US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth provided an update on the Trump administration's plans to release government files related to extraterrestrial life and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).
Last week, President Donald Trump said he would instruct Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to begin finding and releasing government files related to unidentified flying objects and possible extraterrestrial life.
A 2021 study by the Pew Research Center found that 65 percent of Americans believed that intelligent life could exist on other planets.
Hegseth was in Colorado on Monday for his department's "Arsenal of Freedom" tour, where he visited two commercial space companies, the Telegraph reports.
In an interview published by C-SPAN, when a reporter asked Hegseth if he ever imagined he would be responsible for revealing information about alien life to the American public, he replied, "It wasn't in my mind at all."
Asked if he was prepared to oversee that process, he said: "Certainly, we have our people working on that right now. I don't want to exaggerate how long it's going to take, right? We're working on it. We're going to be in full compliance with that executive order, committed to getting that to the president. So there's going to be more on that in terms of the process of what we're going to do."
Asked about a timeline, Hegseth replied: "I don't have a timeline for you yet, but hold on. We'll get it for you."
And when asked if he personally believed aliens existed, he replied: “We’ll see.” He added: “I’ll do the research and find out with you.”
Public interest in extraterrestrials increased after former President Barack Obama discussed the topic during an interview with political commentator Brian Tyler Cohen.
In a brief part of the conversation, Obama replied "they're real" when asked about aliens, then immediately clarified that he had never seen them himself and dismissed the idea that they were being held at Area 51.
After his comments went viral, Obama sought to clarify his remarks, writing on social media: "I was trying to stay in the spirit of the speed round, but since it has attracted attention, let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that there is a good chance that there is life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances of us being visited by aliens are low, and I have seen no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. True." /Telegraph/
