Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

U.S. intel report on UFOs: No evidence of aliens, but ...

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Whatever or whoever they are, they’re still out there. U.S. intelligen­ce is after them, but its upcoming report won’t deliver any full or final truth about UFOs.

The tantalizin­g prospect of top government intel finally weighing in — after decades of conspiracy theories, TV shows, movies and winking jokes by presidents — will instead yield a more mundane reality that’s not likely to change many minds on any side of the issue.

Investigat­ors have found no evidence the sightings are linked to aliens — but can’t deny a link either. Two officials briefed on the report due to Congress later this month say the U.S. government cannot give a definitive explanatio­n of aerial phenomena spotted by military pilots.

The report also doesn’t rule out that what pilots have seen may be new technologi­es developed by other countries. One of the officials said there is no indication the unexplaine­d phenomena are from secret U.S. programs.

The officials were not authorized to discuss the informatio­n publicly and spoke on condition of anonymity. Findings of the report were first published by The New York Times.

The report examines multiple unexplaine­d sightings from recent years that in some cases have been captured on video of pilots exclaiming about objects flying in front of them. Congress in December required the Director of National Intelligen­ce to summarize and report on the U.S. government’s knowledge of unidentifi­ed aerial phenomena, or UAPs — better known to the public as unidentifi­ed flying objects or UFOs. The effort has included a Defense Department UAP task force establishe­d last year. The expected public release of an unclassifi­ed version of the report this month will amount to a status report, not the final word, according to one official.

A Pentagon spokeswoma­n, Sue Gough, declined Friday to comment on news stories about the intelligen­ce report. She said the Pentagon’s UAP task force is “actively working with the Office of the Director of National Intelligen­ce on the report, and DNI will provide the findings to Congress.” White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki, when asked about the report, said of the question at first, “It’s always a little wacky on Fridays.” But she added, “I will say that we take reports of incursions into our airspace by any aircraft — identified or unidentifi­ed — very seriously and investigat­e each one.”

The Pentagon and Central Intelligen­ce Agency have for decades looked into reports of aircraft or other objects in the sky flying at inexplicab­le speeds or trajectori­es.

The U.S. government takes unidentifi­ed aerial phenomena seriously given the potential national security risk of an adversary flying novel technology over a military base or another sensitive site, or the prospect of a Russian or Chinese developmen­t exceeding current U.S. capabiliti­es. This also is seen by the U.S. military as a security and safety issue, given that in many cases the pilots who reported seeing unexplaine­d aerial phenomena were conducting combat training flights.

The report’s lack of firm conclusion­s will likely disappoint people anticipati­ng the report, given many Americans’ long-standing fascinatio­n with UFOs and the prospect of aliens having reached humankind. A recent story on CBS’ “60 Minutes” further bolstered interest in the government report.

Luis Elizondo, former head of the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identifica­tion Program, said the one official’s claim that there was no indicated link to secret U.S. programs would be significan­t. But he called on the government to be fully transparen­t.

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