Retired U.S. Army Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer told Newsmax Saturday that the Pentagon is deliberately moving slowly on releasing what it knows about unexplained objects in the sky, arguing that the Department of War wants to manage any future disclosures to the public tightly.
Shaffer appeared on "Wake Up America Weekend," warning that the Pentagon is in no hurry to open its files on unexplained aerial encounters and suggested the Defense Department is carefully controlling what Americans are allowed to know.
The leader of Project Sentinel, whose career in military intelligence immersed him in national security secrets, was pressed on what information the government has gathered on sightings that many viewers associate with UFOs or possible alien life.
He said the intelligence community has taken the issue seriously for years and has quietly built a record of strange incidents that senior officials have struggled to explain.
"Well, any anomalous activity the U.S. government is going to track. And the intelligence community is very curious about things that cannot easily be understood," he said.
"There's been a pattern essentially of documenting this that has made a lot of folks at senior levels of government and multiple administrations very uncomfortable. Going back to the Roswell incident, which I do believe there was sufficient evidence that something happened there. There's a book called The Day After Roswell. Colonel Philip Corso, an Army colonel, claimed to have been involved in that. It's out there. People can go check it out. So there's ample evidence that we need to continue to expand both our study and disclosure," he said.
His comments came against the backdrop of ongoing government investigations into what officials now label unidentified anomalous phenomena, or UAPs.
The Pentagon’s All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office has been tasked with sorting through reports from pilots, radar operators, and other military personnel. At the same time, whistleblowers and veterans have accused the government of hiding key records and even recovered materials.
Shaffer’s remarks underscored the gap between official statements that most sightings involve balloons, drones, or clutter and the lingering questions inside the classified world.
"Of course, there's things that we are aware of that cannot be necessarily explained that we, that the U.S. Government, chooses to basically keep [quiet] until they can explain it. They want to be able to provide a full disclosure. So I understand why things are not necessarily revealed," he said.
"With that said, I'm one who believes we should continue forward to disclose everything we know within the context of what the government knows. So this is not the first time or last time this is going to be discussed," he added.
"That said, I think the Department of Defense wants to be very careful before they disclose everything they have."
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Jim Thomas ✉
Jim Thomas is a writer based in Indiana. He holds a bachelor's degree in Political Science, a law degree from U.I.C. Law School, and has practiced law for more than 20 years.
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