So who reading this actually believes in UFOs?

It seems like what was once the stuff of science fiction and fantasy popcorn movies really does have government support.

A former Pentagon official is saying that not only does he believe, but he believes we have been visited by aliens.

The Daily Mail reports:

Luis Elizondo previously ran the Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, which leaked records show investigated reports of clashes with unidentified aircraft.

The former chief of the $22 million (£16.5 million) project says he thinks ‘we may not be alone’, based on numerous reports he read on encounters with the flying craft.

Many reportedly displayed out of this world capabilities in terms of both speed and maneuvering.

And I’ve read all of those stories, too. I love that stuff. Whether I believe them to be based in reality, however, is something else.

This past weekend was hopping with news of what was an off-the-books operation with the Department of Defense, meant to explore the possibility of extraterrestrial life, and if it was a national security threat.

I mean, are these aliens visiting for altruistic purposes, as in “Arrival,” or more aggressive purposes, like “Mars Attacks”?

Elizondo resigned in October, due to the secrecy, and a lack of support. The funding was cut in 2012, but as I spoke about this weekend, it has been maintained through the DoD and the Navy.

Also, former House Majority Leader Harry Reid was also a true believer in the necessity of the project.

‘If anyone says they have the answers now, they’re fooling themselves,’ said Harry Reid, the U.S. Senate Democrat leader for 12 years and the project’s most powerful supporter. ‘We do not know.’

Mr Reid, who retired recently as senator for Nevada, first directed the Pentagon to investigate the ‘unidentified aerial phenomena’ repeatedly identified.

Elizondo insists there is evidence that suggests aliens have been here.

Speaking to CNN, he said: ‘My personal belief is that there is very compelling evidence that we may not be alone.

‘These aircraft – we’ll call them aircraft – are displaying characteristics that are not currently within the US inventory nor in any foreign inventory that we are aware of.

‘Things that don’t have any obvious flight services, any obvious forms of propulsion, and maneuvering in ways that include extreme maneuverability beyond, I would submit, the healthy G-forces of a human or anything biological.’

Has anybody else seen the movie, “The Fourth Kind”? It reportedly contains real footage and audio of sessions with people from Alaska in the early 2000s who were reporting repeated visits by aliens, who would spirit them away for testing. Some even spoke in a language that hasn’t been spoke in thousands of years: Sumerian.

Creepy, right? That’s supposed real footage of a session with a counselor, who reported multiple visits (under hypnosis) from aliens, who took her for testing, then returned her to her home, her memory erased. Her young daughter vanished without a trace, and she insists that the girl was abducted by those same aliens.

The man who inspired this ‘X-Files department’, Harry Reid, had the support of two other senior senators, both members of a defence spending sub-committee, who feared a threat to national security behind these chilling sightings. Their rationale was that if the mysterious craft were not aliens, then perhaps Russia or China had developed advanced technology to threaten the West.

And that’s a legitimate concern that also should be explored.

It was a billionaire hotel tycoon (not Trump), and friend of Reid’s, Robert Bigelow who got Reid interested in the project.

Bigelow has invested millions into space projects, like inflatable living modules for the moon.

Mr Bigelow, who became convinced extra-terrestrials exist after his grandparents said they saw a UFO, has been investigating the paranormal for decades and bought a Utah ranch known for UFO sightings in the skies above.

The Pentagon UFO programme paid Mr Bigelow’s Las Vegas-based aerospace research company to do most of its work.

A true believer, or someone getting government kickbacks through his connections to a high powered Democrat senator?

That might be one way to look at it.

Still, Reid insists that he was also influenced by veteran astronaut, John Glenn, who had suggested years previously that he should be talking to military men who had stories to tell of their encounters. Most of those tales had not made it up the chain of command, even though some were backed up with audio and video proof, such as in the case of Navy Commander David Fravor.

Fravor and Lt. Commander Jim Slaight experienced something in 2004 that made true believers out of them, as streiff covered this weekend.

Fravor and Slaight are just two names.

Newly released tapes make for disturbing listening. In another incident involving a U.S. Navy Super Hornet jet chasing a UFO that emitted a ‘glowing aura travelling at high speed and rotating as it moves’, a pilot is heard exclaiming: ‘There’s a whole fleet of them . . . My gosh, they’re all going against the wind. The wind is 120 knots to the west.’

A lot of the sightings, perhaps not coincidentally, are near nuclear facilities or ships.

The Pentagon investigators are likely to have talked to some of the 120 retired military personnel who — according to UFO researchers — have described encounters near nuclear missile bases. Some believe aliens were monitoring them to ensure humanity didn’t blow itself up by accident.

They include Air Force captain Robert Salas, an intercontinental ballistic missile launch officer on duty at Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana one night in 1967.

He says he was warned by his men ‘screaming into the phone’ that a mysterious ‘glowing red object’ had been spotted over their missile silo, which was 60ft underground. Moments later, they discovered that all 10 Minuteman missiles had been deactivated.

Robert Jamison, the base’s targeting officer, confirmed the report and said he heard about a UFO landing in a ‘deep ravine’ nearby. He said he spoke to a security guard, who described ‘two small red lights off at a distance’ that began to close in. The guard then broke down and started crying.

Elizondo proclaimed in 2009 that what was once science fiction is now science fact.

Is he right?

I have no idea, but if there are, I don’t think anyone now is giving an accurate description of the threat.