The Trump administration released its first batch of files on UFOs and “unidentified anomalous phenomena” Friday morning.
The Pentagon’s trove of documents includes descriptions of unidentified objects spotted during NASA’s lunar missions and out-of-this-world FBI tips about flying saucers and extraterrestrial life. The government also released dozens of images and videos of recent sightings, including several from the Middle East region.
Officials are planning to release more files on a rolling basis. The Trump administration has celebrated the release as a “historic transparency effort,” while others have criticized the move, including former GOP congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who described it as “propaganda.”
“I really don’t care about the UFO files. I just don’t. I’m so sick of the ‘look at the shiny object’ propaganda while they wage foreign wars, let rapist and pedophiles run free, and ruin the value of our dollar,” Greene wrote on X.
When asked about Greene’s comments, White House spokesperson Davis Ingle told The Independent: “Marjorie ‘Quitter’ Greene has never met a conspiracy theory she didn’t embrace.”
“The former Congresswoman disgracefully quit on her constituents during the middle of her term. Now, she should also quit spreading Fake News,” he added.
Here’s what to know about the Trump administration’s UFO files:
’Unidentified phenomena’ spotted from moon’s surface during Apollo 12 mission
The newly released UFO files includes photos of several different “unidentified phenomena” taken from the moon’s surface during the Apollo 12 lunar mission in 1969.
The Pentagon said it modified some of the images to “assist viewers in identifying specific areas of interest,” adding that these highlights are “provided for contextual purposes only.”
The Apollo 12 crew was the second to land on the moon, following the Apollo 11 mission earlier that year.
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Buzz Aldrin’s reported ‘unusual’ sights on Apollo 11
Astronaut Buzz Aldrin, the second person to walk on the moon, described three strange sightings from the Apollo 11 mission during a technical crew debriefing conducted in July 1969, according to a transcript included in the Pentagon’s UFO files.
“The first unusual thing that we saw I guess was one day out or something pretty close to the moon. It had a sizeable dimension to it, so we put the monocular on it,” Aldrin said.
Another observation included “little flashes” inside the cabin.
“The other observation that I made accumulated gradually. I don’t know whether I saw it the first night, but I’m sure I saw it the second night. I was trying to go to sleep with all the lights out. I observed what I thought were little flashes inside the cabin, spaced a couple of minutes apart,” he said.
Aldrin also described seeing a “fairly bright light.”
“I observed what appeared to be a fairly bright light source which we tentatively ascribed to a possible laser,” he recalled.
Apollo 17 crew spotted ‘bright particles’ during mission
The Apollo 17 crew reported “unidentified phenomena” to mission control during their 1972 lunar mission, according to a transcript included in the UFO files.
“Now we’ve got a few very bright particles or fragments or something that go drifting by as we maneuver,” pilot Ronald Evans told mission control.
Harrison Schmitt, another pilot on the mission, added: “There’s a whole bunch of big ones on my window down there – just bright. It looks like the Fourth of July out of Ron’s window.”
“Yes. Now you can see some of them in shape. They’re very jagged, angular fragments that are tumbling,” Evans said.
The next day, mission commander Eugene Cernan reported observing a bright light.
“And probably the one most imposing thing I remember is – and the last one I remember before falling asleep – was the fact that there was a very bright spot that flashed right between my eyes like a very bright headlight – like a train coming at you, only with a flash,” he said.
The Pentagon has also opened an investigation into a photograph taken on the Apollo 17 mission.
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The image, which was already public before Friday’s release, shows “three ‘dots’ in a triangular formation in the lower right quadrant of the lunar sky that is clearly visible upon magnification of the image,” according to the agency.
“While this photo has been previously released and discussed by keen observers, there is no consensus about the nature of the anomaly. New preliminary U.S. government analysis suggests the image feature is potentially the result of a physical object in the scene,” the agency said.
“Additionally, as part of this investigation, the government has obtained the original film from the Apollo 17 mission and the results of the full NASA and DOW analysis will be released when completed.”
Strange reports found in FBI case files
The Pentagon released hundreds of pages from an FBI case file that contained reports of UFOs and flying discs documented between 1947 and 1968.
Included in this file was a handwritten letter from a Virginia man, who asked the FBI to comment on an image of a figure with its arms up and looking toward the sky.
Another FBI report described how a young woman went to the agency’s Dallas field office in October 1967 and claimed she received “a quantity of information concerning beings from outer space.”
She refused to give her name because she would “feel like a fool if this information is not true,” the document said.
A man also once contacted the agency claiming he read a report that they “captured a saucer occupant,” according to a letter included in the case file.
He wrote: “Does the FBI really have a saucer man?”
