Obama shuts down alien buzz and says there’s no evidence they’ve made contact
Former US President Barack Obama said he had not seen any evidence that aliens “had made contact with us”, after creating a buzz on social media by claiming aliens were real in a podcast over the weekend.
During a round of rapid-fire questions with podcast host Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama was asked, “Are aliens real?”
“They’re real,” he replied, continuing: “But I haven’t seen them. And they’re not guarded at Area 51.”
On Sunday, the former president released a statement on Instagram, appearing to clarify what he meant by his comments that have since gone viral.
“I was trying to stick with the spirit of the speed cycle, but since this has gotten attention, let me clarify. Statistically, the universe is so vast that there is a good chance that there is life there. But the distances between solar systems are so great that the chances that we have been visited by aliens are low, and I have seen no evidence during my presidency that aliens have made contact with us. Really!”
The secrecy surrounding Area 51, a top-secret Cold War testing site in the Nevada desert, has long fueled conspiracy theories among UFO enthusiasts.
In 2013, the CIA acknowledged the site’s existence, but not UFO crashes, black-eyed aliens or staged moon landings.
Declassified documents referred to the 8,000-square-mile (20,700-square-kilometer) facility by name after decades of U.S. government officials refusing to recognize it.
The base has been a testing ground for a multitude of top-secret aircraft, including the U-2 in the 1950s and later the B-2 stealth bomber.
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This story corrects the podcaster’s name.
