The former president doesn't quite spill the beans on James Corden's talk show.
As OGN reported last year, the world of aerial acronyms just got a new one: UAP (Unidentified Aerial Phenomena). According to the US authorities UFOs (as they were once known) are the sort of things that pill-popping hippies might have spotted. Certainly, no 'normal' person would ever have spied a UFO. Until, possibly, recently. But it's now a UAP if you want to be taken seriously. Seriously!
In January this year, thousands of documents from the CIA on unidentified flying objects were released in a document dump that the agency says includes all their records on UFOs; sorry, UAPs. In April, the Pentagon reluctantly confirmed that leaked photos and videos were legit.
Sue Gough, a spokesperson for the Pentagon, confirmed that images and footage of a blinking triangular object in the sky, along with other UAPs that were categorized as a "sphere”, “acorn” and “metallic blimp”, were taken by navy personnel in 2019. Gough said that the defense department would not comment further on the nature of the footage or share any examinations into them.
Thus, this year, a strange new narrative has emerged: the US military is taking reports of UAPs more seriously than ever before - even setting up a task force that’s scheduled to release a detailed report on the sightings this summer.
And even before the report emerges, several military pilots have come forward to recount sightings of strange objects which, they say, appeared to break the laws of physics. Even members of Congress are getting on board, calling for the Pentagon to reveal more information about the mysterious sightings. Don't we all have a niggling suspicion that America is hiding something from us?
Now, former US president Barack Obama is piling into the debate, letting his thoughts be known on a Late Late Show interview with James Corden. When the show’s bandleader Reggie Watts asked Obama about UFOs, the former Commander in Chief had a surprising, and somewhat tongue-in-cheek, answer.
“When it comes to aliens, there are things I just can’t tell you on air,” the former president told Watts, laughing. “The truth is that when I came into office, I asked,” he continued. “I was like, ‘Is there a lab somewhere where we’re keeping the alien specimens and space ships?'”
“They did a little bit of research and the answer is no,” Obama added jokingly. “But what is true - and I’m actually being serious here - is that there’s footage and records of objects in the sky that we don’t know exactly what they are,” he added. “We can’t explain how they moved, their trajectory. They did not have an easily explainable pattern.”
“I think people still take seriously [the task of] trying to investigate and figure out what that is,” he said. “But I have nothing to report to you today.”
Today's OGN Sunday Magazine articles:
Whale watching in silence: It's a triple whammy of good news - for the planet, marine life and people.
Going green: Two of the world's most famous opera houses are being transformed to meet today's climate challenges.
Science Trumps Silence: President Biden is rectifying matters by creating a Scientific Integrity Task Force.
New girls school in India's Thar Desert: Described by one critic as the 'best architecture I've seen in a long time.'
Borrowdale Banksy: Hunt is on for mystery Lake District artist who has stunned locals with amazing slate sculptures.