However, the former U.S. president states that no extraterrestrial specimens are stored at Area 51—a classified military base
Barack Obama, former U.S. President, has expressed his belief that aliens are “real” while rejecting long-held conspiracy theories that the U.S. is hiding evidence of extraterrestrial life at Area 51, a classified military facility.
Obama made these comments on Brian Tyler Cohen’s No Lie podcast, released on Saturday. When queried if aliens “are real,” the ex-president answered affirmatively, adding “I haven’t seen them, and they’re not being kept in Area 51.”
“There’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States,” he added.
When asked what question he most wanted answered upon taking office, Obama joked that it was: “where are the aliens?”
Area 51 is a top-secret U.S. Air Force installation at Groom Lake in southern Nevada. The CIA officially confirmed the site’s existence in 2013, when declassified documents revealed it had been used since 1955 to test the U-2 spy plane and other experimental aircraft.
The facility’s secrecy has sparked decades of speculation about extraterrestrial research, including theories that crashed alien spacecraft were stored there and that it served as a venue for meetings with extraterrestrials. A few UFO sightings have been reported in the area, but the CIA claimed these were test flights of the U-2 spy plane.
Nevertheless, conspiracy theories have also been fueled by hundreds of purported UFO sightings elsewhere. In May 2022, Pentagon officials told Congress there were nearly 400 reports of unidentified aerial phenomena from military personnel—up from 144 tracked between 2004 and 2021. In 2024, however, the Pentagon stressed it had “no evidence to indicate extraterrestrial life has visited the planet.”
Meanwhile, U.S. President Donald Trump stated he was not a “believer” in extraterrestrial life, though he added that he had met with “serious people that say there’s some really strange things that they see flying around out there.”