UFO Encounters Sightings, Visitations, And Investigations: U.S. Government’s Stance on UFOs
In 2006, a UFO was reported at Chicago O’Hare International Airport: a metallic, saucer-shaped craft was witnessed by pilots, airline personnel, and mechanics. United Airlines and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) initially denied that they had any information on the O’Hare UFO sighting (Hilkevitch, 2007). After the Chicago Tribune filed a Freedom of Information Act request, the federal agency “quickly reversed its position” (Hilkevitch, 2007). Following their request, an internal FAA review of air-traffic communications tapes revealed a call by the airline supervisor to an FAA manager concerning a “mysterious elliptical- shaped craft.”
The effort to underplay UFO sightings is not a recent trend. In the 1940s, Project Grudge was instituted by the U.S. Air Force to investigate and debunk UFOs. The director of Project Grudge, Captain Edward J. Ruppelt (1956), writes, “Everything was being evaluated on the premise that UFOs couldn’t exist. No matter what you see or hear, don’t believe it.” In 1966, a growing number of sightings of Unidentified Flying Objects were reported in Michigan, and people were alarmed. Future President Gerald Ford, who was a congressman at the time, was not satisfied with the laughable “swamp gas” explanation of the sightings and declared that people deserved a better explanation (Fordlibrarymuseum, 1966). Ironically, astrophysicist scientist J. Allen Hynek, who delivered the “Swamp gas” explanation to Gerald Ford, would later become a believer in UFOs and alien aircrafts from another dimension (Kelly, 2019).
Furthermore, the effort to classify UFO sightings is not a new movement either. According to pilot Bill Paynter and Norman C. Miller, the Washington Bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal, President Ronald Reagan witnessed a UFO (Alexander, 2012; Ramasseul, 2015). In 2009, Gorbachev revealed that Reagan asked him point-blank during the 1985 Geneva Summit, “What would you do if the United States were suddenly attacked by someone from outer space?
Would you help us?” (Orr, 2009). Likewise, President Carter himself reported a UFO in 1973 before he became president (O’Toole, 1977). Nevertheless, throughout their office terms, the release of UFO files by government agencies was denied due to national security concerns (Sinclair, 1981; Hansen, 1984). In 2015, John Podesta, a one-time chief of staff to Bill Clinton and an outgoing advisor to Barack Obama, wrote, “Finally, my biggest failure of 2014: once again not securing the disclosure of the UFO files.” He was also the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s 2016 presidential campaign. One of Hilary Clinton’s campaign promises was, in fact, declassifying records and revealing the truth about UFOs (Watkins, 2016; Chozick, 2016).
Recent publicized disclosures made the government agencies’ ambiguous stance on UFOs even more evident. In 2016, the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) was revealed as a classified program funded by the Department of Defense to investigate UFOs. The former head of AATIP, Luis Elizondo, arranged the release of UFO footage; Joseph Gradisher, a spokesperson for the Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Information Warfare, responded that the public was never supposed to see the videos (Rodriguez, 2019). Following the 2016 disclosures, the Navy admitted that the UFO videos are authentic. The Navy does not associate UFOs with evidence of alien life, but witnesses consisting of more than 120 former or retired military personnel testified to witnessing UFO activities and their capability to deactivate missile sites (PR Newswire, 2010; Adams, 2016; CBS, 2010). When some voiced their concerns to superiors, they were told it was “top secret” or that it “didn’t happen” (CBS, 2010). In 2019, Navy officers were directed by their chain of command to erase the evidence of a 2004 UFO Encounter due to pressure from “unknown individuals” (McMillan, 2019). In 2020, the Navy announced that releasing top-secret UFO files would “Gravely Damage” U.S. National Security (Daniels, 2020)
The reason American government agencies are not comfortable with UFOs is not as strange as one might assume. It cannot be emphasized enough that the United States has by far the strongest military force in the world, spending more money on defense than the next seven countries combined (Peter G. Peterson Foundation, 2019). The most advanced military on Earth absolutely knows when an object is unidentifiable, and that such aircrafts can easily outperform the fastest jets of the most powerful and largest military force in the world. In this regard, UFOs are seen as a threat to the current world order, national security, and particularly the United States itself because it challenges the belief of American supremacy (Bender, 2019). More importantly, the United States is the most religious wealthy country in the world, and the existence of aliens may create various complications (Fahmy, 2018). To further elaborate, more than 70% of Americans are Christian, and the existence of alien intelligence would impact lay people and professionals alike. One employee at Chicago O’Hare International Airport, for example, “experienced some religious issues” after witnessing the UFO in 2006. Likewise, some Pentagon officials opposed the AATIP based on religious grounds (Knapp & Adams, 2019).