“Even a truly unusual and unusual discovery would certainly not satisfy the social media verse,” Eghigian says. “‘Hey, is this another hoax? Is this another game the government is playing with us? What else are they hiding from us?'”
“I foresee almost no way to definitively resolve this issue from the point of view of public interest,” he adds.
What’s probably in the files?
If history is any guide, the modern publication would focus on UAP observations and the government programs that track and investigate them. Since the first major UFO craze in 1947, the U.S. government has periodically released documents and reports from internal teams such as Blue book of the projectwhich covered the years 1947-1969, in the 1994 Roswell Reportand recent declassification Pentagon UAP filmswhich was previously leaked. Many of these files contain amazing UAP graphics that cannot be explained.
UAP “can mean many things,” Berea says. “It’s not like they’re all in one bucket. A lot of them have been explained over time. Maybe some of them are balloons or planes or some atmospheric phenomena that we don’t know about. On the other hand, yes, there is a small category where it’s still not clear what they are.”
The tantalizing mystery surrounding these unexplained sightings captures the imagination, although government announcements have repeatedly stated that there is no evidence that these phenomena are of extraterrestrial origin, including: the latest AARO reports.
Sometimes government disclosures about UAPs include juicy admissions, such as citizens lying about the nature of some sightings. One eminent example is 1997 CIA report which said the Air Force made “misleading and deceptive statements to the public in order to allay public concerns and protect an extremely sensitive national security project.”
To this end, the modern announcement may include information on the government’s approach to the internal review of the UAP or records of its public position on the issue – or, more broadly, government campaigns to fraud.
It is also possible that the modern files will contain previously unpublished UAP visualizations or more detailed information about existing UAP observations, such as radar data. However, much of this material will not qualify for declassification if the Pentagon deems it a threat to national security. For example, the government does not disclose sensitive locations of military assets or information about how certain military operations are conducted.
“Classifying things in many cases is not about information alone,” Eghigian says. “By disclosing this material, you may be revealing something about how something was discovered or something was noticed. You are disclosing something about technology or information processing, and often that is a problem of classifying the material.”
“I think we will most likely see what we usually see,” he adds. “There might be some new nuggets there, but I think a lot of people will leave very, very dissatisfied.”
What’s probably not in the files?
In addition to UAP and UFO files, Trump ordered the release of all files related to alien life. The bad news is that – judging by previous releases – there probably won’t be anything modern about aliens in these files. The good news is that this is because alien research is already available in countless volumes of studies and documents, as there is no reason to classify it at all.
“The government has done a tremendous amount of work that actually brings transparency to the study of life in the universe,” Frank says. “There are a lot of documents that people can find about what the government knows or thinks it knows about extraterrestrial life.”