In an interview with New York Magazine, former Sen. Harry Reid spoke in depth about his interest and participation in acquiring funding for the Pentagon’s black budget study of UFOs. During the interview, Reid said he knows more than he is authorized to say publicly and that the press is being lazy uncovering the truth behind the program.

Reid says he became interested in UFOs while spending time with the late John Glenn. Reid asked the astronaut and former senator if he was interested in Roswell and other instances of UFO phenomenon, to which he replied, “I’ve always had an interest in it.”

Reid says his relationship with Sen. Daniel Inouye and Sen. Ted Stevens furthered his interest in UFOs after hearing about their personal encounters with them while serving in the Air Force.

Shortly thereafter, Reid became friends with Robert Bigelow, the billionaire founder of the eponymous aerospace company that received the contract to store and study metal alloys allegedly recovered from UFOs. Bigelow was awarded the contract after he spent large sums of his own money to build facilities and study existing evidence.

For two years the program was appropriated $11 million annually, during which time significant evidence was documented. Reid said, Luis Elizondo and others involved desperately asked the government to do something about it, to which they were met with inaction. One employee even put his job in jeopardy because he “tried to do something he felt was appropriate.”

According to Reid that employee said, “I don’t know why we’re not doing anything. I’ll bet the Chinese are. I’ll bet the Russians are. I’ll bet the Japanese are. Why aren’t we doing anything?”

Reid went on to say that it’s common for Air Force pilots to see these things, though they’re often afraid to report them because they’ll be ridiculed by their colleagues.

As recently as October 2017, several F-15s were scrambled to intercept an unidentified aircraft flying alongside an airliner over Oregon. The call was made after the aircraft was found to have no transponder and wouldn’t respond to communications from ground control or the airliner. By the time the F-15s were airborne, they lost track of the craft, despite the fighter jets ability to cover the distance of the state in just a few minutes.

Reid concluded the interview saying there is more information out there that the press has yet to discover, saying it seems they prefer to be “spoon-fed” the information.

“We have hundreds and hundreds of papers, pages of papers, that have been available since this was completed,” Reid said. “Most all of it, 80 percent at least, is public.”

Reid didn’t give any clues as to where the information could be found, but urged the interviewer to read the reports, before citing another recent UFO incident in Montana near a missile base.

When asked if there was any information about the program Reid couldn’t discuss publicly, he said, “Yeah, but there’s plenty that can be discussed publicly and I’ve tried to do that,” He said,” You know at this stage in the reports, we have thousands of people who have seen this stuff. Not hundreds – thousands.”