IN PURSUIT OF PIES IN THE SKY

ON May 8, the US department of war released the first tranche of declassified files on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP, also called unidentified flying objects) at the order of President Donald Trump.

- KAJAL BASU

The first release included 162 documents, photos and videos, with further updates planned through the grandiosely-named PURSUE programme, or the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters. The effort also involves the White House, Nasa, FBI, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and the All-Domain Anomaly Resolution Office.

Immediately, the Iran-aligned Lego-style satirical viral brigade, Explosive Media, released a rapid-fire rap video telling Trump to “Keep the UFO files, drop the Epstein list”, highlighting off-the-bat what many Americans already feel—that Trump is in serial deflection mode trying to wrench attention from his domestic economic, foreign policy and Epstein files disasters.

The Spectator’s take on the infodump was scathing: “The release is the latest example of UFO activity that began with a controversial 2017 article in the New York Times describing a secret Pentagon programme to investigate UFOs. It was controversial because two of its three authors were UFO enthusiasts who omitted to add that the project also included looking into ghosts and werewolves.”

Controversial or not, the NYT revealed the existence of the Pentagon’s secret Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, a $22-million government project that in 2007-12 was tasked with investigating UFOs/UAPs. In 2022, the Biden administration established the AARO, which built up a caseload of more than 2,000 by early 2026.