Mystery as UFO vault with 3.8 million files is wiped clean hours after Trump demands alien docs released

A massive public archive of declassified US government files vanished just one day after President Trump ordered the release of all UFO-related documents. 

The Black Vault, run by researcher and ufologist John Greenewald Jr, had its main server reportedly wiped clean on February 20, deleting hundreds of gigabytes worth of files on UFOs, declassified CIA projects, and major conspiracies, including the assassination of JFK.

Greenewald shared the news online, explaining that some server directories had their permissions, the safeguards on who can access or edit them, and the file ownership logs changed without explanation.

Black Vault has become a go-to resource for anyone wanting to see exactly what the government has quietly made public over the last 80 years.

Greenewald has spent three decades organizing information on hidden programs and little-known incidents that suggest the US has been involved in top secret efforts to recover and take advantage of alien technology.

Troves of declassified files the public can freely search through on the Black Vault detail military base reports, witness testimonies, and even CIA directives since the 1940s and 50s which have been unsealed without widespread public knowledge.

The researcher has also publicly revealed every time a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request was returned by the CIA, FBI, and other government organizations with little or no response.

The timing of the potential sabotage came just hours after the president's history-making declaration, ordering the Pentagon to disclose anything 'related to alien and extraterrestrial life, unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP), and unidentified flying objects (UFOs).'

In a statement released on X, Greenewald said he did not 'fully suspect foul play' but noted that he couldn't rule out the possibility because of the suspicious information he had received from the website hosting provider.

'[They] had no idea what happened, and on their side, they said it was a deletion, not corruption,' the researcher posted on Saturday.

In simpler terms, someone or something intentionally removed every single file from the Black Vault's server, deleting all the records released by the CIA and other groups, without fully shutting down the site so alarms wouldn't go off right away.

Until recently, the US government has flat-out denied that UFOs or extraterrestrial beings existed, maintaining for decades that there has never been any physical evidence recovered that proves something non-human has ever landed on Earth.

However, Trump's February 19 order came after he publicly criticized former President Barack Obama for saying in an interview that aliens were real. Trump claimed the 44th president had revealed 'classified information.'

Greenewald has previously filed over 11,000 FOIA requests with the US government to obtain these documents, including some declassified reports that date back to the alleged UFO crash landing at Roswell in 1947.

His investigations have also provided legitimate paper trails, detailing how former administrations and the intelligence community created secret task forces of high-ranking military and scientific officials to research UFO incidents.

These groups include the Majestic 12 (MJ-12), which was allegedly formed after the Roswell crash and worked for over two decades investigating sightings of alien spacecraft, working with non-human technology, and contacting extraterrestrials.

Luckily for The Black Vault, Greenewald revealed that all of the more than 3.8 million files were backed up in secure locations and the site was restored soon after the mysterious wiping took place.

'It is a stark reminder to us all, me included. Keep backups. Keep them in multiple places. And never be intimidated by anything that comes our way, no matter what we expect may have happened,' the researcher wrote on X. 

The Daily Mail has reached out to Greenewald for comment on the incident, which the researcher called a 'very oddly timed server maintenance.'

'In my honest opinion, I feel it was a very odd-timed server maintenance done by the hosting provider, that went awry,' Greenewald posted Saturday.

'They didn't catch it, and when I did, they didn't take blame, and there was no way to fully prove what happened, and by whom. Could I be wrong? Yes. Could it have been foul play? I can't rule it out.'

Data wipes like this can occur in a few ways, often without it being a malicious attack. However, these file wipes can be done intentionally by bad actors.

The most common problem happens when hosting companies perform routine updates or data cleanups.

If a software glitch, human error, or incompatible changes take place, it could accidentally delete files or alter permissions.

Hardware issues, such as failing hard drives, software bugs, or even power outages, could also corrupt or erase data. However, The Black Vault's host allegedly ruled out corruption, pointing to a deliberate erasing of the declassified files.

That leaves the possibility of hackers breaching the server through vulnerabilities, including weak passwords, outdated software, or phishing attacks.

Once in the system, the attackers might delete files to cause chaos, especially if the site deals with sensitive data that some groups might want suppressed. 

Critics of the Trump Administration's promise to release all files tied to UFOs and extraterrestrial contact have claimed the move is merely a stunt to distract the public from other political controversies and nothing about aliens will actually be learned.

Many on social media have pointed to the previous releases of the documents detailing President Kennedy's assassination and the Jeffrey Epstein files both containing heavily redacted information that provided no definitive 'smoking gun.'