On May 8, 2026, four of the highest-ranking figures in the US national security apparatus made simultaneous public statements about UFO/UAP as part of the PURSUE Release 01 announcement. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, DNI Tulsi Gabbard, FBI Director Kash Patel, and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman each released statements. The language is not boilerplate. It is carefully chosen and worth reading as primary evidence.
Secretary of War Hegseth
“The Department of War is in lockstep with President Trump to bring unprecedented transparency regarding our government’s understanding of Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena. These files, hidden behind classifications, have long fueled justified speculation — and it’s time the American people see it for themselves.”
Key phrase: “justified speculation.” The Secretary of War — the head of the US military — is formally acknowledging that the public’s speculation about UAP was justified. This is an admission that the speculation was grounded in something real that the government was concealing. The phrase is not “now we can put the conspiracy theories to rest.” It is the opposite.
DNI Gabbard
“Under President Trump’s leadership, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence is actively coordinating the Intelligence Community’s declassification efforts with the Department of War to ensure a careful, comprehensive, and unprecedented review of our holdings to provide the American people with maximum transparency.”
Key phrase: “review of our holdings.” The ODNI is conducting a review of the intelligence community’s full UAP holdings. This is not a document library retrieval exercise. This is the DNI reviewing what the IC knows and selecting what to release. “Comprehensive” and “unprecedented” both imply the scope of what is being reviewed is large. The word “careful” implies some material will not be released, for reasons unstated.
FBI Director Patel
“For the first time in history, the American people have unfettered access to declassified government files on Unidentified Anomalous Phenomenon — a level of transparency that no prior administration has delivered.”
The FBI’s contribution to Release 01 is an HQ-level national security case file — 62-HQ-83894 — with over 153 serials and at least 10 sections, two of which (1 and 8) remain withheld. The FBI Director is publicly endorsing the release while those two sections are still classified. What is in Sections 1 and 8 of that file that requires continued classification while 10 other sections are now public?
NASA Administrator Isaacman
“At NASA, our job is to bring the brightest minds and most advanced scientific instruments to bear, follow the data, and share what we learn. We will remain candid about what we know to be true, what we have yet to understand, and all that remains to be discovered.”
The NASA statement is structured in three parts: what we know to be true; what we have yet to understand; and what remains to be discovered. That three-part structure is not accidental. It implies NASA has sorted its UAP knowledge into those three buckets. The second and third categories are where the important material is. “All that remains to be discovered” is the most significant phrase — it frames UAP as an active frontier of scientific discovery, not a closed question.
The PURSUE portal states that “many of the materials have not yet been analysed for resolution of any anomalies.” Four of the most senior officials in the US national security apparatus spoke on the same day about the same subject. None of them said these objects have been explained.
Source: Department of War press release Article 4480582, May 8, 2026. war.gov/UFO. Statements by Hegseth, Gabbard, Patel, Isaacman.