Leslie Kean

A 1999-2000 study group of senior French military and scientific officials concluded the extraterrestrial hypothesis was the most logical explanation for a subset (they estimated up to ~5%) of unexplained UFO sightings.

The most logical, rational, and valid explanation for the sightings is what they call the extraterrestrial hypothesis.

Kean's first UFO story, based on the French report, was published in the Boston Globe in May 2000 under the headline 'UFOs might be real' and was picked up nationally on the wire services.

I got the story published in the Boston Globe in May of 2000, which was based on that report.

A ~100-page report by NASA scientist Richard Haines documented over 90 cases of aircraft affected by UFOs, including 56 near misses, some dating to the 1950s, with instrument failures and evasive maneuvers.

The data include 56 near misses. And these cases went all the way back to the '50s.

A TWA pilot in 1981 nearly collided with a UFO the apparent size of a grapefruit held at arm's length, which he said seemed to appear suddenly out of a 'bending of the atmosphere.'

It was the size of a grapefruit held at arm's length... it kind of just appeared out of the sky, as if it had come from somewhere else.

UFO landing sites reportedly leave physical trace evidence, such as marks in the soil, burned vegetation, and radiation, which scientists have studied to learn about the objects.

You can, you know, marks in the soil, burned vegetation, radiation, all kinds of evidence that documents the presence.

Hundreds of US government documents released via FOIA use the term 'UFO,' describe pilots attempting to shoot them down, and do not explain what the objects were.

They use the word UFO in these documents... there is no way that those documents explain what these objects are.

Mass UFO sighting waves have occurred in which hundreds of people report seeing the same object over a period of time, considered compelling because of the number of independent witnesses.

There are mass sightings of UFOs in waves in which hundreds and hundreds of people see the same thing over a period of time.

A 1971 photo taken by an automated Costa Rica aerial-mapping camera (one frame among many taken every 20 seconds) shows a disc-shaped object over a lake; it appears in only that single frame and was studied by multiple scientists who calculated its altitude and speed.

It wasn't there before and it wasn't there after. And they calculated a lot about the height and the speed.

A 1987 photograph taken by a Connecticut police officer during the mid-1980s Hudson Valley/Connecticut UFO wave shows lighted objects along the edge of a larger, mostly dark craft.

This one was taken in 1987 in Connecticut... this was taken by a police officer.

The 'Gimbal' video, one of three Navy UFO videos released as part of the 2017 story, was filmed in January 2015 off the USS Theodore Roosevelt near Jacksonville, Florida.

This is one of the videos that was released. It's known as the Gimbal video. It was taken in January of 2015 off of the USS Roosevelt off of Jacksonville, Florida.

Kean and Ralph Blumenthal's December 2017 New York Times story (with Helene Cooper) confirmed the Department of Defense ran a secret UFO study program (AATIP), based on DoD documents and an on-record phone confirmation from former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

Harry Reid had never spoken out before about this program. So this was like the first moment in which he came out on the topic.

Our check Confirmed: Leslie Kean, Ralph Blumenthal and Helene Cooper published 'Glowing Auras and 'Black Money': The Pentagon's Mysterious U.F.O. Program' in the New York Times on December 16, 2017, based on Pentagon documents and disclosures; the DoD confirmed to the Times that AATIP had run from 2007 to 2012 at roughly $22 million. Harry Reid, who had pushed for the program's creation, publicly confirmed and later took credit for it ('I think it's one of the good things I did in my congressional service'), corroborating his involvement, though the exact wording of his on-record comment to the Times reporters specifically could not be pinned down beyond secondary summaries.

Sources en.wikipedia.org, 8newsnow.com

Lou Elizondo characterized UAP as displaying repeated observable traits: no visible propulsion, instantaneous extreme-G acceleration, hypersonic velocity, ability to vanish/reappear, and travel across air, space and water (transmedium travel), plus a later-added sixth trait of biological/perceptual effects on witnesses.

They can stop on a dime and then instantaneously accelerate really fast at G-forces that nobody could survive.

Pilot Ryan Graves described an incident in which a sphere encased in a cube flew between two Navy aircraft flying roughly 100 feet apart over the Atlantic Ocean, part of a broader pattern of objects that would stay aloft for long periods.

Something flew between them, right past the cockpit. And it was a sphere encased in a cube.

Our check Matches the substance of Ryan Graves's account as reported in and after the New York Times' 2019 pilot-sightings coverage: a dark object described as a cube inside a translucent sphere flew close between two F/A-18s during training off the US east coast, part of a broader pattern of objects lingering aloft for extended periods that Navy pilots reported repeatedly. Sources differ slightly on the exact separation (roughly 100-150 feet between aircraft, with the object passing within about 50 feet of the lead cockpit), so the '100 feet apart' figure is a reasonable rounding rather than an exact match.

Sources earthfiles.com, fanaticcook.com, newsweek.com

The 2021 preliminary ODNI UAP report examined 144 cases and was able to explain only one; it found no data indicating UAP are a foreign (Russian/Chinese) collection program, and could not confirm that any were classified US systems.

They had looked at 144 cases and only were only able to explain one of them.

Our check Confirmed against the ODNI Preliminary Assessment (June 25, 2021, archive.dni.gov / odni.gov): it examined 144 reports from November 2004 to March 2021, resolved exactly 1 with high confidence (a deflating balloon), leaving 143 unidentified. The report states the government 'currently lack[s] data to indicate any UAP are part of a foreign collection program,' and that investigators were unable to confirm that any reports were attributable to classified USG systems (only that some 'could be' attributable to such programs). Matches the claim closely.

Sources archive.dni.gov

Senator Mitt Romney stated publicly that he did not believe UAP were of foreign-adversary origin, because that would imply China and Russia (and the US) possess a technology 'in a whole different sphere' than anything currently understood.

China and Russia just aren't there, and frankly, neither are we, by the way.

Senator Marco Rubio, after repeated classified briefings, stated that either dozens of credible individuals with high clearances are 'revealing the biggest story in human history' or a large cohort of cleared officials are lying or delusional with no apparent motive to do so.

Either dozens of credible individuals... are revealing the biggest story in human history, or a sizable cohort of high-level government officials holding top security clearances are crazy.

The All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office (AARO), a DoD office set up under congressional mandate to investigate and report on UAP, has functioned, in Kean's assessment, more to hold information back than to bring it forward, and most people who have interacted with it do not trust it.

It's been more of a kind of an operation to hold information back rather than bring it forward.

A 2023 NASA independent study team, reviewing only unclassified data over about a year, concluded UAP present 'a unique scientific opportunity that demands a rigorous evidence-based approach.'

They thought this presented a unique scientific opportunity... that demands a rigorous evidence-based approach.

Our check Confirmed as a near-verbatim quote. NASA's UAP Independent Study Team, chaired by David Spergel, released its final report on September 14, 2023 after roughly a year reviewing only unclassified data; it states 'the study of UAP presents a unique scientific opportunity that demands a rigorous, evidence-based approach.' The report found no evidence of extraterrestrial origin and attributed the unresolved fraction mainly to poor sensor calibration and metadata.

Sources science.nasa.gov

At a 2023 NASA press conference, then-AARO director Sean Kirkpatrick showed a video of a spherical, metallic orb filmed in the Middle East in 2022 by an MQ-9 drone, calling it a 'typical example' of objects seen worldwide making unexplained maneuvers.

This is a spherical orb, metallic, in the Middle East 2022, by an MQ-9. This is a typical example of the thing that we see most of.

David Grusch stated that the government possesses crash-retrieved craft of non-human origin, intact or in pieces; he said he became '100% convinced' of this not through his own direct observation but through interviews with others and documents/photos he was shown.

He became 100% convinced through his knowledge basically, not that he'd seen it himself, but through the people he talked to and what he was shown.

David Grusch testified under oath before Congress in July 2023 that crash-retrieval programs exist, that there may have been non-human bodies recovered, and referenced 'pilots of the craft.'

David Grusch, who swore before Congress that these programs existed in which crash retrieved objects had been retrieved, that there may have even been bodies, referenced the pilots of the craft.

The Intelligence Community Inspector General (ICIG), after interviewing numerous people about David Grusch, found his whistleblower complaint 'credible and urgent.'

They interviewed a lot of other people about him... they said that his case was credible and urgent.

Congressional hearings in November 2024 and September 2025 featured additional whistleblowers and witnesses who, per Kean, corroborated Grusch's original crash-retrieval claims and discussed the 'legacy program' allegedly operating without required congressional oversight.

These are whistleblowers, witnesses, investigators... confirming what David Grusch originally said about the crash retrieval program.

President Trump posted a statement on February 19 directing federal agencies to release UAP-related information, and pledged again on April 29 to release 'a significant amount of material' related to UFOs/UAP.

He said he was going to direct his agencies to release information about UFOs... he pledged again... to release a significant amount of material related to UFOs and UAPs.

Rep. Anna Paulina Luna provided a list of 46 specific UAP-related video file names to the executive branch, requesting their release.

One of the members of Congress, Anna Paulina Luna, has actually provided a list of 46 specific videos, file names, handed them over to the executive branch.

Rep. Burlison told Kean privately that despite the congressional hearings, Congress still needs 'receipts' -- physical or hard evidence -- and that he has been given enough information behind the scenes to find them but lacks access.

Behind the scenes, I'm trying to find the receipts. In private conversations, I've been given enough information to find them, but I just don't have access.

The term 'UAP' (unidentified anomalous phenomena) replaced 'UFO' to cover a broader range of reported phenomena, including non-physical, orb-shaped, or non-flying anomalies.

Anomalous phenomena refers to all kinds of things that UAP can take all kinds of forms. They're not always flying. They're not always objects.

The documentary 'Age of Disclosure' (released November 2025) features multiple named former senior officials (CIA, DNI, National Security Council) stating on camera that non-human intelligence is real and that craft are 'not human.'

Non-human intelligence exists. UAPs are real. They're here and they're not human.

Our check 'The Age of Disclosure,' directed by Dan Farah, had its Oscar-qualifying release in November 2025 (theatrical Nov 21, 2025, after an SXSW premiere in March 2025) and does feature roughly 34 named former senior US government, military and intelligence officials (including Secretary of State Marco Rubio) making on-camera claims about an alleged 80-year non-human-intelligence cover-up. The film accurately reports that these people said this on camera; it does not itself establish that non-human intelligence or 'not human' craft are real, and AARO's own Historical Record Report (see yUJucfWAGGU-c01) found no empirical evidence for the underlying claims these officials make.

Sources en.wikipedia.org, foxnews.com, skeptic.com

Political scientist Alexander Wendt's thesis is that state secrecy about UFOs stems from 'authoritative anxiety': fear that acknowledging a more advanced non-human intelligence threatens (1) the state's claim to protect its citizens, (2) national sovereignty (risking a shift toward world government), and (3) the anthropocentric premise that only humans have authority to govern.

It creates a deep unconscious insecurity in which certain possibilities are unthinkable because of their inherent danger.

During the 1989-90 Belgian UFO wave, the Belgian Air Force, Gendarmerie, and scientific community openly and jointly investigated for roughly six months, including sending F-16 jets to intercept the objects and collecting extensive witness and data documentation, but never identified the objects.

The Air Force was actually sending up jets to try to get close to the objects and see what they were... they never figured it out.

During the mid-1980s Hudson Valley UFO wave, hundreds of witnesses, including roughly 13 police officers tracking the same object from different vantage points on one night, saw large triangular craft; officials offered dismissive or implausible explanations (planes in formation, helicopters) and no formal investigation was conducted.

There were like 13 different, you know, numerous police officers saw the same thing from different vantage points in the state.

J. Allen Hynek, scientific consultant to Project Blue Book for two decades, wrote his last essay before his death expressing astonishment at the US government's apathy and non-reaction to the Hudson Valley sightings, in contrast to Belgium's open investigation.

The last essay he wrote before he died was about his absolute astonishment at the non-reaction... the apathy, the denial, the disinterest.

Physicist Hal Puthoff, in a Journal of Cosmology paper, proposed an 'ultraterrestrial' hypothesis: that non-human entities could be advanced humans or beings hidden on Earth (e.g. under the ocean, in mountains), interdimensional beings, or time travelers, rather than extraterrestrial visitors.

They're There are these sort of ET very advanced beings who have been living on this planet for a long time before we even came around.

UAP are reported to appear frequently at nuclear weapons facilities and power plants, which some researchers interpret as evidence of non-human concern about Earth's environment and nuclear risk.

They've shown up a lot at nuclear power plants. And so people think, well, maybe they have an investment in caring about our planet.

Jeffrey Kripal argues UAP are simultaneously 'objectively physical' and engaged with perception as if from 'some other world,' violating the ordinary division of reality into mind and matter, which he calls the phenomenon's central 'non-duality.'

The phenomenon clearly violates our present ways of dividing reality up into mind and matter. I continue to think that this fundamental non-duality is their ultimate power.

A program called Skywatcher trained former intelligence and military personnel to use consciousness-based ('psionic') techniques to telepathically or energetically contact, summon, or land UAP, developed as a distinct effort from the physical reverse-engineering of retrieved craft.

There was a whole program called Skywatcher... they developed a whole protocol as to how to bring in UFOs by using their consciousness in some way.

Jake Barber, described as one of the 'psionic' practitioners in the program discussed above, is also reported to have been a witness to a crash-retrieval program; Kean says she has spent time talking with him and finds him credible.

He was actually a witness to the crash retrieval program. I mean, I spent time talking to him. I have great respect for him.

Kean concedes, under direct audience challenge, that her acceptance of crash-retrieval and non-human-origin claims rests on personal trust in named and unnamed insiders she knows, not on any evidence shown publicly, and that 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' is a legitimate, currently unmet standard.

All we have is people telling us that this is true.

Asked whether UAP could be hostile per a 'dark forest'-style hypothesis, Kean would not confirm it, but noted that insiders such as Lou Elizondo and Jim Semivan have 'hinted' at a 'dark and somber side' to the phenomenon without giving specifics.

There is a scary side to it. And they've acknowledged that without telling us exactly what they're referring to.

David Grusch has referred to ongoing disinformation campaigns intended to mislead the public about UAP; Kean's advice for the public is to identify trusted sources/journalists and organizations (e.g. the Disclosure Foundation) and rely on them to sort disinformation from fact.

You have to find out who those people are that you trust and that you're really interested in. And then you just have to keep relying on what they tell you.

There is private discussion among Kean's sources of scientists linked to energy research going missing, sometimes connected in speculation to the UAP topic and to a general named in the film as having interacted with Tom DeLonge, but Kean says nobody she knows actually knows what is behind it.

There's been a lot of discussion that I've been privy to behind the scenes about what might or might not be going on, but nobody really knows.

Regarding 2024-25 mystery drone sightings (New Jersey, the Midwest, Denmark/Scandinavia), none of Kean's insider sources believe they represent alien spacecraft, but they also do not rule out that some UAP could be 'mixed in' with mundane drone activity; the phenomenon remains officially unexplained.

None of the insiders have told me that they believe that they're UAP... but they don't know either. They're not ruling that out.

Karen Austin, who Kean says heads the Rice University metadata study, has discussed the project with Kean many times, and Kean intends to report on it when it is published.

I've talked to Karen Austin about this who heads that up, you know, many times... I have every intention of trying to report on it when it comes out.

The John Mack Institute archive holds accounts from thousands of people describing similar-but-distinct anomalous experiences, which Kean says makes the phenomenon hard to dismiss as a fringe concern.

thousands and thousands and thousands of people telling similar but different enough stories that you can't help but be... confronted with the idea that there is something very real and bizarre going on

Kean endorses Jim Semivan's argument that the UAP phenomenon itself, not government or human institutions, controls the pace of disclosure, and could disclose itself in seconds if it wished.

I'm a lot go along with the Jim Semivan arguments is that it's really the phenomenon that's in control. Uh if the phenomenon wants disclosure, it could happen in 2 seconds.

Kean argues gradual, incremental disclosure is preferable to an abrupt full release of information, because society could not immediately absorb or get answers to all the resulting questions.

the best chance I think the best chance we have is to sort of gradually unfold it the way we are... not to be able to answer all the questions that would come up as a result of doing that

Kean says a number of unnamed insider sources convey an 'ominous' sense about what they know without sharing classified specifics, and that Elizondo's book carries the same tone.

I get that sense from a number of sources I have that it's kind of ominous, you know, and Lou even in his book writes about it in that way

Kean states the UAP phenomenon appears far more powerful than humanity and effectively 'in control,' with humans not at the top of the food chain.

the phenomenon is obviously completely uh more you know, so much more powerful than we are that basically it's in control... not being at the top of the food chain

Kean relays a theory she has heard, not her own, that continued environmental destruction and escalating geopolitical conflict could lead to dire events in coming years, and that if the phenomenon is 'really in charge,' its response to a human-caused planetary crisis is unknown; she explicitly labels this '100% speculation.'

since we are in the process of destroying our planet on an environmental level, plus geopolitically, things are escalating, and we're very warlike... there may be some kind of serious events that unfold in the next years that are very dire for the planet... this is 100% speculati

A claim, raised in the conversation, that communications attributed to non-human intelligence (NHI) during contact experiences frequently concern environmental themes.

the messaging coming from NHI over and over and over again, you know, and with experiences, it a lot of times it has to do with environmental issues

A theory, described as one Kean has heard rather than her own, that some entities behind UAP/contact phenomena may not be extraterrestrial but 'ultraterrestrial' - indigenous to Earth, possibly inhabiting the oceans.

there's the whole theory that perhaps many of the species don't aren't extraterrestrial, they're ultraterrestrial. They might inhabit our planet in some way under the ocean.

Kean began practicing Buddhism in college, at age 19, well before her reporting trips to Burma.

I actually began practicing Buddhism when I was in college... my practice of Buddhism, which began, you know, when I was 19

Kean reports witnessing, during her journalism trips to Burma, that Buddhist perspective was well integrated into the country's political system and culture.

going to Burma, which was absolutely a wonderful thing to for me to witness how the Buddhist perspective was actually integrated into the political system in Burma

Kean's book Surviving Death examined multiple independent research areas for evidence bearing on whether consciousness survives bodily death, and these lines of evidence 'all kind of pointed towards the same thing.'

for the book Surviving Death where I was looking at all this kind of studies and evidence for the possibility of consciousness surviving the death of the body, and it was from all these different research areas that all kind of pointed towards the same thing

Kean states that when she wrote Surviving Death, she had no sense that the UFO/UAP phenomenon was related to consciousness-survival research, and only began seeing the two as connected after the book was published.

when I wrote that book, I had no concept of the UFO phenomenon being in any way related to what I was writing about in Surviving Death... I find now to be kind of amusing

Kean asserts that recognition of a connection between UAP and consciousness is now widespread among observers of the field.

I think everybody kind of sees that now.