As regular readers are already aware, the Pentagon has been under a lot of pressure lately to disclose more information on the results of ongoing investigations into Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (the fancy name for UFOs) intruding into our military airspace. For the most part, they’ve been very reluctant to discuss the subject publicly beyond confirming things that had already leaked out into the public eye. But even behind the scenes, is our government taking this issue seriously enough? Are they doing anything about it?

That’s clearly not the opinion of former Senator Harry Reid of Nevada. He gave an interview to Motherboard recently for one of their podcasts and expressed his dissatisfaction with the amount of work going on around this topic. He also opened up considerably about his own views on the subjects of UFOs and the possible existence of extraterrestrial beings.

Former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid has done more than any other lawmaker to support the search for UFOs, which he says doesn’t mean a whole lot.

“The sad part about it is no one else has done anything, so saying I’ve done more than anybody else is no big deal,” Reid told Motherboard on the CYBER podcast. “There’s no one doing anything and that’s too bad.”

Reid was the architect of two Pentagon programs designed to look for and study UFOs, unidentified aerial phenomena, and advanced propulsion technologies. These two programs, called the Advanced Aerospace Threat and Identification Program and the Advanced Aerospace Weapons Systems Applications Program, had $22 million in funding between 2007 and 2012 through a Congressional “black budget,” and were run through a company called Bigelow Aerospace Advanced Space Studies, which worked on it along with the Pentagon.

As far as the “little green men” go, Reid was rather candid about that. He said we would have to be “a little short-sighted if we think we’re the only species in the entire universe.” (By the way, Senator. They’re not green. They’re gray.)

The UFOs or UAPs are similarly a settled matter for Reid, who has been working on this subject under the covers for decades. He told Motherboard that the number of credible people who have reported such encounters is not in the tens or the hundreds. It’s in the thousands. He also became one of the few elected public officials I’ve heard admitting that one of our nuclear missile sites in the Dakotas was effectively shut down when “something” was hovering over it. Reid further gave a nod to the accuracy of reports stating that communications systems among our carrier groups in the Pacific have similarly been temporarily lost when the Tic Tacs were in the vicinity.

As for what we need to be doing, Reid was emphatic that our elected officials need to be pushing this issue and that the public should be entitled to know about any information that can be safely released.

“I think that we need to fully understand this and have no boundaries on what we look for,” he added. “And I repeat now for the second or third time that people should not be afraid. I think that too many of my legislative friends are afraid to go into this because someone will think that they’re some kind of a nutcase. But I went into it and I don’t think it hurt me politically.”

At the risk of sounding insensitive here, I’m just going to point out that Harry Reid is getting well on in years and has been dealing with some serious health issues. While I wish Senator Reid nothing but good health and long life, the reality is that he’s not going to be with us forever. I’ve often wondered if he might not be one of the ideal candidates to be one of those people who deliver a so-called “deathbed confession” that blows the lid off this story. Reid knows a lot more than he’s revealed in interviews and has said so repeatedly. But he doesn’t want to violate his oaths and release any unapproved information.

Will that change at some point? I get the feeling that if Harry ever decided to really spill the beans, he could shift the attention of the entire world and reconstruct how humanity views its place in the universe.