Plenty of countries in the world have considered UFOs significant enough phenomena to establish official research efforts concerning them, a UFO Festival speaker said during a Saturday lecture.

“Up until recently, we were unaware that the United States government actually has one,” he said. “But what a lot of people don’t know is that there are government, official government research organizations all over the world,” said Alejandro Rojas, a well-known researcher of unidentified flying objects, alien phenomena and the paranormal.

Rojas, a journalist by training, was once the spokesperson for the national Mutual UFO Network. Now he is director of operations for Open Minds Productions and editor and contributor for its blogs, website, and video and radio productions.

During his talk at the International UFO Museum and Research Center, Rojas discussed various government research organizations worldwide and some of the more famous incidents that either prompted the formation of the research entities or were investigated by them.

He said the organizations have existed or do exist in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Uruguay, Chile, Peru and Argentina. The United Nations was asked by a group of scientists and researchers to launch an investigative effort in 1978, but it instead issued a “decision” that still stands, which says it will accept and keep documents that national entities want to send it regarding UFOs but will not necessarily take any action regarding them.

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“What is interesting is that we have a lot of different models,” Rojas said. “Some of these organizations are under their FAA (Federal Aviation Administration) type organizations, a lot of them under the military and then GEIPAN (France’s research entity) under their NASA, space-type of program.”

Speaking about the United States, Rojas said, “We might be heading toward another official UFO agency.”

He said he plans to talk more about U.S. research programs during an 11:30 a.m. talk today (Sunday) at the museum, but he said that some of the indications of the possibility of a new UFO research arm of the government are recent comments by U.S. senators about their belief that the issue deserves serious consideration and the April announcement that the U.S. Navy is developing new procedures for their personnel to report UAPs, or unidentified aerial phenomena.

Rojas said investigators have uncovered documents confirming three different U.S. government-sanctioned UFO research projects in the past, Project Sign (1947-1949), Project Grudge (1949-51) and Project Blue Book (1951-69).

Luis Elizondo, a former U.S. intelligence officer, also has publicly said the Department of Defense investigated UFOs under a program called Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program (AATIP) that ran from 2007 until about 2012. That news broke nationally in 2017 when Elizondo began talking to the news media.

According to Rojas, sometimes official efforts get disbanded or unfunded, go underground and operate under new names. He said he thinks that could be the case with Project Blue Book and AATIP.

He also noted that research about intelligent life on other planets and interplanetary communications has been openly accepted for decades through the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) collaborative project. What governments often hide, he said, is research about extraterrestrial activity or unexplained phenomena in and around Earth.

He also explained that not all researchers and investigators think every sighting or incident is related to extraterrestrials. Some think what is being experienced could involve time travel or a universe with various types of realities, spatial organization and timelines.

“Multidimensional sort of issues is what some scientists think might be going on,” he said.

To read Rojas’ latest opinion column, click here.

Senior Writer Lisa Dunlap can be reached at 575-622-7710, ext. 311, or at reporter02@rdrnews.com.