Published: 21:19 BST, 7 August 2026 | Updated: 23:47 BST, 7 August 2026
The man who claims he brought pastors from around the country to a secret UFO disclosure meeting in the Tennessee mountains has revealed what he believes is a missed clue in the latest batch of files declassified by the Pentagon.
In February, six influential Christian leaders met with a group of former government insiders and military personnel who allegedly had access to classified UFO data and knew about the Trump Administration's plans to disclose the information publicly.
Evangelist Tony Merkel claims he was contacted by these operatives, and he helped organize the gathering in a private cabin hidden in the mountains.
Merkel, Pastor Joseph Bishop Zupetz and Alan DiDio of the Revival Nation Church were among the influencers in attendance who said they were shown several images of extraterrestrial beings and UFOs, including one of a squid-like alien with long limbs.
Merkel described how the pastors were shown specific images of beings, which he believed appeared to be 'interdimensional' in nature, telling the Daily Mail that the creatures seemed to be 'shifting' in the pictures,
In other images he claimed he and the pastors reviewed, having both a physical body but vanishing 'between realms' at the same time, like a ghost or spirit.
'The thing that stood out the most to me, I would say, is how physically present some of this stuff was. And then some of the other stuff appearing to be almost in a middle ground… almost like it's physical, but not totally physical,' Merkel described.
'That's how I took what I was looking at, because what I was looking at didn't seem like it was all physically here.'
Merkel compared an image he saw of one object to a video of a craft spotted over the Atlantic Ocean in 2020 (above), which was revealed in the July 10 UFO files release which described it as a 'somewhat deformed balloon'
Images included in the UFO files released by the Pentagon have been compared to angels flapping their wings
Merkel said the images allegedly shown to the pastors reinforced his understanding of a 1967 US Air Force document which was declassified in the government's July 10 UFO files drop.
Merkel has claimed that his theory of 'interdimensional beings' is supported by a single page from the Air Force's review of Project Blue Book, a program that investigated the nature and origin of UFOs in the 1950s and 1960s.
He cited a specific passage which stated that the military could find no evidence that sightings of strange craft were piloted by 'space travelers.'
However, the document added that an investigator, whose name was redacted, eliminated all the other causes for these sightings, 'leaving him "extra-terrestrial" as the only one remaining in many cases.'