The Department of War released more than 160 previously classified files related to UFOs and extraterrestrial life on Friday, but a veteran researcher who has spent six decades chasing unexplained aerial phenomena says the government is still running a shell game, and that Americans may not be ready for what remains locked away.
Dennis Anderson, a long-time UFO expert and former member of the Center for UFO Studies, told the New York Post in an exclusive interview that Friday's document dump amounts to carefully managed theater. He has been investigating unidentified aerial phenomena for 63 years. He is not impressed.
"The government will never disclose that we are dealing with an unknown phenomenon that we can not control or defend ourselves against."
That blunt assessment lands at a moment when the Trump administration is framing the release as a historic break from decades of secrecy. President Trump ordered the government to identify and release any files related to alien life and UFOs. Director of National Security Tulsi Gabbard said Friday that the files will "provide the American people with maximum transparency."
The 162 files made public Friday are only the first batch. The government announced that more will follow on a rolling basis in the coming weeks.
Trump posted on Truth Social that his administration had delivered on a promise. Just The News reported that Trump described the effort as part of a push for "Complete and Maximum Transparency" and said previous administrations had failed to disclose such material.
"Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, 'WHAT THE H*** IS GOING ON?'"
The materials are being posted through a program called the Presidential Unsealing and Reporting System for UAP Encounters, PURSUE, and housed on a dedicated government website at War.GOV/UFO. Fox News reported that the first batch includes never-before-seen UAP files, videos, photos, and source documents, among them Apollo 12 and Apollo 17 images showing unusual objects and mission transcripts describing bright, jagged, tumbling fragments seen from a spacecraft.
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth framed the disclosure in stark terms: "These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation, and it's time the American people see it for themselves."
Pentagon officials went further, stating that "no other president or administration in history has followed through on this level of UAP transparency," the Washington Times reported. Among the newly released documents is a 1994 report describing a passenger jet crew over Kazakhstan who watched a bright object maneuver for about 40 minutes, executing circles, corkscrews, and rapid 90-degree turns.
The broader cache includes old State Department cables, FBI documents, NASA transcripts, and more than 20 videos from military sensors. That is a substantial haul. Whether it moves the needle on the central question, are we alone?, is another matter entirely.
Dennis Anderson is not buying the transparency pitch. He told the Post that the government's strategy is to release just enough material to look cooperative while withholding anything that would change the public's understanding. The pattern, he said, is deliberate.
"They're trying to cover as much as they can and still make it sound like they're interested in giving you the information when they're really not. It's all smoke and mirror stuff."
His concern is not just that Washington is holding back. It is that the drip-feed approach is designed to exhaust public interest. Release fuzzy pictures. Promise more. Deliver vague files. Watch the audience tune out.
Anderson described the likely outcome plainly: "I think what happens is that if they show you enough of this stuff where you're not seeing anything and they keep saying they're going to release more, but then they really don't. And if they do, it's another fuzzy picture and stuff. People are just going to get tired and they're just going to not pay attention anymore."
That fatigue strategy, if Anderson is right, would fit a long pattern of Washington managing uncomfortable information by burying it in process. It is a tactic familiar to anyone who has watched federal agencies slow-walk disclosures on other sensitive subjects.
Anderson's most provocative claim is not about government deception. It is about public readiness. Some UAP researchers believe Americans could absorb full disclosure. Anderson disagrees.
"Some UAP researchers think the public could handle it, I don't. This is just one of several reasons I don't believe full disclosure will take place."
He is not the only person in Washington's orbit to suggest that classified briefings contain material the public is not prepared for. Rep. Tim Burchett has previously said that Americans would "come unglued" if they knew what he learned in classified briefings on extraterrestrial life.
Anderson offered his own theory about the nature of the phenomena. He said whatever is behind the sightings has been present for a very long time and adapts to the era. People in the late 1800s claimed to have witnessed "Phantom Airships." In 2001, Anderson himself studied the mysterious "Arthur Kills Lights", five to 16 bright orange "ovals" that flew between New Jersey and Staten Island.
"There's something that is going around all... It's constantly around us, but just adapts to the time. When we reach that point, maybe it'll start to appear as something else. So whatever this thing is, whatever this phenomenon is, it stays one or two steps ahead of what people actually expect something to be."
That is a striking claim, one that cannot be verified from declassified files or government statements. But Anderson is clear-eyed about one thing: whatever the phenomenon is, it has not posed the kind of mass threat that would force immediate disclosure.
"Whatever's going on around us, whatever this is, it hasn't really taken any steps to make itself where it's really killed off millions of people or whatever. They haven't done anything like that, and they show absolutely whatever it is, it shows no care for any particular political group or race or color, whatever. It doesn't show anything. It just is and it just does whatever it feels like whenever it wants to."
Not everyone shares the excitement, or the alarm. Sean Kirkpatrick, a former Pentagon official who led earlier UAP investigations, offered a cooler assessment. He told the Associated Press that there is nothing unexpected in the release and warned that without proper analysis, the files will "only serve to fuel more speculation, conspiracy and arm-chair pseudoscience."
A 2024 Pentagon report found no evidence that the U.S. government had confirmed alien technology or alien life. The AP noted that many cases in the newly released files remain unresolved but do not point to extraterrestrial origins.
That tension, between the administration's promise of historic transparency and the possibility that the files contain more ambiguity than answers, sits at the center of the debate. Trump ordered the Pentagon to release these files after years of bipartisan pressure. The question is whether the release satisfies that pressure or merely redirects it.
Anderson's skepticism, whether you share it or not, raises a question that goes well beyond UFOs. When the federal government promises transparency on any subject, classified programs, surveillance, law enforcement conduct, judicial coordination, how do citizens evaluate whether they are getting the real thing or a carefully curated version?
Washington has a long track record of managing information to protect institutional interests. Agencies classify material, slow-walk FOIA requests, redact documents beyond recognition, and then announce partial releases as though they have thrown open the vault. The pattern is so familiar it barely registers.
Trump deserves credit for ordering the release. No prior administration followed through on this scale. Hegseth's framing, that the files were "hidden behind classifications", is a direct acknowledgment that previous leadership kept this material from the public. Gabbard's pledge of "maximum transparency" sets a standard the administration will now be measured against.
Anderson told the Post that the information the government plans to give the public "really isn't going to help you any, because it's either very vague or... even what they think is true probably isn't true." That is the assessment of a man who has spent 63 years asking questions and getting non-answers.
More files are coming. The administration says so. The real test is not whether Washington releases another batch of aging memos and grainy video. The test is whether any of it tells the public something the government previously refused to say out loud.
If the answer is no, Anderson will have been right all along, and the smoke-and-mirrors routine will have outlasted yet another promise of sunlight.