Ex-CIA Chief Thinks UFOs Could Exist After Friend's Plane 'Paused at 40,000 Feet'

Former CIA Director James Woolsey believes UFOs could exist after a plane belonging to a friend of his was "paused at 40,000 feet," which he said he could not explain, he revealed during a recent interview.

"There have been over the years now events of one kind of another, usually involving some kind of aircraft-like airframe," Woolsey told the YouTube channel for the Black Vault, an online archive of declassified government documents.

"I never thought there was anything to all this; it always seemed pretty far out to me," he continued. "But there was one case in which a friend of mine was able to have his aircraft stop at 40,000 feet or so and not continue operating as a normal aircraft."

He did not identify this person, but did note that it was someone he "respects."

Woolsey said, "What was going on? I don’t know. Does anybody know? There had just been enough things like that that have occurred that I think there will be a lot of examination of what’s going on over the course of several months or years."

He added: "I’m not as skeptical as I was a few years ago, to put it mildly, but something is going on that is surprising to a series of intelligent aircraft, experienced pilots."

Woolsey isn’t the only former head of the CIA to express a belief in the possibility that UFOs exist. Former director John Brennan told the podcast "Conversations with Tyler" in December that it’s "presumptuous and arrogant" to think that Earth is the only planet in the universe with life.

"I think some of the phenomena we’re going to be seeing continues to be unexplained and might, in fact, be some type of phenomenon that is the result of something that we don’t yet understand and that could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life." 

He added that the Navy videos that appear to show "unidentified aerial phenomena" are "quite eyebrow-raising," noting that "you try to ensure that you have as much data as possible in terms of visuals and also different types of maybe technical collection of sensors that you have at the time."

Former Director of National Intelligence John Ratcliffe told Fox News last month that "there are a lot more sightings than have been made public," and said, "some of those have been declassified."

Ratcliffe added, "and when we talk about sightings, we are talking about objects that have been seen by Navy or Air Force pilots, or have been picked up by satellite imagery that frankly engage in actions that are difficult to explain."

The Pentagon said in a statement last year that "The Department of Defense has authorized the release of three unclassified Navy videos, one taken in November 2004 and the other two in January 2015, which have been circulating in the public domain after unauthorized releases in 2007 and 2017. The U.S. Navy previously acknowledged that these videos circulating in the public domain were indeed Navy videos.

After a thorough review, the department has determined that the authorized release of these unclassified videos does not reveal any sensitive capabilities or systems, and does not impinge on any subsequent investigations of military air space incursions by unidentified aerial phenomena. DOD is releasing the videos 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. The aerial phenomena observed in the videos remain characterized as ‘unidentified.’"

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