With elements like a Russian spy ᴀssᴀssination, a self-immolation, gun-wielding government enforcers, and other dramatic plot devices, Project Blue Book, History’s hit new series about the Air Force’s U.F.O. investigation program, is far from the historian’s version of Project Blue Book.

As writers who have extensively covered the serious side of U.F.O. phenomena, we watched the first six episodes with a critical eye. We were part of the team that broke the December 2017 New York Times exclusive on a secret Pentagon program studying U.F.O.s, alongside our colleague Helene Cooper. Leslie Kean authored the 2010 Times bestseller U.F.O.s: Generals, Pilots, and Government Officials Go on the Record, while Ralph Blumenthal has written about U.F.O.s for Vanity Fair and The New York Times.

Despite the show’s embellishments, we found striking similarities between its fictionalized portrayal and the real history of U.F.O. investigations.

Predictably, the History series amplifies and dramatizes real-life events, injecting fabricated storylines and exaggerated depictions of historical figures. This blending of fact and fiction only adds to the challenge for those seeking to understand the truth about government involvement with U.F.O.s.

Yet, beneath the melodrama, the core story remains intact:

Project Blue Book was an Air Force initiative launched in 1952 in response to numerous Cold War-era U.F.O. sightings. Its mission was to explain or debunk as many reports as possible to prevent public panic and conceal an undeniable national security dilemma—an advanced technological phenomenon beyond human control, not of Russian origin, yet carrying an unknown threat.

The show’s central character, renowned astronomer J. Allen Hynek (played by Aidan Gillen), was indeed recruited as Blue Book’s scientific consultant. Initially, he aimed to rationalize U.F.O. sightings as natural phenomena or misidentified objects. Over time, however, he came to believe that these strange encounters were real and warranted deeper scientific study. (That said, he never personally witnessed an alien floating in a tank or crashed a plane while reenacting a reported U.F.O. dogfight, as depicted in the series.)

During Hynek’s involvement, Project Blue Book documented 12,618 U.F.O. sightings, 701 of which remain unexplained to this day.

But the most significant developments of that era happened beyond Project Blue Book’s official scope—at least as far as has been revealed. Our investigation into the Pentagon’s Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program, established in 2007, uncovered modern parallels: military encounters with U.F.O.s being studied and recorded in secrecy. Unlike in Blue Book’s time, there is now no public agency available to process or investigate civilian reports, even in cases involving hundreds of witnesses.

Through Pentagon documents and interviews with those involved, we discovered that the mystery of unidentified aerial phenomena remains unsolved, and the issue has been largely neglected since Blue Book’s closure nearly five decades ago.

The origins of the government’s U.F.O. investigations trace back to 1947. Lt. General Nathan Twining, then commander of Air Materiel Command, sent a classified memo to the Pentagon, stating that the “phenomenon reported is something real and not visionary or ficтιтious.” According to his description, these silent, disc-shaped objects exhibited “extreme rates of climb, maneuverability (particularly in roll), and motion which must be considered evasive when sighted or contacted by friendly aircraft and radar.”

This led to the formation of Project Sign, based at Wright Field (now Wright-Patterson Air Force Base) in Ohio. Its mandate was to collect U.F.O. reports and ᴀssess whether the phenomenon posed a security threat. When analysts ruled out Russia as the source, they produced a top-secret report, the Estimate of the Situation, concluding that U.F.O.s were most likely of interplanetary origin.

However, this ᴀssessment was dismissed by Air Force Chief of Staff General Hoyt Vandenberg. From that point forward, the idea that U.F.O.s had off-world origins lost favor, and military leadership pushed for more conventional explanations.

Project Sign eventually evolved into Project Blue Book, which sought to ᴀssure the public that U.F.O. sightings had mundane explanations.

Behind the scenes, however, officials were grappling with serious, well-documented U.F.O. encounters. These cases involved multiple trained observers, radar evidence, pH๏τographic documentation, physical traces on the ground, and even reported electromagnetic interference with aircraft.

In 1952, Air Force Director of Intelligence Maj. Gen. John Samford briefed the F.B.I., acknowledging that it was “not entirely impossible that the objects sighted may possibly be ships from another planet such as Mars,” according to government documents. The F.B.I. memo noted that Air Intelligence had largely ruled out any known terrestrial origin.

National security concerns escalated later that year when glowing objects were spotted and tracked on radar over Washington, D.C., prompting the Air Force to scramble fighter jets. In an attempt to quell public anxiety, Samford held a press conference, explaining that most U.F.O. reports had been identified. However, he admitted that a small percentage came from “credible observers of relatively incredible things” and remained unresolved.

Although he dismissed the possibility of a direct threat, other officials took the matter more seriously. Later in 1952, H. Marshall Chadwell, the C.I.A.’s ᴀssistant Director of Scientific Intelligence, warned C.I.A. Director Walter Bedell Smith that “sightings of unexplained objects at great alтιтudes and traveling at high speeds in the vicinity of major U.S. defense installations” were neither natural nor attributable to known aircraft.

By 1953, concerns arose that the flood of U.F.O. reports could disrupt military communications. Defense officials feared the Soviets might exploit mᴀss hysteria by orchestrating a U.F.O. scare before launching an attack.

Documents reveal that the C.I.A. then initiated plans for a “national policy” to control the narrative around U.F.O.s and prevent public panic.

A classified scientific advisory panel, led by physicist H.P. Robertson of Caltech, met behind closed doors and subsequently recommended a strategy of “training and debunking.” The goal was twofold: educate the public on identifying conventional aerial objects while using media—television, films, and popular articles—to discredit U.F.O. reports.

The plan even enlisted psychologists, advertising specialists, amateur astronomers, and Disney animators to produce debunking propaganda. Civilian U.F.O. groups were also to be monitored, given their “great influence on mᴀss thinking if widespread sightings should occur.”

The Robertson Panel Report remained classified until 1975—five years after Project Blue Book shut down. Its influence, however, persists, as U.F.O. research continues to be met with skepticism and ridicule.

“The implication in the Panel Report was that U.F.O.s were nonsense (nonscience) and had to be debunked at all costs,” Hynek later wrote. “It made the subject of U.F.O.s scientifically unrespectable.”

Over time, Hynek abandoned his skepticism and concluded that U.F.O.s were a legitimate phenomenon requiring scientific study. Many cases within the Blue Book archives remain unresolved, while some of the “explained” incidents were dismissed with absurd, frustrating rationalizations—sometimes by Hynek himself.

“The entire Blue Book operation was a debacle, driven by the ᴀssumption that the incredible reports simply couldn’t be real,” he admitted in the 1970s when he was finally free to speak openly.

When Project Blue Book officially ended in 1969, the Air Force released a fact sheet claiming that U.F.O.s had never posed a national security threat, that they exhibited no technology beyond known science, and that no evidence suggested they were extraterrestrial.

Yet, declassified documents tell a different story. Just two years prior, in 1967, a glowing red U.F.O. hovered over Malmstrom Air Force Base in Montana. During its presence, ten underground nuclear missiles inexplicably shut down. Government technicians found no conventional explanation.

Furthermore, despite claiming to have abandoned U.F.O. investigations, the Air Force continued tracking reports in secret. A classified memo from October 1969—just months before Blue Book’s closure—stated that U.F.O.s with potential national security implications would still be handled through standard Air Force protocols.

Government involvement in U.F.O. research never truly ended. Even today, official records detail extraordinary cases, many of which remain unacknowledged or unexplored.