'Unrevealed Secrets' About UFOs To Be Described By Ex-Military During Lecture

Few details have been released about what the speakers will discuss, although the event venue's proximity to Area 51 in Nevada will almost certainly have conspiracy theorists excited. The credibility of the speakers is one of the main differences between this event and past events where individuals would speak on the experience they had seeing supposed alien spacecraft.

"One of the things that is different is that you have high-credibility vetted sources," retired U.S. Army Col. John Alexander told the Huffington Post. "What you're getting from this panel are people who have worked with the military, all of whom certainly agree UFOs are real, and I think most of them would say it ought to be researched." Alexander was a member of a group of government officials and scientists who researched UFOs.

Also at the event will be retired U.S. Air Force Col. Charles Halt, who, as deputy commander of the former RAF Bentwaters base in the U.K., is best known for his involvement in the UFO investigation in Rendlesham Forest.

In 1980, Halt led a team of military-security investigators to what they thought was a UFO landing site in England. There, they saw a slew of unidentified lights and one in particular that brightly flashed toward Orford Ness, a former military testing site. Halt made an audio tape during the investigation, the written transcript of which has been analyzed by the U.K. Defense Ministry.

Also speaking will be Nick Pope, a former UFO investigator with the U.K. Defense Ministry; retired U.S. Air Force Col. William Coleman, a former spokesman for Project Blue Book and a producer of NBC's "Project UFO" from 1978 to 1979; and retired U.S. Air Force Col. Robert Friend, a former director for Project Blue Book.

Project Blue Book was a program that lasted from 1952 to 1969. Its aim was to determine whether UFOs threatened national security and to scientifically analyze the data garnered from their alleged sightings, according to the U.S. Air Force.

Pope in particular gave audiences something to look forward to by telling the Huffington Post in an email he would delve into "some hitherto unrevealed secrets of the British government's UFO project."

The host museum is associated with the Smithsonian Institution. It is holding the event not long after a previous exhibit, dubbed "Area 51: Myth or Reality," was deemed a success. That one questioned whether the military tested spacecraft flown by extraterrestrials, as noted by the Huffington Post. At the exhibit, a so-called Authentic Alien Artifact -- a collection of small, unidentified materials found at the site of an alleged UFO crash in Russia -- made its public debut.