How the Pentagon Started Taking U.F.O.s Seriously | The New Yorker
The government may not have been in regular touch with exotic civilizations, but it had been keeping something from its citizens. By 2017, Kean was the author of a best-selling U.F.O. book and was known for what she has termed, borrowing from the political scientist Alexander Wendt, a militantly agnostic approach to the phenomenon. On December 16th of that year, in a front-page story in the Times, Kean, together with two Times journalists, revealed that the Pentagon had been running a surreptitious U.F.O. program for ten years. The article included two videos, recorded by the Navy, of what were being described in official channels as unidentified aerial phenomena, or U.A.P. In blogs and on podcasts, ufologists began referring to December, 2017 as shorthand for the moment the taboo began to lift. Joe Rogan, the popular podcast host, has often mentioned the article, praising Kean s work as having precipitated a cultural shift. It s a dangerous subject for someone, because you re open to ridicule, he said, in an episode this spring. But now you could say, Listen, this is not something to be mocked anymore there s something to this.