Author: Agencies

US President Donald Trump said Thursday he is ordering federal agencies to begin “identifying and releasing” government files related to UFOs and aliens, a move sought for decades by some Americans.

“Based on the tremendous interest shown, I will be directing the Secretary of War, and other relevant Departments and Agencies, to begin the process of identifying and releasing Government files related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs),” Trump posted on his Truth Social platform.

While he did not specify whether classified documents would be released to the public, Trump added that the files should include “any and all other information connected to these highly complex, but extremely interesting and important, matters”.

Earlier in the day the Republican president claimed that one of his Democratic predecessors, Barack Obama, had revealed “classified” information in his recent viral podcast remarks about the existence of extraterrestrial life.

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them and they’re not being kept in… Area 51,” Obama told host Brian Tyler Cohen, referring to the top-secret US military facility in Nevada at the heart of many UFO conspiracy theories.

“There’s no underground facility. Unless, there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States.”

Asked on Thursday about the comments, Trump told reporters that Obama “gave classified information, he is not supposed to be doing that”.

The president did not specify what part of Obama’s remarks were classified, but claimed “he made a big mistake”.

For his own beliefs about aliens, Trump, 79, said “I don’t know if they are real or not.”

No evidence has been produced of intelligent life beyond Earth.

Interest in UFOs and UAP has been renewed in recent years as the US government probed numerous reports of seemingly supernatural aircraft, amid worries that adversaries could be testing highly advanced technologies.

In March 2024, the Pentagon released a report saying it had no proof that UAP were alien technology, with many suspicious sightings turning out to be merely weather balloons, spy planes, satellites and other normal activity.

(FRANCE 24 with AFP)

The US military is prepared to strike Iran as early as this weekend, though President Donald Trump has yet to make a final decision on whether he’ll authorize such actions, sources familiar with the matter tell CNN.

The White House has been briefed that the military could be ready for an attack by the weekend, after a significant buildup in recent days of air and naval assets in the Middle East, the sources said.

But one source cautioned that Trump has privately argued both for and against military action and polled advisers and allies on what the best course of action is.

Top administration national security officials met Wednesday in the White House Situation Room to discuss the situation in Iran, a person familiar with the meeting said.

Trump was also briefed Wednesday by special envoy Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law, about their indirect talks with Iran that occurred a day earlier. It was not clear if Trump would make a decision by the weekend.

“He is spending a lot of time thinking about this,” one source said.

The US’s readiness to strike by the weekend was first reported by CBS News.

Iranian and US negotiators passed notes for three-and-a-half hours Tuesday during indirect talks in Geneva, though they departed with no clear resolution.

Iran’s top negotiator said both sides had agreed upon a “set of guiding principles,” though an American official said “there are still a lot of details to discuss.”

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said Wednesday that Iran was expected to provide more details on its negotiating position “in the next couple of weeks,” but she wouldn’t say whether Trump would hold off on military action within that timespan.

US Secretary of State Marco Rubio is expected to travel to Israel on February 28 to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and update him on the Iran talks, a State Department official told CNN Wednesday.

“I’m not going to set deadlines on behalf of the president of the United States,” Leavitt said.

She added that while “diplomacy is always his first option,” military action remains on the table.

“There’s many reasons and arguments that one could make for a strike against Iran,” she said, adding Trump was relying on counsel from his national security team “first and foremost.”

The opaque statements have fueled increasing fears of military conflict between the two nations — even as officials ostensibly hold out hope for diplomacy.

The USS Gerald Ford — the most advanced carrier group in the US arsenal — could arrive in the region as soon as this weekend, after a flurry of other military buildup.

US Air Force assets based in the United Kingdom, including refueling tankers and fighter jets, are being repositioned closer to the Middle East, according to sources familiar with the movements.

For its part, Iran is fortifying several of its nuclear facilities, using concrete and large amounts of soil to bury key sites amid US military pressure, according to new satellite imagery and analysis from the Institute for Science and International Security.

A number of calendar events could play a role in the timing of an attack. The Winter Olympics — traditionally a moment of global unity — conclude on Sunday; some European officials said they believed no strike would occur before then. Meanwhile, Ramadan began Wednesday; some officials from US allies in the Middle East — which have lobbied against an attack, fearing regional destabilization — said an attack during the Muslim holy month would convey American disrespect.

And Trump is delivering his annual State of the Union address on Tuesday; aides have said it was likely to act as a kickoff for Trump’s midterm year message on domestic issues. It wasn’t clear whether the president was taking any of those events into account as he weighs his options.

Trump, in his statements on Iran over the past weeks, has done little to gain buy-in from the American public or Congress for a large military operation in the country. He has hinted at a desire for regime change, and insisted Iran not obtain a nuclear weapon, but has not said what precisely his objectives would be in ordering an attack.

Former President Barack Obama has broken his silence on the current state of American politics, sharply criticising a “loss of shame” and decorum in the nation’s discourse.

In a wide-ranging podcast interview with Brian Tyler Cohen, Obama responded to a recent controversy involving a video shared on Donald Trump’s Truth Social account.

The video, which promoted election conspiracies, featured a racist depiction of the former president and First Lady Michelle Obama with their faces placed on the bodies of monkeys.

Obama described the current political environment as a “clown show” driven by social media and television, lamenting that the sense of propriety once expected of public officials has evaporated.

While the Trump campaign eventually removed the video and blamed a staff error, Obama noted that the “devolution of discourse” into such levels of cruelty is deeply troubling to the majority of Americans.

He predicted that this shift toward inflammatory messaging would ultimately hurt the Republican Party at the ballot box during the upcoming midterm elections.

The interview also touched on the Trump administration’s recent immigration crackdown in Minnesota.

Obama did not hold back, comparing the tactics used by federal agents to those found in authoritarian dictatorships.

He specifically referenced “rogue behaviour” and two fatal shootings that occurred during the weeks-long operation, which involved thousands of ICE agents.

Obama stated that such systematic aggression by the federal government against residents is dangerous and contradicts American values.

Despite his grim assessment of the political climate, Obama expressed hope in the resilience of ordinary citizens.

He praised the demonstrators in Minnesota who stood in sub-zero temperatures to peacefully oppose the raids, calling their organised resistance a “heroic” defence of the America they believe in.

These comments come at a time of intense legislative gridlock, as a partial government shutdown continues over a funding dispute regarding the Department of Homeland Security’s enforcement methods.

Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser to US President Donald Trump, discussed opposition strategies with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein against Pope Francis, with Bannon saying he hoped to “take down” the pontiff, according to newly released files from the US Department of Justice.

Messages sent between the pair in 2019, released in the massive document dump last month, reveal Bannon courted the late financier in his attempts to undermine the former pontiff after leaving the first Trump administration.

Bannon had been highly critical of Francis whom he saw as an opponent to his “sovereigntist” vision, a brand of nationalist populism which swept through Europe in 2018 and 2019. The released documents from the DOJ appear to show that Epstein had been helping Bannon to build his movement.

“Will take down (Pope) Francis,” Bannon wrote to Epstein in June 2019. “The Clintons, Xi, Francis, EU – come on brother.”

Pope Francis was a significant obstacle to Bannon’s brand of nationalist populism. In 2018, the former Trump aide described Francis to The Spectator as “beneath contempt,” accusing him of siding with “globalist elites” and, according to “SourceMaterial,” urged Matteo Salvini, now Italy’s deputy prime minister, to “attack” the pontiff. For his part, Salvini has used Christian iconography and language when pursuing his anti-immigrant agenda.

Rome and the Vatican have been important for Bannon. He set up a Rome bureau when he ran Breitbart News and has been involved in trying to establish a political training “gladiator school” to defend Judaeo-Christian values not far from the Eternal City.

Francis, meanwhile, was a counterweight to the Trumpian worldview, strongly critiquing nationalism and making advocacy for migrants a hallmark of his pontificate.

The recently released DOJ files reveal Bannon messaged Epstein on several occasions in his efforts to undermine the late pope.

In his messages with Epstein, Bannon references “In the Closet of the Vatican,” a 2019 book by French journalist Frédéric Martel that lifted a lid on secrecy and hypocrisy at high levels of the church. Martel created a storm with his book by claiming 80% of the clergy working in the Vatican are gay, while exploring how they keep their sexuality secret.

The whole question of homosexuality in the church has been a lightning rod for some conservatives, who see it as evidence of a deeper, systemic crisis in the church, with some linking it to the wider sexual abuse scandals. Most experts and researchers view any conflating of sexual orientation with abuse as scientifically inaccurate.

Bannon showed an interest in turning Martel’s book into a film after meeting the author in Paris at a five-star hotel. In the messages, Bannon appears to suggest that Epstein could be the film’s executive producer. “You are now exec producer of ‘ITCOTV’ (In the closet of the Vatican),” Bannon wrote.

It is not clear how serious the proposal from Bannon to Epstein was, and, in the exchange, Epstein doesn’t mention the offer and asks about Bannon filming Noam Chomsky, the philosopher and public intellectual. Martel said when he met Bannon at the Hotel Le Bristol he told him that he could not agree to any film deal as his publishers controlled the film rights and had already signed a deal with another corporation. He told CNN that he thinks Bannon wanted to “instrumentalize” the book in his efforts against Pope Francis.

The Epstein files show Epstein, on April 1, 2019, emailed himself “in the closet of the vatican,” and later sent Bannon an article titled “Pope Francis or Steve Bannon? Catholics must choose” to which Bannon replies “easy choice.”

Austen Ivereigh, a biographer of the late pope, said Bannon thought he could use Martel’s book to embarrass and damage Pope Francis, while claiming to “purify” the church. “I think he badly misjudged the nature of the book – and Pope Francis,” Ivereigh told CNN.

Yet, as it now turns out, it appears that Bannon was messaging Epstein several years after his 2008 conviction for child sex offenses and just before he was arrested for the sex trafficking of minors.

Rev. Antonio Spadaro, a Vatican official who collaborated closely with Pope Francis, told CNN Bannon’s messages show a desire to fuse “spiritual authority with political power for strategic ends.”

The late pope, Spadaro explains, resisted such a link: “What those messages reveal is not merely hostility toward a pontiff, but a deeper attempt to instrumentalize faith as a weapon – precisely the temptation he sought to disarm.”

The period of 2018 to 2019 saw intense opposition to Francis, which culminated in an August 2018 dossier released by Archbishop Carlo Maria Viganò, the former papal ambassador to the US, accusing him of failing to deal with abuse committed by Cardinal Theodore McCarrick. A Vatican inquiry later cleared Francis.

But Bannon’s desire to make a film out of Martel’s book saw him lose an ally in the Vatican. Cardinal Raymond Burke, a prominent conservative critic of Francis, said: “I am not at all of the mind that the book should be made into a film.”

Burke was also portrayed in an unflattering way in Martel’s book. Burke’s split with Bannon came when he cut ties with Dignitatis Humanae, a conservative institute founded by Benjamin Harnwell, a British political adviser and a close associate of Bannon’s based in Italy.

Harnwell had been working with Bannon to set up an academy to train nationalist-populist leaders in an 800-year-old former monastery called “Certosa di Trisulti” in the province of Frosinone, 47 miles south-east of Rome. Harnwell is engaged in an ongoing legal battle with Italy’s culture ministry over the monastery’s conversion, with a hearing taking place on February 11.

In 2019, the Italian government revoked a lease given to Harnwell’s institute for the monastery, stating irregularities, non-payments and misrepresentations by Harnwell. In 2024, however, a Roman court cleared him, and he is seeking to win back the lease.

The Epstein files also reveal that Bannon forwarded an email to Epstein in July 2018 with an article from Italian newspaper “La Repubblica” headlined “Bannon the European: He’s opening the populist fort in Brussels.” Bannon was forwarding an English translation of the article, which had originally been sent by Harnwell.

Harnwell told CNN that Epstein was “not involved in Trisulti.”

Elsewhere in the files, Epstein jokes with his brother, Mark, about inviting Pope Francis to his residence for a “massage” during the US papal visit in 2015. Three years later, he messages Bannon to say he’s trying to “organize a trip for the pope to the Midde East,” adding “headline – tolerance.”

When Bannon shares with Epstein an article about the Vatican condemning “populist nationalism,” Epstein quotes John Milton’s biblical poem “Paradise Lost,” when Satan has been cast out of heaven.

“Better to reign in Hell, than serve in Heaven,” Epstein tells Bannon.

CNN has contacted a representative of Bannon for comment. Trump has consistently denied any wrongdoing in relation to Epstein or any allegation of sexual misconduct.