The White House will begin releasing afirst batch of so‑called 'alien files'in Washington on Friday, according to a senior US Congressman, in a move that believers say could mark the start of long‑awaited UFO disclosure by the American government.
The phased release comes after years of pressure from lawmakers and UFO campaigners who argue that US agencies have quietly amassed evidence of unidentified flying objects while keeping the public in the dark.
The idea of a future 'Disclosure Day', when governments supposedly admit they have proof of extraterrestrial life, has shifted from fringe message boards to mainstream podcasts and congressional hearings, helped along by former presidents and intelligence officials who now speak relatively freely about the phenomenon.
Republican Representative Tim Burchett, a member of the House Oversight Committee's Task Force on the Declassification of Federal Secrets, told theNew York Postthat the first tranche of alien files would be made public on Friday.
Burchett briefed the paper after attending a White House meeting on the plan. The task force was set up to scrutinise classified material across government, with UFO‑ and alien‑related records among its most politically sensitive assignments.
The process has been nudged from the very top. In February, President Donald Trump instructed US agencies, including the Pentagon, to identify and release government files relating to aliens and extraterrestrial life. That directive followed a remark by his predecessor Barack Obama, who told podcaster Brian Tyler Cohen earlier this year that 'they [aliens] are real, but I haven't seen them and they're not being kept in Area 51.' The comment was loose and half‑joking, but for those already inclined to believe, it sounded suspiciously like confirmation.
Burchett has said the initial release of alien files will focus heavily on accounts from US military pilots who reported encounters with unidentified flying objects while on duty. These first‑hand testimonies, previously locked inside classified channels, have long been at the heart of the UFO debate, pitting trained observers against sceptical officials who traditionally waved such sightings away as equipment glitches or misidentifications.
Alongside written reports, Burchett confirmed that one video would be included in the tranche. He did not describe the footage or say when it was taken, and that silence is already fuelling speculation among UFO enthusiasts about whether the clip will be genuinely new or simply a re‑packaged version of material already circulating online.
If campaigners hoped this opening would be a flood rather than a trickle, they may be disappointed.
According to theNew York Post, the first release will not include 46 additional UFO videos that Congress has explicitly asked the Department of Defence to declassify. The Pentagon's reluctance to hand over that cache, even as the White House leans into transparency language, suggests officials are still drawing hard lines around what the public is allowed to see.
Source: International Business Times UK
