In December 1988, an extraordinary event occurred in Puerto Rico, leaving many baffled. A bunch of folks claimed they saw U.S. warplanes tangling with enormous, bizarre aircraft that didn’t look like anything from this planet. One jaw-dropping moment stuck with the witnesses: two F-14 jets supposedly flew right into a gigantic, triangle-shaped craft hovering in the sky. Did the planes vanish from existence, or were they involved in a covert collaboration with the entity piloting the craft? Naturally, conspiracy buffs have their theories. Some reckon the U.S. government’s been cozying up to extraterrestrials for years—maybe even letting them set up shop on hidden bases, like one rumoured to be stashed underwater somewhere off the western Atlantic. Others whisper about a darker deal: aliens snatching everyday Americans in exchange for high-tech know-how. So, what’s the real story? What do the people in charge actually know about these mysterious visitors?
Officially, the U.S. Department of Defence appears to have distanced itself from the entire UFO issue. These days, they don’t even call them UFOs—too retro. Now it’s all about “Uncorrelated Targets,” or UCTs, when something weird shows up in the sky. The military’s tight-lipped as ever, and good luck getting hard numbers out of them. They will claim that there is no special office responsible for this matter, but many individuals who are deeply involved in the subject find this claim to be utterly absurd. The Pentagon’s decision to discontinue its public UFO investigations in 1974 marked a significant shift, according to some.
Rewind to just after World War II, and UFO fever was in full swing. Sightings were popping up everywhere, and the U.S. kicked off “Operation Blue Book” to calm everyone down. The idea was to show they weren’t hiding anything about alien ships. It was essentially a deceptive strategy. Those in the military who had the audacity to reveal information to outsiders were subject to penalties as severe as if they had been discovered engaging in espionage. Blue Book stuck to safe cases—ones they could brush off as hoaxes or mix-ups. Enter Josef Allan Hynek, an astrophysicist and hardcore skeptic hired as a consultant. Later, he revealed that Blue Book automatically discarded reports from anyone under the age of 18, leaving only the explainable ones for public scrutiny. Over its run, Blue Book sifted through 15,000 UFO reports—lots still unsolved—and Hynek? He flipped from doubter to believer, even giving us the phrase “close encounter.”
Across the pond, Britain’s got its own UFO guru in Nick Pope. He was just a regular government worker at the Ministry of Defence, fielding questions from curious citizens. But the deeper he dug, the more he found—enough to fill books with tales of the unexplained. Other researchers believe he has only touched the surface. They have discovered treasures such as a 1960 document named “UFO Policy,” a comprehensive six-page document cautioning that disclosing UFO secrets could result in legal consequences under the Official Secrets Act.
The Ministry of Defence maintains a neutral stance, stating that they only address UFOs when they pose a “defence concern.” Even with solid evidence or chilling eyewitness stories, they shrug and say it’s no threat to the nation. That’s the line they feed us, anyway—what’s cooking behind closed doors is anyone’s guess.
The challenge for British investigators is that their government excels at maintaining secrecy. However, in the U.S., the Constitution and the Freedom of Information Act aim to provide transparency. Back in 1980, a group called Citizens Against Unidentified Flying Objects Secrecy took the National Security Agency to court, demanding files on 239 UFO cases. The NSA pushed back, claiming it’d jeopardize national security. In the present day, declassification has finally led to the release of some of those documents, but don’t expect any shocking revelations.
It’s hard to shake the feeling that the really explosive stuff, the kind that’d send people into a panic, stays locked away. Are our governments sitting on a big, cosmic secret, or is there just nothing worth telling? Maybe we’ll never know for sure.