The post you are reporting:
An intriguing article from the Telegraph.
Earth may well have been visited by UFOs from outer space, the former head of a secret US government programme has told The Telegraph. Luis Elizondo said the existence of supremely advanced unidentified aircraft, using technology that did not belong to any nation, had been "proved beyond reasonable doubt".
Until two months ago, from his office on the fifth floor of The Pentagon, Mr Elizondo, a career intelligence officer, ran the innocuously named Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program (AATIP), which was funded with $22 million in "black ops money" from Congress. The existence of the real-life X-Files department, which began in 2007, was revealed this week and confirmed by the Pentagon.
In an interview with the Telegraph Mr Elizondo said much of what he could discuss was still classified.
That included whether his team had examined UFO sightings in other countries including the UK, or spoken to witnesses. I am not at liberty to discuss that," he said. "But we took a very comprehensive approach. Nothing was too small to investigate." He added: "In my opinion, if this was a court of law, we have reached the point of 'beyond reasonable doubt'. I hate to use the term UFO but that's what were looking at. "I think it's pretty clear this is not us, and it's not anyone else, so one has to ask the question where they're from." The exact number of UFO sightings investigated, and witnesses interviewed, is also classified but Mr Elizondo said there had been "lots".
Geographical "hot spots" emerged during the investigations, sometimes near nuclear facilities and power plants. Common factors between the movements of separate unidentified objects had also been identified by the Pentagon team. "It was enough where we began to see trends and similarities in incidents," he said. "There were very distinct observeables. Extreme manoeuvrability, hypersonic velocity without a a sonic boom, speeds of 7-8,000mph, no flight surfaces on the objects. A lot of this is backed with radar signal data, gun camera footage from aircraft, multiple witnesses. "There was never any display of hostility but the way they manoeuvred, in ways no-one else in the world had, you have to be conscious something could happen." After the existence of the secret programme was revealed this week attention focused on the release of footage of an unidentified object off San Diego in 2004. US Navy pilot Commander David Fravor, flying an FA-18 near the object, described seeing a "white Tic Tac, about 40ft long with no wings" which was "something not from the Earth".
Mr Elizondo said Commander Fravor was a "national hero" for speaking out. He said: "The social stigma about this is unbelievable, it's very challenging. There are many other Commander Fravors out there who have come forward (to us), but he's brave enough to discuss his experience publicly." Fravor's encounter with an unidentified aircraft of some kind -- whitish -- that was around 40 feet long and oval in shape, over the Pacific while on a training mission in 2004 caught the attention of a Pentagon program investigating
Mr Elizondo said he had not preconceived ideas when he took the helm of the Pentagon programme, but later became convinced by what he saw. "We [career intelligence officers] tend to be sceptics by nature. For some of us working on it the time came as an 'Aha!' moment, for others it was a slow progress towards the realisation that these are probably not any type of aircraft in any national inventory.