Last year in December, when President Donald Trump signed the Coronavirus relief and government funding bill, a 180-day countdown began for the intelligence officials. This is because the 5,593-pages included an unexpected proposition, a request for the US intelligence agencies to provide all the details about UFOs to Congress within the given time.
A comment from the Senate intelligence committee was attached to a portion of the package funding the intelligence operation. The Director of National Intelligence was asked to consult with other top defense officials and spy chiefs to submit a complete report on what they know about UFOs or "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP).
As the 180 days countdown has already begun, according to the Senate intelligence committee's directive, the officials will need to submit a report containing a detailed analysis of UFO and intelligence collected by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the UAP Task Force and the FBI.
The committee also said that the report should include details about any potential threats posed by the UFOs and whether any country's adversaries could be behind such unusual activity. The report must be unclassified but it can include a classified annex.
Matter of Interest
The Pentagon released videos, in April last year showing "unidentified aerial phenomena" which later US Navy confirmed as real footages. One of those videos was from 2004, while the other two were from 2014. These videos showed what appeared to be unknown flying objects moving while recorded by infrared cameras. It is still unclear whether these were so-called alien spaceships or drones.
Members of Congress and defense officials expressed their concerns regarding the appearance of unidentified aircraft over US military bases for a long time. Some of the officials believe that these were nothing but drones, operated by other countries to gather intelligence. However, since these sightings are still mysterious, in August last year, Pentagon announced the formation of a task force to investigate the unusual events.
The officials at Pentagon previously studied recordings of such sightings as part of a classified project that began because of intense interest in the UFOs by former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. The shadowy program began in 2007 and ended in 2012. According to Pentagon, the program was abandoned because they thought there were higher priorities that needed government funding.
In 2017, former Pentagon official, Luis Elizondo, who led the program to research UFOs, said in an interview, "My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone."
