On Monday, a former Pentagon official who ran the U.S. government's program to identify and detect UFO threats said he has good reason to believe life could exist outside of planet Earth.
"My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone," Luis Elizondo told CNN's Erin Burnett.
Recent reports published by both Politico and The New York Times highlighted the Pentagon's former program for the first time, which began largely at the request of the then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nevada — though some also believe the shadowy program could still be receiving funding.
"These aircraft — we'll call them aircraft — are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of," Elizondo, who no longer works for the program or the government, said. "We found a lot."
Much of the aircraft appeared to defy "the laws of aerodynamics," Elizondo said
He elaborated, "Things that don't have any obvious flight services, any obvious forms of propulsion, and maneuvering in ways that include extreme maneuverability beyond, I would submit, the healthy G-forces of a human or anything biological."
Reports also included two videos of pilots attempting to assess what they had been seeing, which looked like a circular flying object.
"My gosh," one pilot said. "They're all going against the wind; the wind is 120 miles to the west."
"Look at that thing, dude!" one said.
The reports detailed that the Pentagon had secretly been putting money towards investigating UFOs, in what was called the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program which began in 2007 and reportedly shut down only five years later. Parts of the program still remain classified, and the funds had gone to an aerospace research company run by Reid's longtime friend, Robert Bigelow.
Bigelow has previously said on CBS's "60 Minutes" that he's "absolutely convinced" aliens exist and that UFO's have paid Earth a visit.
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