Jay Stratton’s UFO Claims: What’s in Out of the Shadows?
Jay Stratton is a former US intelligence official who led a government team studying UFO reports. His 2026 memoir brings that work together with claims about recovered craft and unusual beings. Some are things he says he saw himself. Others are stories he says people told him.
His book, Out of the Shadows: Revealing the Truth About Non-Human Intelligent Life, was published on October 13, 2026. In an interview that month, he described a figure looking through a window at his son. He said it was gone by the time he ran outside.
Understanding these claims means looking at both his government role and the source of each account.
The Investigator Before the Interviews
Stratton's formal name is John F. Stratton Jr. When Radiance Technologies announced his hiring in May 2022, it described a recently retired senior intelligence executive from the Office of Naval Intelligence. He had spent more than 32 years in the field.
The company identified him as the first director of the government's Unidentified Aerial Phenomena Task Force. His new job at Radiance involved intelligence strategy, contracts and customers.
The Defense Department had formally announced the task force in August 2020. The Navy-led group would find, examine and record unidentified aerial phenomena, or UAP, that might threaten national security.
Its job was to investigate sightings that had not been explained. The public announcement did not claim that the government had recovered alien vehicles.
Stratton also took part in earlier work covered in our guide to AAWSAP and BAASS. Those were separate programs and organizations, rather than other names for the same task force.
- Read Jay Stratton’s account of government UFO investigations
- Explore the claims presented in his 2026 memoir
- Compare the author’s account with the public record
A Triangle Starts the Conversation
On Bret Baier's Fox News program, Stratton described seeing a video while he worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency. He said a colleague showed him footage of a black triangle over a nuclear site.
During the interview, he also said he had personally seen nonhuman beings and craft. He claimed that both government agencies and private contractors held recovered vehicles. Viewers were not given the original triangle recording to examine.
Stratton described another operation off the East Coast. He said he arranged for a nuclear submarine and a Navy P-3 aircraft to take part in an effort to draw out a UAP. According to him, the first mission gathered data.
The interview did not identify the submarine or supply independent Navy confirmation. Stratton also said he believed the president had not seen all the evidence. He presented his book as context for years of congressional briefings.
Jay Stratton Explains His Claims to Bret Baier
These claims concern government operations and recovered objects. In another television appearance, Stratton described an encounter at home.
The Figure Outside His Home
NewsNation host Chris Cuomo asked Stratton for a specific example. Stratton said a humanlike figure had been watching his son through a window at his home near Washington.
He described a large head, small black eyes, little or no nose and a narrow mouth. He said they made eye contact, but the figure was gone when he reached the outside of the house.
Stratton said this figure differed from taller beings he had encountered earlier. He preferred the term “nonhuman intelligent life” because calling something alien would assume where it came from.
That wording explains his interpretation. His description alone does not establish what the figure was or where it originated.
The Figure at the Window, in Stratton’s Words
How Twelve Craft Entered the Story
Stratton calls the alleged recovery effort the Legacy Program. According to Ben Schreckinger's reporting in PARADIGM, Stratton writes that former Lockheed executive Jim Ryder told him the company and the CIA had a dozen recovered alien craft.
Stratton says Ryder offered to arrange the transfer of one craft to the Defense Department. Ryder died in 2018. This part of the book reports what Stratton says Ryder told him; it is not an account of Stratton inspecting twelve vehicles.
Schreckinger asked former congressional staff about related claims. Susan McCue, a former chief of staff to Harry Reid, could not confirm a story that Reid accidentally received a briefing about the alleged program. She said Reid had not told her about it.
Retired Senate staffer Kirk McConnell did not recall Stratton sharing recovery information with the committees, though he welcomed Stratton's current statements. Those responses leave questions open. Someone not remembering an event does not, by itself, show that it never happened.
The source of each story matters. For the window encounter, Stratton can be asked about what he says he saw. For the twelve craft, checking the claim also means finding out how Ryder supposedly knew about them.
The Reports the Public Can Read
A public June 2021 intelligence assessment covered 144 government reports, including 80 with observations from more than one sensor.
One case was confidently identified as a deflating balloon. The others remained unexplained at that time. Possible explanations included objects such as clutter, effects in the atmosphere, US projects and foreign systems.
The report called for better analysis of objects that seemed to move unusually. The unresolved cases were not a count of confirmed alien craft.
A later Pentagon office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, or AARO, examined claims about hidden technology. Its 2024 historical report said it found no evidence from observations or tests that government agencies or private companies were taking apart alien technology to learn how it worked.
That report addressed the wider claim about recovered hardware. It appeared before Stratton's memoir and could not assess the new book itself.
Stratton also appears in Dan Farah's documentary The Age of Disclosure. Our review of the film examines that collection of insider accounts.
- Thirty-four insiders discuss UFOs and government secrecy on camera, putting faces and voices to a story usually told through headlines.
- Follow their claims of hidden technology and restricted information into the questions at the heart of the disclosure debate.
- Hear the interviews for yourself and decide which accounts leave you wanting answers.
The memoir gives readers more specific claims to examine. Checking them will require following each account back to the people, records or objects that could support it.
BAASS and AAWSAP: The $22 Million Contract Behind the Pentagon’s UFO Program
The Age of Disclosure Puts UFO Secrecy in the Spotlight