Former Pentagon UAP task force chief Jay Stratton's memoir makes non-human craft claims, offers no public proof

What was released

Jay Stratton, a former Defense Intelligence Agency senior executive who led the U.S. government's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force, published a memoir titled Out of the Shadows: Revealing the Truth About Non-Human Intelligent Life on Oct. 13, 2026. The book comes from William Morrow, a HarperCollins imprint, according to Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter, which announced the title and date on June 3. ^{[1] [2]}

Stratton promoted the book with a Fox News interview with anchor Bret Baier, reported by Cybernews and IBTimes UK, and with an appearance on Fox News Radio on Oct. 13, where he discussed what the network described as encounters near nuclear facilities and a race to reverse-engineer non-human technology. ^{[3] [5] [6]}

What Stratton claims

Cybernews reports that Stratton says he has personally seen non-human beings and non-human craft, that the U.S. government possesses craft of non-human origin, and that presidents have not been fully briefed. He describes a decades-long system of secrecy lasting about 80 years and a quiet international race over the technology, without naming countries. ^[3]

IBTimes UK reports that Stratton described an incident involving a U.S. nuclear submarine off the East Coast and a Navy P-3 aircraft collecting sensor data on an unidentified object. The outlet said the material it reviewed did not establish the date, location or mission designation. ^[5]

A separate IBTimes UK report says the memoir relays a secondhand account from an unnamed insider that a craft broke apart near Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947 and that some non-human occupants survived before dying. Stratton does not claim to have witnessed the recovery, and the outlet notes no authenticated records were supplied. ^[4]

What is not established

None of the reporting reviewed includes independent evidence for the central claims. The Cybernews article contains no response from the Pentagon or its All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, and IBTimes UK notes that the Roswell and recovered-craft accounts are unverified allegations. ^{[3] [4]}

IBTimes UK reports that Stratton's representative says 21 agencies and departments reviewed the manuscript before publication, and notes that a security review is not an endorsement of its factual claims. ^[4]

On Roswell, the Air Force's 1994 investigation traced the debris to Project Mogul, a classified balloon program meant to detect Soviet nuclear tests, as summarized by IBTimes UK. The same outlet says AARO reported in March 2024 that it found no verifiable evidence that government agencies or private companies held extraterrestrial technology. ^[4]

Background

The book's synopsis, quoted by The Hollywood Reporter, says Stratton helped found the Advanced Aerospace Weapon System Applications Program, the first official U.S. government effort to investigate UAP since Project Blue Book closed, and later created and led the task force. The Pentagon approved the task force on Aug. 4, 2020, and IBTimes UK reports Stratton was its first director and retired in 2022. ^{[1] [4]}

Cybernews describes him as having nearly 33 years in the military and intelligence community and more than 16 years investigating UAP. He also appeared in the 2025 documentary The Age of Disclosure. Its director, Dan Farah, has secured film and television rights to the memoir with plans for a scripted series, The Hollywood Reporter reported. ^{[1] [3]}

What comes next

The Hollywood Reporter noted in June that the book arrives as the Trump administration released a batch of 162 declassified files on UFO reports, and that Steven Spielberg has a UFO film, Disclosure Day, in the works. Whether any government body will respond to Stratton's specific allegations is not yet known. This article does not attribute the rise in searches for Stratton's name to any single cause. ^[1]