What irks me about all this is that it remained a "secret" quite well guarded for so long (and he characterizes as a global phenomenon, so gigantic surface area for public scrutiny/whistle-blowing)[1], but then I remember the PRISM program/Snowden revelations and I don't know what to think. Perhaps it's also valid to consider that it might be a top secret US aircraft that he judged to be of alien origin and no one in the military tried to correct it, for obvious reasons.

[1] - “Retrievals of this kind are not limited to the United States. This is a global phenomenon, and yet a global solution continues to elude us.”