Documentary

What's Really in the Government's UAP Files?

A journey inside the "disclosure" movement seeking to reveal that the government is hiding alien technology

Zach Weissmueller | 11.9.2026 11:30 AM

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Are aliens visiting Earth? What would that mean for human society? Are we in danger?

The "disclosure" movement, which includes former intelligence officials and sitting members of Congress, is fighting to declassify everything that the government has concealed about unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs. They say we're already in the process of coming to terms with the truth about extraterrestrial life.

"People say, 'When are we going to have disclosure?' I think you're living through it right now," says former intelligence official Luis Elizondo.

But one former government scientist tasked with examining UAP claims tells Reason that the entire movement is based on a carefully orchestrated web of lies.

"All of them are the same players," says Sean Kirkpatrick. He calls the movement "a conspiracy…to get resources to pursue a storyline and to propagate this storyline."

But the believers accuse Kirkpatrick of orchestrating a government cover-up.

After speaking with skeptics and believers, and poring over the government's most recent document dumps, most UAP images remain blurry, but the bigger picture has become more clear: Government officials have misled the public for decades about the mysterious objects in our skies, hyping aliens when it provided cover for clandestine research, while in other instances discrediting whistleblowers attempting to reveal unusual government programs and alarming encounters to the public. At the same time, a well-funded group of believers in the paranormal has successfully captured the imaginations of influential members of Congress, which has translated into millions of federal dollars funding paranormal research that's yielded few meaningful results.

The following is an attempt to step out of this hall of mirrors and carefully examine what we know—and don't know, maybe can't know with scientific certainty—about what's really out there.

Inside the Disclosure Movement

On June 25, 2026, lawmakers, whistleblowers, and scientists affiliated with the disclosure movement gathered in the Senate's Kennedy Caucus Room to talk about UAPs. This is the room where the Watergate hearings took place in 1973, and the event attendees say they're also exposing a massive government cover-up, but with much greater consequences for humanity.

Christopher Mellon, the former deputy assistant secretary of defense for intelligence, now chairs the board of the Disclosure Foundation. He tells the audience in his opening remarks that the evidence "increasingly suggests" that "some of these craft are of nonhuman origin."

Mellon was the source of the famous "Tic Tac" video published in The New York Times, which showed Navy pilots zeroing in on an unidentified object appearing to zip over the water.

"We saw this little white Tic Tac–looking object, and it's just kind of moving above the white water area," a Navy pilot told 60 Minutes in 2021.

Suddenly, UFOs were a front-page story, and not just in the Weekly World News. The mainstream was taking it seriously.

Asked on 60 Minutes about the object "mimicking your moves," the pilot said, "Yeah, it was aware we were there."

Since then, more government insiders have come forward. They say Washington is hiding recovered wreckage, off-world technology, and the corpses of aliens.

Rep. Eric Burlison (R–Mo.) asked Elizondo during a 2024 House Oversight Committee meeting, "Was anything described as that we have possession of bodies?"

"Yes, yes, we have biologics," Elizondo answered.

Burlison asked whether it was "multiple types of creatures."

"I couldn't answer that," Elizondo said. "I can tell you anecdotally that it was discussed quite a bit when I was at the Pentagon."

In 2017, Elizondo revealed to The New York Times that the government had a secret program to study UAPs. Elizondo's role in publicizing the story made him a hero of the disclosure movement, and he was honored with an award at the Disclosure Forum.

"The truth belongs to the American people," he said during his acceptance speech. "It doesn't belong within classified channels or security containers somewhere in the Pentagon or the CIA."

In an interview with Reason, Elizondo says, "There's a story to be told, and I think people realize that a truth has been kept from them."

Nine years after the Tic Tac video was released, the Trump administration declassified troves of material, causing renewed public interest in UAPs. The newly released documents include videos of strange objects zipping over the ocean, pictures of unusual lights in the sky during the Apollo missions, and internal government memos about flying disc sightings dating back to the 1940s.

Elizondo says the most explosive material, which will establish the existence of extraterrestrial visitors beyond a reasonable doubt, is yet to come.

"The administration is doing the right thing," Elizondo tells Reason. "I think they're dipping their toe in the water before doing a cannonball off the high dive. It's a measured approach, and they're doing it for several reasons. One is probably to socialize the American public to this new reality."

He says the releases mean that "on Capitol Hill, we can have a real conversation with policymakers about the phenomena, about the scientific implications, and equally as importantly, about the national security implications of the fact that we don't have full control over American skies, or at the very least, there [are] anomalous phenomena occurring that we cannot explain effectively."

Mike Gold, who investigated UAPs as part of an independent study group for NASA and sits on the board of the Disclosure Foundation, says many of the people who have appeared at the Disclosure Forum have put their reputations on the line to speak the truth.

"Members of our UAP independent study had their careers threatened," Gold says. "They were threatened that they'll never publish again, that they won't be able to receive tenure, that they'll lose their jobs, not for saying that UAPs are real or that there's a nonhuman intelligence, just for having the temerity to ask the question. And I put it to you, how can we do good science when simply asking the question is reason to have your career threatened?"

"People like Luis Elizondo have all suffered incredibly personally, financially, emotionally, for what they've done," he says.

Investigating the Investigators

In 2022, the federal government created an office within the Pentagon to study UAPs. But members of the disclosure movement say it was designed to silence critics with a........

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