Nobody Ever Claimed to Fake These Files
- Cristina Gomez
- Jul 20
- 3 min read
The debate over UFOs have moved past the question of whether the craft are real, and toward a harder one, who decides when the public is allowed to hear it. Three stories surfaced in recent coverage, and each points back to the same claim, that physical evidence exists and is being released on someone else’s timeline.
The first part is documents. On his NewsNation program Reality Check, investigative journalist Ross Coulthart addressed the leaked CARET files, short for Commercial Applications Research for Extraterrestrial Technology.
According to Coulthart, the pages include diagrams of what is labeled recovered non-human hardware, notes on extraction and component analysis, and a symbolic written language that has not been decoded. The files first appeared online in 2007, posted by a man who claimed he reverse engineered recovered craft at a lab in Palo Alto, California. Most observers dismissed them as a hoax. Coulthart does not. He stated on the show that he cannot dismiss the case for reasons he cannot disclose, that it is an ongoing investigation, and that he has a lead on who produced the documents. His argument against the hoax label is practical. A fake running 50 pages of engineering detail and invented language would earn the hoaxer nothing, and no one ever came forward to take credit.
The second thing connects the phenomenon to a weapon the President has already confirmed. According to the New York Post, during the January raid that captured Nicolás Maduro, Trump said United States forces used a device he called the Discombobulator, which shut down enemy equipment before a shot was fired. Reports referenced by CNN and others point to a high-powered microwave system, or HPM. Coulthart’s focus is on where that class of technology has come up before. On Reality Check he noted that high-powered microwaves have allegedly been used to bring non-human craft down, and he tied the injuries described in Venezuela to the unresolved Havana syndrome cases, where personnel report the same symptoms with no cause the government will name. His warning is that other governments now know the weapon works, which means it can be aimed back at American forces.
The third part is about secrecy and the people caught inside it. Responding to Vice President JD Vance, who told Joe Rogan that a secret this large could not stay hidden, the researcher known as UAP Gerb argued the opposite. Gerb noted that the disclosures already leaked through official channels, referencing the 2023 congressional testimony from David Grusch and the inspector general process that preceded it. He also argued the government is engineered to keep secrets, pointing to the National Underwater Reconnaissance Office, a real intelligence agency that operated for years before the public learned it existed. Gerb added that the four batches of released files still do not touch crash retrievals, reverse engineering, or the Department of Energy, which controls its own classification under the 1954 Atomic Energy Act that the President cannot fully override.
That control extends to individuals. According to attorney Daniel Sheehan, who represented former AATIP official Luis Elizondo, the Pentagon denied Elizondo’s role, then reversed itself. The public record is messier than either side admits. In 2017, a Pentagon spokesperson confirmed to Politico that Elizondo ran the program. Later spokespeople said he had no such role, and Senator Harry Reid, who created the program, wrote a letter confirming Elizondo led it. The pattern of denial, confirmation, then denial fits a framework described by retired Army Colonel Karl Nell, who backed the 2023 testimony on the record. Nell has laid out a controlled disclosure, information released on a timeline stretching past 2030, so the public is prepared rather than shocked. Under that reading, a denial now and a confirmation later are not a contradiction. People may be telling the truth only at the point they are cleared to.
Sources
NewsNation. (2026, July 19). Ross Coulthart Q&A: Trump’s ‘discombobulator’ and whistleblower retaliation | Reality Check [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vky8TA15UAA
Saucers and Saints. (2026, July 18). Danny Sheehan: What aliens want, who they answer to & disclosure [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4m_9YnIuYFM
The Hill. (2026, July 17). UAP Gerb reacts to Vance’s UFO and alien comments to Joe Rogan [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c3N5yfQAX2I
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