing government transparency around reported UFO sightings.

RELATED: These states have the most UFO sightings

What's next:

The Department of Defense states that additional files will be released on a rolling basis. A third release of UAP files will be announced in the near future, according to the Department of Defense.