Months before he died, former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) famously told the world that the Pentagon had denied him access to materials which had supposedly been recovered from an unidentified flying object (UFO). Reid's story, though unusual in coming from a powerful American politician, nevertheless feels rote: There have been a number of public UFO sightings confirmed by the Pentagon itself, and as recently as last month the Navy admitted it had UFO videos that it would not release on the grounds that doing so would "harm national security."
Yet given the growing public clamor (and congressional clamor, for that matter) for information about UFOs, NASA felt compelled to provide the public with some answers. Consequently on Monday the federal agency launched a new study with 16 members for the purpose of determining the best way for NASA to further study what the scientists refer to as "UAPs" (unidentified aerial phenomena). They will not seek to determine exactly what they are, however.
