UNCLASSIFIED // PUBLIC RELEASERELEASE 03 · JUNE 12, 2026
PENTAGON UFO FILE · DOCUMENT · USG-UAP-D001Congressional, White House, UFO-related Constituent Correspondence, 1998
This bundle shows how the federal government handled UFO mail in the late 1990s. It is mostly NASA paperwork: tracking slips from its Headquarters Action Tracking System, draft and final reply letters, and the enclosures that went with them. The letters began with ordinary citizens who wrote to their representatives or to the President; those offices forwarded them to NASA to answer.
Who wrote, and what NASA said
The tracking slips name the routes. Senator Olympia Snowe forwarded a Maine constituent who doubted recently released Mars photographs and another interested in sightings and abductions; Senator Charles Grassley forwarded a request about astronaut sightings; Representative Bart Gordon passed on a letter about spending public money on the search for extraterrestrials; and White House referrals asked about congressional hearings on UFOs. Constituents’ names are redacted.
The replies are consistent. A September 1998 letter to Grassley says astronaut sightings were mostly identified as launch-vehicle material or water droplets, that NASA has no UFO program and has withheld nothing. A draft to Snowe corrects the constituent: the images came from Mars Global Surveyor, not Mariner, and NASA does not tamper with them. Several letters note that Congress, in 1993, told NASA to end its own search program, pointing writers to the SETI Institute.
The enclosures
Along with a NASA fact sheet on the government and UFOs, the Grassley reply enclosed a 1976 magazine article by space writer James Oberg arguing that well-known astronaut sightings — including McDivitt’s on Gemini 4 — had ordinary explanations. It is the government’s view as of 1998, not new evidence.
The official description
From war.gov/UFO, released June 12, 2026, quoted in full
This collection of documents, primarily from 1998, contains draft and final correspondence from the White House and the offices of members of Congress responding to constituent inquiries about Unidentified Flying Objects, or “UFOs.” These inquiries cover a diverse range of topics, including alleged UFO sightings by NASA astronauts, questions regarding the authenticity of photos collected during U.S. missions to Mars, alleged improper withholding of information by the U.S. Government, questions regarding the appropriateness of “UFO-related” governmental spending, and calls for congressional hearings regarding the nature and existence of “UFOs.” The official responses consistently state that, circa 1998, the U.S. Government is not aware of evidence supporting the existence of extraterrestrial technology, and that NASA does not actively investigate “UFOs.” The collection includes references to materials of both confirmed and unconfirmed authenticity, as provided by constituents, as well as references to historical, scientific literature addressing specific “UFO” sighting claims.