Hillary Clinton Pledges to Release UFO Files if Elected

During her 2016 presidential campaign, Hillary Clinton publicly pledged to declassify government files on UFOs and unidentified aerial phenomena if elected, with campaign chairman John Podesta driving the initiative as a longtime disclosure advocate.

The Campaign Promise

Clinton made her commitment to UFO transparency during multiple campaign appearances. When asked by a reporter from the Conway Daily Sun in late December 2015, she stated: "I'm going to get to the bottom of it." She even suggested the possibility of "a task force to go to Area 51," the classified Nevada military facility.

During an April 2016 interview on The Breakfast Club radio show, Clinton expressed skepticism about dismissing UFO reports entirely: "There's enough stories out there that I don't think everybody is just sitting in their kitchen making them up."

Podesta's Role and Advocacy

John Podesta, Clinton's campaign chairman and former chief of staff to President Bill Clinton, was instrumental in elevating the UFO issue. Podesta had long championed government transparency on the subject, famously stating that his "biggest failure" in the Obama administration was "once again not securing the disclosure of the UFO files."

In June 2016, Podesta revealed that he had personally helped Clinton file a FOIA (Freedom of Information Act) request for documents related to a possible UFO incident involving what he described as "a crash of what he described as a possible UFO or Soviet device." He noted that "the files had disappeared but it was clear there'd been some investigation by the Air Force."

Specific Commitments

• Declassify as many government records on UFOs as possible, provided no national security risk exists
• Push federal agencies to "do a much better job in answering the quite legitimate questions that people have about what's going on with unidentified aerial phenomena"
• Potentially establish a task force to investigate UFO-related government files

Historical Significance

This marked the most prominent presidential campaign engagement with the UFO topic in modern American political history. Clinton's public statements and Podesta's advocacy brought extraterrestrial disclosure from fringe conspiracy circles into mainstream campaign discourse, appealing to voters interested in government transparency on the subject.