The Unidentified Flying Object (UFO)/Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena (UAP) community felt an 8.5 earthquake this past month as former President Barack Obama was a guest on the Brian Tyler Cohen podcast. It was a short interview, as interviews go, and just a few minutes before it ended, Cohen started a new topic:
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: So, I want to do a little bit of a lightning round here because it’s not often I get access to the president of the United States. So, a couple of questions here: Are aliens real?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: They’re real, but I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in—what is it?—
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Area 51?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Area 51. There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: What was the first question you wanted answered when you became president?
PRES. BARACK OBAMA: Where are the aliens?
BRIAN TYLER COHEN: Where are the aliens? (Laughter.)
The next question was about who President Obama would like to meet (the answer: The Pope, as they are both from Chicago and White Sox fans.) Finally, there was a question about whether Tupac Shakur was truly dead or not. So, the questions pretty much ran the gamut from the mundane to the bizarre.
The UAP community came alive immediately regarding the so-called admission from the 44th President that aliens are real. However, if you saw the video of the Q&A and understood what a lightning round is, you would have noticed a twinkle in the ex-president’s eye and the hint of a grin on President Obama’s face. He then became equivocal, stating that there are no crashed spaceships or extraterrestrial bodies, as far as he knows, and that he has no personal experience in this regard. Several days later, with the firestorm unabated, President Obama issued a clarification. The former president said:
"I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed round, but since it's gotten attention, let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that the odds are good there's life out there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances we've been visited by aliens is low, and I saw no evidence during my presidency that extraterrestrials have made contact with us. Really!"
Here, he summarizes that with all of the four thousand or so planets discovered, the odds of life appearing elsewhere in the universe are high. But then how can lifeforms from an alien civilization travel at the speed of light, perhaps for centuries, to reach us? This is a sort of paradox, though there is a workaround solution that I will explain below.
What President Obama said should be a wake-up call to those who expect an extraterrestrial vessel to land at any moment in Lafayette Park, as Klaatu’s ship did in the classic film The Day the Earth Stood Still. There has been a sort of hysterical expectation over the past ten years that sees a ‘disclosure’ or reveal occurring imminently
A mystery
McCasland was the commander of the Air Force Research Laboratory at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base near Dayton, according to his Air Force biography. He managed a $2.2 billion science and technology program as well as $2.2 billion in additional customer-funded research and development.
This job at Wright-Patterson AFB would have put him in contact with an alien spacecraft if one existed, and it also brought him into contact with a civilian metallurgist at Wright-Patterson named Monica Reza who went missing outside Los Angeles, CA on June 22, 2025. She may be best known for holding a patent on a “super strong metal alloy” used in rockets.
When people realized that two people were nissing from the same unit where exotic extraterrestrial material was believed by some to be stored, rumors went through the roof.
McCasland seemed to be casually interested with UFO’s after he retired, but if he knew any secrets, he did not share them. And his name came up in the context of a band member of the Australian group Blink-182 who was also interested in UFOs/UAPs when an e-mail was revealed by WikiLeaks (see below.)
DoD registers net domains
President Trump has promised full disclosure. However, to date no executive order specifically addressing UAPs has been signed. Yet, there seems to be some movement in this direction.
In the past week, the government has registered at least two domain names: alien.gov and aliens.gov. The second site appears to redirect to https://aliensgov.online/ and there is currently intermittent access, activity, and tentative information on how the site is set up. There are also occasional pop-up Google warnings that your device has been infected if you try to access the sites. But it is clear that one or two sites are being set up for providing information. As of March 24, 2026, there was a welcome message that began:
Welcome to aliens.gov, your official and trusted source for comprehensive information on unidentified aerial phenomena and the ongoing search for extraterrestrial intelligence. This platform has been meticulously developed to serve as a singular, authoritative gateway to declassified government files, official reports, and verified data concerning UFOs and potential life beyond Earth. Our core mission is to empower the global public, dedicated researchers, and avid enthusiasts with unprecedented access to an expansive archive of documents, all carefully curated from various governmental agencies around the world. Here, you can explore historical narratives, meticulously analyze incident reports, and delve deep into the scientific principles that underpin many unexplained phenomena, all presented with unwavering transparency and absolute clarity. We are committed to fostering an informed understanding, directly from the source, by providing factual insights that challenge perceptions and invite exploration into the unknown. Discover the truth and broaden your perspective with authentic, accessible information.
At the moment, there are no ‘bells and whistles’ on the site (i.e., graphics) except for a small alien face emoji. The site promises to provide ‘unparalleled access to officially declassified government documents.’ That remains to be seen, of course.
The site promises to provide the necessary information needed to conduct trend and time series analysis, as well as information on astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial life.
Does it cut to the chase?
There are currently thousands of cases released over the years that involve misidentification of stars, planets, meteors, weather balloons, etc. There is absolutely no incentive for the government to classify a photo of a flock of geese or a hubcap from a Cadillac sailing like a frisbee in a 1957 photo. You might think, then, that this site will focus on those cases that could not be identified with certainty or cases we had not heard of before. But there is no explicit promise on the new site to do so. Nor is there any hint of preparing the public for something astonishing. The site says that people will be able to review cases and make up their own minds about what is occurring, so I’m not sure exactly what sorts of treats we will encounter.
Nor can we know for sure that whatever executive order is eventually issued by POTUS will be complied with, any more than we can be sure that every document in the Jeffrey Epstein files will be released. So some will likely be disheartened.
And what is the truth?
I read so many notes from younger people who have their hopes dashed by the lack of disclosure and by what is clearly a cover-up. They believe — perhaps rightly — that evidence of life elsewhere in the universe should be celebrated and not concealed from the public. Some enthusiasts are too eager to find extraterrestrial life in every report, while others stubbornly refuse to believe in any life elsewhere in the cosmos. I think the truth is somewhere between these two extremes. I don’t think a comet that takes 4.3 million years to get here harbors life, but neither do I believe that a spaceship is the only way to get from point A to point B. We’ll just have to see how this all plays out — if we don’t blow ourselves up before then.
If you enjoyed this, you might also enjoy these:
Intro to Xenolinguistics
Read about the fundamentals of cross species communications with an emphasis on alien cultures.
Whiskey 2-Niner-One
Read about UAP “hot spot” off the U.S. coasts where mysterious objects wait to meet patrolling American fighter jets
