For five years, the U.S. Department of Defense ran a program that monitored reports of human encounters with UFOs (unidentified flying objects). Now the release of more than 1,500 pages of documents reveals that the agency compiled bizarre stories of unaccounted pregnancies, radiation burns and even brain damage during a secretive stretch from 2007 to 2012.
First published in the British tabloid The Sun in compliance with a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request, the collection of documents was originally created by AATIP (Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program). Its existence only became known to the public after former program director Luis Elizondo resigned from the Pentagon in 2017 and released videos of unidentified, fast-moving aircraft. While the U.S. government withheld some of the requested documents in the new release, claiming there were privacy and confidentiality concerns, the materials that were produced are bound to fuel rampant speculation among the large community of UFO conspiracy theorists.
