Today, we’re featuring a guest essay from Buck Sexton — co-host of The Clay Travis & Buck Sexton Show, former CIA officer and editor at Paradigm’s Money & Power.

Buck spent Thursday evening at a gala event in our nation’s capital. By Friday, D.C. was buzzing about the latest UFO file drop.

With an insider’s instinct for intelligence operations, Buck explains why this story is suddenly moving from fringe fascination to something harder to ignore.

Here’s Buck…

“Something big is coming.”

That’s what multiple top officials told me Thursday night.

I was at the Independent Women’s Forum Gala in D.C. About 300 people attended, including some very senior intelligence folks.

I got to catch up with Kash Patel, for instance…

Buck Sexton (left) and FBI Director Kash Patel (center)

As fun as the night was, pretty quickly, you could tell something was in the air.

So I started asking around, half-joking, “What’s up, guys? What’s going on?”

Your Rundown for Monday, May 11, 2026...

“Have Fun and Enjoy!”

In my mind, I already had the answer. It had to be something concerning Iran. That’s where your mind goes when you’re talking to senior intelligence people right now.

So I asked one of them: “This Iran-related?”

“No. We’re about to drop something on the UFO files.”

Yeah, alright. C’mon.

But he just looks at me and says, “Seriously, Buck. I thought the same thing. This is real.”

Then I hear it again. Everyone is saying the same thing.

I can’t help being skeptical, of course. But these are serious intelligence people from the Trump orbit.

And what they stressed to me is that what's coming is going to blow people’s minds and change the conversation on the whole “alien” question.

Buck and Carrie Sexton (left) and Secretary of War Pete Hegseth (third from left)

Just like they warned me, the White House dropped the UFO files [Friday] morning…

The release contained 162 files dating back decades, including documents from the FBI, the State Department and NASA.

[They even put up a new website. If you want to take a look, it’s a no-spin, information database.]

Back in February, Donald Trump made it pretty clear he was going to push this forward, directing agencies to start identifying and releasing government files tied to UFOs, UAPs — whatever you want to call them — and anything connected to potential extraterrestrial activity.

This has actually been building for a while. People want to know what the government knows.

In 2017, The New York Times broke the story about the Pentagon’s classified program investigating these encounters. That’s really when this went from fringe topic to something Washington had to take seriously.

So, I’m glad President Trump is coming through on something the public has been asking for for years now.

He said in a Truth Social post [Friday] morning: “Whereas previous Administrations have failed to be transparent on this subject, with these new Documents and Videos, the people can decide for themselves, ‘WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?’ Have Fun and Enjoy!”

Aye, aye, Mr. President. Let’s have some fun.

The Files

So what’s actually in these files?

Some of it is exactly what you’d expect. It’s not like UFO reports and sightings are anything new.

But there are a few items that make you stop and think…

There’s material tied to the Apollo 17 mission where astronauts are describing objects moving past the spacecraft.

They said things like, “There are big ones on my window… looks like the Fourth of July.”

“You see them… jagged, angular fragments tumbling.”

For years, NASA waved this off as debris, “floating insulation,” that kind of thing.

But now the White House says there is no clear consensus on what those objects actually were.

Agents on the ground independently reported another incident, observing large orange orbs deploying smaller red orbs, a silent fiery orb observed near rock formations and kite-shaped objects initially misidentified as vehicles.

Upon viewing these objects through night vision goggles, agents described thin or transparent forms exhibiting unusual illumination.

According to some of these files, astronauts on the Apollo 11 reported objects that were essentially tracking alongside them. Not just one sighting, but multiple.

And it does make you go back and look at that original press conference. Those guys didn’t look like they’d just taken a victory lap. They looked… rattled.

I’m not saying this explains that. But it adds context that people didn’t have before.

There’s also a 1947 memo talking about “flying disks” and (this is where it gets a little out there) language about maintaining order and concerns around atomic conflict.

Let’s Not Get Ahead of Ourselves

I’ll say this: Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

No, aliens are not landing tomorrow, at least not on my calendar. You’ve still got to keep your head on straight with this stuff.

But at the same time, you can’t just wave it away either.

What we have here, in black and white, are documented incidents from credible people describing things they saw that don’t line up neatly with known tech or natural phenomena.

At minimum, there are things happening in our skies that the U.S. government cannot fully explain.

Whether you think that ends up being advanced tech, misidentified phenomena or something else entirely — that’s a different conversation.

But in that room last night, I heard it with my own ears: “This is just the beginning.”

Given that I know these people, I’m inclined to believe them when they tell me something, especially considering their roles in our government.

Unidentified Flying Objects

In all, I’d look at it less as an “alien story” and more as a national security story.

Who (or what) is operating in our airspace that we don’t fully understand?

In a world where China and Russia are pushing hard for advanced weapons, hypersonics, drone swarms and next-gen surveillance, you have to at least consider that some of what’s being observed could fall into that category.

If even a fraction of this turns out to be foreign tech, that’s a major problem.

Think about it… objects moving in ways that trained observers can’t easily explain, showing up in places they shouldn’t be and doing things that don’t line up with known capabilities.

That’s a potential gap in our defense posture, not some sort of fun mystery.

Now, I’m not saying that’s conclusively what this is. There’s not enough here yet to make that call.

But from a national security standpoint, you don’t get to ignore it just because it sounds strange.

And what I got from the intelligence folks is that this is clearly an unexplained aerial phenomenon. We have no program to meet it right now.

I’m going to withhold judgement for the time being, but I’ll leave you with what the top guys told me last night:

“Just wait. There’s more.”