Barack Obama claims aliens are 'real' — are they kept in Area 51? What former US President said | Watch video

Former US President Barack Obama said he believes extraterrestrial life exists, but acknowledged that he does not know where such beings might be, in a podcast interview with YouTuber Brian Tyler Cowen, released on Saturday.

“They’re real, but I haven’t seen them,” Obama said. He added, “They’re not being kept in Area 51, there’s no underground facility, unless there’s this enormous conspiracy and they hid it from the president of the United States."

Area 51 is reportedly a top-secret US Air Force facility located at Groom Lake in Nevada. For decades, it has attracted the attention of conspiracy theorists who claim the government is concealing alien spacecraft and extraterrestrial remains at the site.

Some theories about the covert operations at the site claim it houses, studies and attempts to reverse-engineer crashed alien spacecraft, including debris allegedly recovered from Roswell, New Mexico, in 1947.

Others suggest the facility is used to develop a range of advanced technologies, from intergalactic weapons and time travel to teleportation devices or even weather-control systems, according to The Independent.

In 2021, the Pentagon made public three unclassified Navy videos depicting unusual objects streaking across the sky as US personnel responded with astonishment. One of the UAPs appeared to rotate while flying against the wind. Notably, this was not the first occasion on which former President Barack Obama has spoken about aliens and UFOs.

"When it comes to aliens, there are some things I just can’t tell you on air,” he joked during a 2021 interview with James Corden, the host of The Late Late Show.

He later confirmed that the UAP sightings were genuine and said the government was unable to determine the origin of the craft or account for their unusual flight behaviour. He added that there was indeed footage and documentation of objects in the sky whose exact nature remained unknown, stressing that he was being serious.

Obama's remarks about Area 51 and extraterrestrials came months after a filmmaker behind a documentary alleging a sweeping government cover-up of non-human intelligence suggested that Donald Trump could soon acknowledge the existence of alien life.

“I think it's only a matter of time before the release of this film is followed by a sitting president stepping to the podium and telling the world, 'We're not alone in the universe,” Dan Farah, director of The Age of Disclosure, told Entertainment Weekly in late November.