UFO sightings don't just come from crackpots: in 2004, a team of elite Navy pilots and radar operators had one of many military encounters with unidentified aerial phenomena. As evidence mounts, the government, along with alien-obsessed billionaire Robert Bigelow, grow more interested in UFOs and the paranormal — and the conversation around them moves from the fringes to the center of the Pentagon.

Even as the New York Times brought credibility and a broad audience to the question of UFOs and extraterrestrial life, other figures challenged whether it might all be a great big lie. But when an acclaimed Harvard psychiatrist named John Mack began investigating the phenomenon now known as alien abductions, he proved that these bizarre experiences couldn't be so eagerly dismissed — and that the truth might be far more complicated than we imagine.

As the world reeled from the New York Times bombshell that revealed the government's interest in UFOs, a few dissenting voices suggest that what looks like sincere interest might actually be a disinformation campaign. Is the U.S. government covering up the existence of aliens — or are they using the alien narrative to cover up the existence of something else?

A groundbreaking 2017 story in the New York Times reveals that the Pentagon secretly spent years studying UFOs, casting new light on decades of unexplained UFO sightings in America — like the 1997 Phoenix Lights encounters and the 2006 Chicago airport sighting. Has first contact already been made, and if so, why is the US government trying to cover it up?