X-Files are real: Pentagon says UFO team existed

The Pentagon ran a secretive five -year programme to investigate UFO sightings, spending US$22 million before it was shut down due to cost, it has been disclosed.

For the first time, the US defence department has acknowledged the existence of the mysterious Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Programme run from an office in a quiet corner of its sprawling headquarters.

There, between 2007 and 2012, a team of researchers working with experts in Nevada investigated reports of aliens and strange sightings over the American skies — a real life version of the hit television show The X-Files.

The enterprise was the passionate project of Harry Reid, the retired Democrat senate majority leader. Reid told the New York Times: “I think it’s one of the good things I did in my congressional service.”

However, although some of the unit’s work remains classified, it is not thought any convincing evidence of extraterrestrials was discovered. “If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling themselves,” Reid tweeted. “We do not know the answers but we have plenty of evidence to support asking the questions.”

Documents show how the unit, working with a Las Vegas aerospace company run by Robert Bigelow, investigated sightings of aircraft mov- ing at high speeds with no signs of propulsion or that hovered mysteriously.

Officials with the programme also studied videos of encounters between unknown objects and American military aircraft, including one released in August of a white oval object, about the size of a commercial plane, chased by two US navy fighter jets from the aircraft carrier Nimitz off the coast of San Diego in 2004.