“What does the U.S. government really know about UFOs and for how long have they known it?” Ufologists and UFO experiencers have been asking these questions for decades, and it seems that answers are finally emerging. Based on the CIA’s recent release, on January 14, 2021, of nearly 3,000 pages of documents that detail  a wealth of fascinating data about UFO behavior and capabilities , it seems they know a lot and have known a lot about this topic for quite some time. These freshly declassified US government UFO info documents (published in their entirety on  The Black Vault ) reveal the truth about harrowing and awe-inspiring encounters between reliable witnesses and “unidentified aerial phenomena” of unknown origin that have been occurring since the 1950s. The recently-released US government UFO info includes multiple stories of up-close sightings of  mysterious disks , glowing spheres, wingless cigar-shaped cylinders, and other anomalous flying objects by military and commercial pilots, in the United States and  elsewhere around the world . 

In many instances these objects were observed visually and on radar performing aerodynamically impossible (for conventional aircraft) maneuvers. Other times they emitted odd beams of light and other forms of strange illumination. The CIA files even reported close encounters between shocked military personnel and  actual aliens , who were spotted emerging from landed UFOs.

These types of stories have circulated for years, and have frequently been discussed on radio programs, podcasts, YouTube videos, at UFO conferences, and in online forums frequented by paranormal enthusiasts. But now, for the first time, the government is adding its official seal of approval to such reports, giving them a legitimacy that they lacked when they were coming exclusively from anonymous “whistleblowers,” alien disclosure gadflies, mysterious ex-military insiders, and other questionable sources sporting dubious or non-existent credentials.

The CIA has long withheld detailed information about UFOs from the public but that changed on January 14, 2021, when nearly 2 million documents were released and published online.

Government UFO Info: The US Senate Demands Answers 

The January 2021 release of these new documents was apparently prompted by  a special comment  added to the recent $2.3 trillion COVID relief and government funding bill passed by Congress and signed into law by President Trump at the end of last December. In this comment, the Senate Intelligence Committee, headed by Senator Marco Rubio (R-FLA), instructed the Director of National Intelligence, the Secretary of Defense, and the heads of all other intelligence agencies to “submit a report within 180 days of the date of the enactment of the Act, to the congressional intelligence and armed services committees on  unidentified aerial phenomena .”

Under the terms of the Intelligence Committee directive, the government  UFO info  report would have to address “observed airborne objects that have not been identified” and should include a “detailed analysis of unidentified phenomena data collected by geospatial intelligence, signals intelligence,  human intelligence , and measurement and signals intelligence.”

In an added paragraph that seems like a nod to X-Files fans, the Intelligence Committee further ordered “a detailed analysis of data of the FBI, which was derived from investigations of intrusions of unidentified aerial phenomena data over restricted United States airspace … and an assessment of whether this unidentified aerial phenomena activity may be attributed to one or more foreign adversaries.”

It must be noted that this government UFO info directive says nothing about public disclosure. It only requests that reports be created and forwarded to the Senate Intelligence Committee for analysis. This makes the decision of the CIA to release this latest batch of documents to the public a matter of choice rather than law. No one required them to do it, but for reasons unknown they decided to do it anyway and several months before the June deadline that requires them to file a report with the Senate Intelligence Committee.

CIA UFO Data Dump: Honest Disclosure Or Hidden Agenda?

Curiously, this is the second occasion in the last year where an agency of the US government has deliberately chosen to release information that whets the public’s appetite for insider information about UFOs. In April 2020, the Department of Defense took the extraordinary step of declassifying  three U.S. Navy videos  that showed unidentified aerial objects performing their tricks for navy pilots. 

These videos, which were recorded in 2004 in one case and 2015 in the other two instances, had already been leaked to the media in 2007 and 2017. It appears the Defense Department’s primary objective in releasing them officially was to confirm their  anomalous nature . 

In their statement accompanying the release, the Defense Department said it wanted to “clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real.” They confirmed that “the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena.”

In other words, the United States Department of Defense wants its citizens to know that UFOs are real, that they aren’t secret military aircraft, and that investigations into their activities will continue if and when other encounters occur. 

After decades of denial and obfuscation, it seems the US government is no longer interested in debunking UFOs or covering up the truth (whatever it might be) about their origin and nature.

Dutifully, mainstream media sources in the United States and the United Kingdom are following the government’s lead, and are now reporting  UFO stories  disclosed by official sources in a relatively straightforward manner, without the usual snide remarks, snarky tones, or tired and dismissive “explanations” that invoke swamp gas, ball lightning, weather balloons, or next-generation stealth aircraft. 

Following this remarkable turn of events, it seems the old questions about “what do they know and for how long have they known it” have been rendered obsolete. In this current disclosure-oriented environment, what we should be asking instead is, “why are they doing this and why are they doing it now?”

Top image: US government info on “everything” to do with UFO sightings, held by the CIA, was released and published online on January 14, 2021