A tranche of UFO videos — including never-before-seen footage — was quietly released by federal law enforcement last month.
US Customs and Border Protection, the agency responsible for keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the country, uploaded 10 videos that appear to show craft moving in strange ways in our skies.
The videos were released on August 9 without warning, a press release or much in the way of context, only to be discovered by UFO enthusiasts and online sleuths earlier this week.
The videos document a fighter jet pursued by an apparently baffling flying orb, as well as something that appears to be a propeller-powered hang-glider, and yet another apparent floating orb, hovering this time near a parked 16-wheeler truck.
But the enigmatic nature of the drop — which offered little detail regarding the times and locations of these sightings, plus more than a few sweeping redactions — has left more questions than answers.
The drop follows rising tensions within the corridors of power in Washington on the once taboo subject of UFOs.
Open congressional hearings, federal legislation and even brand new government offices have now been dedicated openly to the investigation of these aerial mysteries, with at least one former senior US intelligence official calling the strange sightings ‘a national security issue.’
US Customs and Border Patrol uploaded 10 videos that appear to show craft moving in strange ways in our skies. The videos document, among other oddities, a fighter jet pursued by an apparent flying orb (above), as well as what appears to be a propeller-powered hang-glider
But perhaps most significantly, the US CBP release confirms, at least tacitly, the veracity of a heavily scrutinized, 2013 thermal UFO video leaked to UFO researchers in 2015. For the first time since the leak, the April 25, 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico UFO video has been confirmed
The videos were released on a dedicated site for agency records made public via requests under the US Freedom of Information Act (FOIA).
But perhaps most significantly, the release confirms, at least tacitly, the veracity of a heavily-scrutinized, 2013 thermal UFO video leaked to UFO researchers in 2015.
For the first time since the leak, the April 25, 2013 Aguadilla, Puerto Rico UFO video has been confirmed by the US government as genuinely unidentifiable.
Asked by NBC News, the only other news outlet to yet cover CBP’s UFO drop, Chris Mellon, a former official with the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, described the release as ‘very significant.’
‘This will help the public understand what our military personnel are encountering all over the world,’ Mellon said.
Chris Mellon, formerly with the Secretary of Defense for Intelligence, praised US Customs for their UFO records drop, saying the newly released videos ‘will help the public understand what our military personnel are encountering all over the world’
‘We’re getting, on the Defense Department side, 50 to 100 [UFO] reports per month — and this is happening globally.’
‘It’s happening overseas. It’s happening off the east coast and the west coast,’ he elaborated. ‘This will help people better understand why Congress takes the issue seriously [and] why it’s a national security issue.’
The videos were accompanied by a 389-page PDF document, ostensibly of UAP records held internally by the US Customs.
While the paperwork includes much chaff, news clippings, and already public government reports, the FOIA drop also included internal emails detailing deliberations on the law enforcement agency’s UFO cases.
Several agency emails from August 2021, document an exchange between a UFO enthusiast and his superior regarding efforts to comply with spirit of the then-recent congressional legislation on UFOs and the resulting UAP Task Force report.
‘As a pet project, or for fun, do all the research you want,’ the redacted official wrote to the CBP’s equivalent to The X-Files FBI agent Fox Mulder. ‘I know this topic is of great interest to you and there’s a ton of information to sift through.’
‘There just isn’t an avenue for any formal research or reporting any type of findings or conclusions,’ the redacted official stressed.
The also redacted CPB employee responded, ‘T4… I apologize, and took The Director of National Intelligence’s UAP report seriously.’
In another video, released via FOIA by US Customs and Border Protection, yet another apparent orb can be seen hovering near a parked 16-wheeler truck
But the release also includes over two dozen tantalizing pages that have been redacted in their entirety.
Per statute, each page lists the legal statute under which US CBP is permitted to withhold these records.
The majority of these redactions were justified under the b(5) and b(7)e exemptions clauses of federal FOIA law.
Investigative reporters and open government advocates have dubbed the b(5) exemption the ‘The Withhold It Because You Want To Exemption‘ as its guidelines were even described by the US Justice Department as ‘opaque.’
The exemption, as described, grants government agencies the right to withhold any ‘inter-agency or intra-agency memorandums or letters that would not be available by law to a party.’
Another video shows a strange glowing orb – but the videos were released with little by way of supporting documentation as to dates, times, personnel or recording equipment used, making each of US Custom’s UFO videos hard to contextualize
The b(7)e exemption pertains effectively to law enforcement’s own ‘sources and methods,’ as it withholds details that would ‘disclose techniques and procedures for law enforcement investigations or prosecutions’ and other material that officials believe ‘could reasonably be expected to risk circumvention of the law.’
To this end, several of the released videos have notably redacted the majority of the heads-up-display information from US CBP’s infrared or thermal video recordings: which would likely include data on the altitude, bearing and range of these UAP.
In his further comments on the new CPB videos, former DOD intelligence official Chris Mellon noted that these mysterious UFO videos highlight ‘the challenges we are facing monitoring and controlling our airspace.’
Mellon cited both last February’s infamous Chinese spy balloon (and still-as-yet-unidentified UAP), and ‘of course the explosion of drone use around the world,’ as examples of the new threats to US sovereignty posed by the weak official reporting and widespread stigma surrounding unidentified aerial phenomena.
‘I hope that the Defense Department and [US] Intelligence Community are paying attention,’ Mellon told NBC.
‘They have many videos that are of a similar, unclassified nature,’ he noted, ‘or were, until they — out of nowhere — created this new classification guide.’
Mellon went on to express the opinion that the Pentagon’s new and more expansive classification standards for its own UAP or UFO videos might not be ‘lawful.’
‘I don’t think that’s consistent with the executive order governing classification,’ the former intelligence official said. ‘But they are withholding a lot of similar kinds of videos from the public on that basis.’
This is a developing story and will be updated as new information emerges.
Have YOU seen one? The Pentagon reveals what the most commonly reported UFO looks like
Ever since the first sighting more than 75 years ago, popular culture has usually depicted a UFO as a flying saucer emitting a powerful halo of light.
But that could finally change following the official release of information from the Pentagon about the mysterious aerial phenomena.
The new Department of Defense document reveals characteristics of the typical UFO, including the colour and the shape, velocity, and flight level
Based on clues from reported sightings, the typical UFO has a round shape, usually described as spherical or an orb, with a white or silver colour, often translucent.
It also has a size of between 3 and 13 feet (1 to 4 metres) and usually travels through the air at a height just below commercial passenger planes.
The Pentagon has also released a hotspot map that reveals the location of reported UFO sightings, including Japan and the Middle East.
Read more here.
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