Don’t Expect Big Surprises in the Government’s Alien Files

“Even some sort of really remarkable and extraordinary revelation would certainly not satisfy the social-media-verse,” says Eghigian. “‘Hey, is this another hoax? Is this another game that the government is playing with us? What else are they keeping from us?’”

“I don’t foresee almost any way for this thing to be definitively resolved in terms of the public interest,” he adds.

What’s Likely in the Files?

If history is any guide, a new release would center on UAP sightings and the government programs that track and study them. Since the first major UFO craze in 1947, the US government has periodically released documents and reports from internal teams, such as Project Blue Book, which covered the years from 1947 to 1969, the 1994 Roswell Report, and the more recent declassification of the Pentagon UAP videos, which had previously been leaked. Many of these files contain eerie visuals of UAP that have defied explanation.

UAP “can be a number of things,” says Berea. “It’s not like they are all in one bucket. Many of them actually are, in time, cleared up. Some of them, maybe, were balloons, airplanes, or some atmospheric phenomenon that we don’t know about. Then, yes, there is a small category where it is still not clear what they are.”

The tantalizing mystery surrounding those unexplained sightings excites the imagination, though government releases have repeatedly specified that there is no evidence these phenomena are extraterrestrial in origin, including recent reports from the AARO.

Sometimes, government disclosures about UAP include juicy admissions, such as lies to citizens about the nature of some sightings. One famous example is the CIA report in 1997 that said the Air Force had made “misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public fears and to protect an extraordinarily sensitive national security project.”

To that end, a new release may contain information about the government’s approach to internally evaluating UAP or records about its public posture toward the topic—or, more broadly, government campaigns of deception.

It’s also possible that new files will contain previously unreleased visuals of UAP, or more detailed information about existing UAP sightings, such as radar data. But much of this material will not be eligible for declassification if the Pentagon deems it a risk to national security. For example, the government does not divulge sensitive locations of military assets or insights into how some military operations are conducted.

“Classifying stuff, a lot of times, is not about the information, per se,” says Eghigian. “By revealing that material, you may reveal something about the way something was found out or something was seen. You’re revealing something about technology, or information processing, and oftentimes that is the concern about classifying material.”

“I think in all likelihood, what we’ll see is what we typically see,” he adds. “There’s maybe going to be some new nuggets in there, but I think a lot of people are going to come away very, very unsatisfied.”

What’s Probably Not in the Files?

In addition to files about UAP and UFOs, Trump ordered the release of any files related to alien life. The bad news is that—if we are judging by past releases—there will probably be nothing new about aliens in these files. The good news is that this is because alien-related research is already available in endless volumes of studies and documents, as there is no reason to classify it in the first place.

“There’s a huge amount of work that the government has done, all of which is actually transparent about the study of life in the universe,” Frank says. “There are a lot of documents people can go find about what the government knows, or think it knows, about extraterrestrial life.”