In May 2026 the Disclosure Foundation, a nonprofit formed after David Grusch’s 2023 congressional testimony, published 334 pages of records it pried loose from the National Security Agency. The agency had first denied the group’s Freedom of Information Act request outright. On appeal, the NSA’s own appeals authority agreed the blanket denial was improper and released the files.

The pages are intelligence messages, many stamped TOP SECRET UMBRA. UMBRA was the codeword the NSA used for its most sensitive signals intelligence until it was retired in 1999. What survives the redactions reads like a log of radar tracks and sightings: two silent yellow lights changing course at low altitude, a disc above the clouds described as brighter than the sun, an elongated fireball that split in three. One entry, on page 236, describes 13 MiG fighters sent after one object. It appears to be a foreign military report the U.S. intercepted, not an American encounter.

Not everything is strange. Some entries conclude the objects were probably balloons. Long stretches are blacked out under national-security exemptions, and the foundation says it will challenge those redactions, in court if needed. It has also filed requests to declassify UAP briefings that Congress was legally owed.