LAS VEGAS — Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is calling for more public information following the declassification of video taken from U.S. warplanes that show "unidentified aerial phenomena" in the skies above Earth.
On Monday, the Pentagon officially released a series of videos showing things that defy explanation.
The videos were released by a third party in 2017 and were formally acknowledged by the U.S. government in September 2019.
A Pentagon spokesperson said the videos were released "in order to clear up any misconceptions by the public on whether or not the footage that has been circulating was real, or whether or not there is more to the videos."
"Until we get some really good evidence, I think we should be just a little bit skeptical," said Dr. Seth Shostak, lead astronomer of the Search For Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute (SETI Institute). "I'm looking for aliens, that's what the SETI Institute does, but we don't claim to have found them yet."
Shostak says the videos, which date back to 2004, were taken from U.S. warplanes using an infrared camera.
The video shows objects moving in ways that defy physics — and officials still have no explanation.
"The bottom line is really quite simple: You see a piece of evidence, you know there are usually several ways to explain that evidence, only one of which is UFOs," Shostak said.
There are firm believers that the video is only further proof that aliens and alien technology are all around us.
"My assessment is that they travel through electromagnetic fields," said George Harris, a Nevada UFO expert, and owner of the Alien Research Center in Hiko, Nevada.
"That's how they get the speed, that's how they can fly at light speed," Harris said.
Harris has conducted countless interviews with people who claim to have had close encounters, even abductions.
"It was very hard for the government to admit that there were credible sightings," Harris said. "The sad thing is that this has been happening since the late '50s, but no one ever really talked about it."
Harris points to the viral "Storm Area 51" event last September in which millions expressed interested in seeing what secrets the government is keeping in the heavily guarded base in the Nevada desert.
Reid went on Twitter to express his views about the video and said there are more research and information in which the public has a right to know.
"The U.S. needs to take a serious, scientific look at this and any potential national security implications," Reid said. "The American people deserve to be informed."
This story was originally published by Joe Bartels on KTNV in Las Vegas.