Pentagon Releases UFO Files, Trump Says Public Can Decide What’s Real

The Pentagon opened a new UFO website Friday and began releasing 162 files from the FBI, Department of Defense, NASA and State Department, but President Donald Trump’s message to the public was less about sober disclosure than about judgment: “have fun.”

That line landed at the center of an administration effort that is being presented as transparency, yet also risks turning a national-security document dump into a public guessing game. The files are being posted on a rolling basis and span decades, with some records dating back to the late 1940s and others running through 2025. The first batch includes old State Department cables, FBI documents, NASA transcripts and imagery, giving the public a broad but uneven look at what federal agencies have collected over the years.

Trump directed the administration in February 2026 to release files on UFOs and any “alien and extraterrestrial life.” The order followed a years-long push in Washington to make more of the government’s UFO records public after Congress ordered the Pentagon in 2022 to begin releasing decades of related material. The move comes as military sightings of unexplained aircraft have kept pressure on federal agencies to answer questions that have long fed public suspicion and official caution.

The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, which handles unidentified anomalous phenomena reports, said in its fiscal 2024 report that it received 757 UAP reports during the reporting period. In its historical review, AARO said it found no evidence that any U.S. government investigation, academic-sponsored research or official review panel had confirmed that any UAP sighting represented extraterrestrial technology.

That gap between public curiosity and institutional evidence has defined the politics of UFO disclosure. Rep. Anna Paulina Luna has pressed for more transparency, saying in March that 46 UAP videos identified by whistleblowers were expected in a later release. The new filing batch suggests more material is coming, but it also underscores how much of the archive remains open to interpretation.

For the administration, the release is a test of whether disclosure can strengthen public trust. Trump’s “have fun” remark signaled something different: an invitation for Americans to sort through the material themselves, even as the government continues to decide what it will release, when it will release it and how much context the public will get.