Thread by @Telegraph

🌌 The United States’ long history of UFO sightings began on June 24, 1947 when an amateur pilot reported seeing “flying saucers” in Washington state

telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/05/2…

🇺🇸 In the 1950s, the US Air Force was inundated with UFO reports from the public. One of the most notorious was the so-called “Invasion of Washington” in 1952.

During the Cold War, fearing mass hysteria, the CIA worked to debunk sightings and infiltrate UFO-hunting groups

🏜️ For decades afterwards, anyone who reported seeing something strange in the sky was considered a crackpot.

However, Senator Harry Reid, who represented the state of Nevada – home to Area 51, believed there was a mystery to be solved

💰 In 2007, Mr Reid managed to clandestinely push $22 million in “black ops” funding for a new department through Congress.

From deep inside the Pentagon, a real-life X-Files team studied hundreds of reported UFO sightings – including the USS Nimitz “Tic Tac” incident from 2004

🚢 The “Tic Tac” incident

Lieutenant Commander Alex Dietrich, a US Navy fighter pilot, has had one of the most famous close encounters with a UFO.

On November 14, 2004 numerous flying objects were picked up by ship radar. They dropped 80,000ft in less than a second

⁉️ In separate planes, Lt Cdr Dietrich and Commander David Fravor were dispatched to investigate.

What they saw on that day has never been adequately explained – until now.

This week Lt Cdr Dietrich spoke publicly about her encounter for the first time...

🧠 She told US news programme 60 Minutes:

“It jumped from spot to spot, and tumbled around in a way that was unpredictable. The whole time we’re on the radio with each other just losing our minds"

📸 Ship radar picked it up seconds later, 60 miles away.

A third F/A-18 then caught it on an infrared camera: it looked like a giant white Tic Tac

🌎 Her testimony coincides with a growing acceptance among defence officials around the world that there may indeed be something “out there” – and that it might pose a genuine global security threat.

There has been a sea change in how the Pentagon regards such sightings

🇺🇸 It no longer refers to them as UFOs but UAPs, or Unidentified Aerial Phenomena.

Next month, Congress is to be given an unclassified report on evidence collected by the Pentagon’s UAP Task Force, the Office of Naval Intelligence and the FBI

💰 People who investigate UFOs may have former president Donald Trump to thank for this change.

In December, when he signed his $2.3 trillion coronavirus relief bill into law, it contained a clause requiring a full report on UFOs within 180 days, i.e. by June 25

✈️ Nick Pope, who investigated UFO sightings while working for the Ministry of Defence says:

“When top guns, who don’t impress easily, get excited about the capability of these objects, their speed, manoeuvrability, trans-medium travel in water and air…that gets my attention"

🤷‍♂️ John Ratcliffe, director of National Intelligence under President Trump, says he had seen satellite imagery of objects “frankly engaging in actions that are difficult to explain”

⁉️ Former president Barack Obama – who has long joked in interviews that he knows things about “aliens” adds:

“What is true – and I’m actually being serious here – is that there’s footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are"

⚡ Luis Elizondo, from the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program says:

“Extreme manoeuvrability, hypersonic velocity without a sonic boom, speeds of 8,000mph. These are probably not any type of aircraft in any national inventory. I think it’s pretty clear it’s not us"

🟢 Last month, footage of bizarre images of flashing pyramid-shaped UFOs was posted online, which the Pentagon confirmed was taken in 2019, by a US Navy ship off California

🌌 These incidents are expected to be further detailed in next month’s report.

Mr Pope says:

“If there is anything really juicy, it will probably be in the classified annex. Governments are just nervous and reluctant to say ‘We don’t know...’ because it makes them look weak"

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