On the 54th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing, a recording surfaced at the University of Cincinnati archive from a 1994 engineering conference at which Armstrong was a guest speaker.
An audience member asked Armstrong directly whether he believed the United States had been visited by extraterrestrial craft.
Armstrong's response: "I can't speak to that directly. But I will say this: there are things that have been reported by people I consider reliable — careful, technically trained people — that have not been adequately explained. And my suspicion is that the answers to some of those questions are not what we have been told."
He then redirected to a discussion of SETI and the statistical likelihood of extraterrestrial life. Armstrong biographers said the remarks were consistent with comments Armstrong had made privately but had rarely articulated in recorded settings.
Armstrong died in August 2012. The question of what he knew or believed, given his access to classified briefings throughout his post-Apollo career, remains open.