Is there life out there? Author to hold discussion on the ‘Inside Story’ of UFOs at Ford Museum

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. — Members of The Gerald R. Ford Presidential Library & Museum are welcoming back bestselling author and journalist Garrett Graff to discuss his latest book that offers a deep look into the history of the country’s many experiences with UFOs.

Titled UFO: The Inside Story of the US Government’s Search for Alien Life Here―and Out There, the book is a departure from his previous books that focus on historical events like the Cold War and the Watergate scandal, but still gives the same fact-based focus.

Though he doesn’t consider himself much of a sci-fi fanatic, Graff said he became more and more interested in the idea as the national conversation has given UFO sightings more credibility.

“I came to this and got interested in it because you have seen in the last six years, this remarkable shift in the way that Washington and the U.S. government talk about UFOs. And what the Pentagon now calls UAPs — Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon,” he said. “I began to pay real attention to this subject when you began to see serious people talking seriously about this subject.

“People like former CIA Director John Brennan, former President Barack Obama — this is a subject that now is getting a fair bit of congressional attention. There have been hearings on Capitol Hill both of the last two years and the Pentagon and NASA and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence have all recently set up new offices or new task forces, to dive more into the mystery of what UFOs and UAPs actually are.”

The book touches on the 1947 Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting that happened near Mount Rainier, Washington as well as the Roswell Incident in New Mexico from the same year. Graff said a goal of his was to lay out the history for newcomers of the subject.

“Weaving together both the history of the U.S. military’s hunt for UFOs here, as well as the broader and evolving science and astronomy around what’s called the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence across the universe,” he said. “One of the things I really tried to do with this book was lay out the possibility that, you know, the answer to UFOs and UAPs may not be aliens in the end, but might still be unlikely is worthy of further study, because the answers could still be fascinating and world changing and insightful and change the way that we look at our place in the universe. Even if UFOs and UAPs don’t turn out to be aliens.”

As someone who is open to the idea that intelligent life is indeed out there, Graff said it’s fun to see that even the skeptics take the time to see what he’s found out.

“In many ways, this is the story of one of the most fundamental questions of human existence, are we alone? And it’s probably one of the two or three biggest questions that humans have asked, since the dawn of human civilization,” he said. “I think that this is a subject that even if you are absolutely sure that UFOs are not aliens, there’s a lot to be said in this book about our modern political moment and the evolving science as it has changed our understanding of the universe beyond.”