Mystery persists over Pentagon UFO program

WASHINGTON - The Pentagon acknowledged on Saturday that its long-secret UFO investigation program ended in 2012, when United States defense officials shifted attention and funding to other priorities.

But as to whether the Advanced Aviation Threat Identification Program has continued to investigate UFO sightings since its funding ended five years ago could rank as an unexplained phenomenon.

The New York Times reported on Saturday that the hush-hush program, tasked with investigating sightings of unidentified flying objects, or UFOs, ran from 2007 to 2012 with $22 million in annual funding secretly tucked away in US Defense Department budgets worth hundreds of billions of dollars.