A shocking admission by the CIA has just reopened the mystery surrounding 3I/ATLAS, the interstellar object speeding through our solar system.

Although NASA has claimed the object is an ordinary comet, an icy rock with a long tail of gas and dust, intelligence officials have refused to answer whether they investigated the possibility that 3I/ATLAS is an extraterrestrial craft. 

In response to a November 2025 Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request regarding the supposed comet, the CIA said it could 'neither deny nor confirm the existence or nonexistence of records' regarding 3I/ATLAS.

The federal government had maintained that the object showed no signs of harboring alien life or that it was an artificially constructed spacecraft since it was detected in July 2025.

However, the CIA still decided to provide what is known as a 'Glomar response.' It's a way for the government to say, 'We're not going to tell you if we have information or not, because even admitting that could reveal sensitive secrets.' 

Harvard professor Avi Loeb has continued to challenge NASA's claims, highlighting that 3I/ATLAS has exhibited at least 12 strange behaviors that scientists have not been able to explain as natural occurrences.

Those anomalies include the object having a bright 'anti-tail' pointing in the opposite direction of a normal comet, course changes that defy the laws of gravity, and a nickel shell, which is a metal typically used by spacecraft to deflect heat.

'That this information is treated as sensitive enough to be classified by the CIA is surprising, given that NASA officials stated decisively at a press conference on November 19, 2025, that 3I/ATLAS is definitely a comet of natural origin,' Loeb said.

As 3I/ATLAS nears Jupiter on March 16, the Harvard physicist said the new revelations by the US intelligence community suggest the government has secretly investigated the possibility that the object is a hostile threat, as he theorized last year. 

The Daily Mail has requested comment from both the CIA and NASA and is awaiting a response.

The FOIA request was submitted by UFO and government conspiracy researcher John Greenewald Jr, who noted in a post on X that he was filing an appeal to get a clearer answer from the CIA.

Greenewald Jr added that he has filed the same request for information regarding 3I/ATLAS with NASA and other US agencies and is still waiting for them to reply.

FOIA requests are part of US law that lets anyone, including citizens, journalists, and researchers, ask government agencies for documents or records on a specific topic.

The agency must give a response, but it can withhold revealing details if the information is classified for national security reasons or falls under certain exemptions.

'Very interesting, apparently CIA [director John] Ratcliffe knows something,' one person on social media alleged. 

The new revelations have come months after NASA completely dismissed the possibility of 3I/ATLAS being extraterrestrial in origin, with space agency administrator Nicky Fox saying they've found nothing 'that would lead us to believe it was anything other than a comet.'

However, NASA's November announcement created more doubt about the object's origins than it solved, as the agency was widely mocked for the blurry images it released of 3I/ATLAS.

Many critics quickly pointed out that amateur astronomers with common telescopes had been taking much clearer photographs of the alleged comet as it approached Earth in December, despite being over 200million miles from the object.

In comparison, NASA Mars orbiters were less than 20million miles away from 3I/ATLAS in early October 2025, but still only returned heavily pixelated images of the visitor, which caused some to claim it was a cover-up.

'NASA officials were encouraged to deliver the likely scientific interpretation, while at the same time, the serious consideration of a black swan event by the CIA was hidden from public view to prevent panic from taking hold for no good reason,' Loeb speculated in a statement published Monday.

A black swan event is a rare, totally unexpected happening that's highly unlikely but could have huge, world-changing consequences for the Earth.

In the case of the interstellar comet 3I/ATLAS, Loeb said if the tiny chance that the object was artificial alien technology turned out to be true, it would be a massive shock with enormous implications for humanity, including proving aliens exist.

The cryptic response from the CIA adds another layer to the eight-decade conspiracy theory UFO believers have had, claiming that the US government has been concealing what it knows about extraterrestrial life.

Just days after Greenewald Jr's FOIA request was submitted in November, the hit documentary 'The Age of Disclosure' was released, interviewing 34 US government, military, and intelligence officials about their knowledge of an alleged UFO cover-up.

Despite the speculation, the US military and federal government have said there has never been any physical proof that UFOs or beings from other planets exist.