The Documents

In 1947, a rancher in Roswell, New Mexico found material scattered across his field that he could not explain. The United States Army Air Forces explained it for him: weather balloon. This explanation was given the same week the Army Air Forces created a new unit specifically to investigate unexplained aerial phenomena. The two things coexisted without comment.

On Thursday, April 17, 2026, Donald Trump announced that UFO files are coming. He directed Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to begin the release process. He described what he has apparently already seen as "very interesting documents."

(I want to dwell on this phrase for a moment. Very interesting. This is the adjective chosen after 79 years of classification. Not alarming. Not unprecedented. Not civilization-altering. Very interesting. This is also the phrase used when a colleague presents a quarterly report that has problems in it.)

Since 1947, roughly ten thousand military personnel, commercial pilots, and government employees have filed official reports of objects they could not identify. Many of them were investigated by the same institutions they worked for. Several were grounded. A number were told, by other people in the same building, that they had not seen what they saw.

The documents explaining what they actually saw are apparently coming. They have been in rooms. The rooms had locks. The locks are now, as of Thursday, being discussed.

The word used to describe the contents — by someone who has already read them — is "very interesting."

There are two ways to be very interested in a document. One is that the document contains information that requires the reader to reconsider their understanding of the universe. The other is that the document contains information about what a midsize contractor was doing at a specific base in 1953 that nobody wanted published.

Both options have been sitting in the same room for 79 years.

Both are apparently very interesting.