13 items from the files. Call each one, then see the answer and its source. 7 or more counts toward Level 2.
ITEM 1 / 13
Infrared cockpit footage of a small object, said to be filmed by a US Navy aircraft in 2004.
Released. The US Department of Defense published this video on 27 April 2020 and still calls the object unidentified. The Navy confirmed the date: 14 November 2004.
Source: DoD statement on the release of historical Navy videos, 27 April 2020 · Open the file
“I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world.”
ITEM 2 / 13
A sitting US president, speaking at the United Nations, 1987.
Released. Ronald Reagan said it to the UN General Assembly on 21 September 1987. The full transcript is on the Reagan Library site.
Source: Reagan Library: Address to the 42d Session of the United Nations General Assembly
ITEM 3 / 13
A night photograph of a large lit triangle over Petit-Rechain, Belgium, April 1990. Studied by specialists for twenty years; the icon of the Belgian UFO wave.
Fake. In July 2011 the photographer told Belgian television he had staged it with a polystyrene model. (We do not show the photo: its rights are unclear and it is a hoax.)
Source: VRT NWS: Belgian UFO picture was really a forgery, 27 July 2011 · Open the file
ITEM 4 / 13 · Draft
Two infrared videos from US Navy jets, January 2015, known as ‘Gimbal’ and ‘GoFast’.
Released. On 27 April 2020 the Department of Defense authorised the release of three unclassified Navy videos, one from November 2004 and two from January 2015, and said the phenomena in them remain characterised as unidentified.
Source: The War Zone: Navy Officially Releases Controversial UFO Videos, 27 April 2020 · Open the file
ITEM 5 / 13 · Draft
A US Air Force record card for a UFO sighting at National City, California, May 1952.
Released. It is a page from Project Blue Book, the Air Force's UFO investigation, now declassified at the National Archives: 12,618 sightings from 1947 to 1969, 701 still ‘unidentified’. This card's own conclusion box reads ‘Meteor’.
Source: National Archives: Project BLUE BOOK - Unidentified Flying Objects
ITEM 6 / 13 · Draft
A photo said to show a mirror panel left on the Moon by the Apollo 11 crew in July 1969.
Released. It is NASA photo AS11-40-5952 of the laser ranging retroreflector. In 2019 NASA reported that observatories still fire lasers at the Apollo reflectors, and that the measurements show the Moon moving away by about 3.8 cm a year.
Source: NASA JPL: The Apollo Experiment That Keeps on Giving, 24 July 2019
ITEM 7 / 13 · Draft
Before he became president, this man filled in a UFO sighting report form about a light he saw over Leary, Georgia.
Released. Jimmy Carter filed the report in 1973, as Governor of Georgia, about a sighting in 1969. The Carter Presidential Library holds the form.
Source: National Archives News: Do Records Show Proof of UFOs?, 9 February 2018
“No, as far as I know, an alien spacecraft did not crash in Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.”
ITEM 8 / 13 · Draft
A US president, answering a 13-year-old's letter in front of a crowd in Belfast, 1995.
Released. Bill Clinton said it on 30 November 1995 at the lighting of Belfast's Christmas tree, and added that if the Air Force had recovered alien bodies, they didn't tell him either.
Source: The American Presidency Project: Remarks on Lighting the City Christmas Tree in Belfast
“there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don't know exactly what they are”
ITEM 9 / 13 · Draft
A former US president, on a late-night talk show, May 2021.
Released. Barack Obama said it on The Late Late Show with James Corden. A month later the US intelligence community reported that it could explain only one of 144 military UAP reports.
Source: NBC News: Obama on UFO videos: 'We don't know exactly what they are', 18 May 2021
ITEM 10 / 13 · Draft
Seventeen minutes of grainy black-and-white film, shown in 1995, said to record the autopsy of an alien.
Fake. In 2006 producer Ray Santilli admitted on television that he and Gary Shoefield had built a set, hired actors and filmed what he called a ‘restoration’.
Source: TIME: How an Alien Autopsy Hoax Captured the World's Imagination for a Decade, 24 June 2016
ITEM 11 / 13 · Draft
A video of flying craft over Haiti, posted on YouTube as ‘UFO Haiti’, August 2007.
Fake. A professional animator admitted to the Los Angeles Times that he had made it entirely on a computer, as what he called a social experiment.
Source: Flathead Beacon: UFOs and YouTube, 31 August 2007 (reporting the Los Angeles Times)
ITEM 12 / 13 · Draft
Two small ‘alien mummies’ in Andean clothing, seized by customs in Lima in October 2023 on their way to Mexico.
Fake. In January 2024 Peruvian forensic experts said they were dolls made of animal bones held together with modern synthetic glue, and stressed that the remains shown to Mexico's Congress are not extraterrestrial either.
ITEM 13 / 13 · Draft
Screenshots shared in March 2022 said to prove that The Simpsons predicted Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Fake. Fact-checkers found the images were doctored: the flag and ‘2022’ were added, and the missile came from a 2016 decoration in a Simpsons game.
Source: PolitiFact: No, the Simpsons did not predict Russia's invasion of Ukraine, 25 March 2022
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