House Plans Hearing On UFOs Next Week: ‘We’re Done With The Cover-Ups’
Topline
The House Oversight Committee will hold a hearing on “Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena”—commonly referred to as UFOs—next Wednesday, Rep. Tim Burchett (R-Tenn.) announced in a press conference Thursday, the latest attempt by government officials to take reports of sightings seriously.
Key Facts
The hearing will provide “firsthand accounts of unidentified anomalous phenomena” and discuss the federal government’s transparency and accountability regarding the matter, the committee said.
Burchett said the committee will hear from former Navy commander David Braver and former Navy pilot Ryan Graves, who claim to have spotted a UFO, as well as David Grusch, a former U.S. intelligence official who has claimed the U.S. government has found vehicles of non-human origin, adding that the witnesses will “speak frankly.” (Grusch has yet to publicly share evidence to back up his extraordinary claims.)
The committee asserted that the federal government spends millions of dollars examining UFOs, but has refused to be forthcoming with the public about what it knows.
Burchett said the committee members have seen “a heck of a lot of pushback” on this hearing: ”There are a lot of people who don’t want this to come to light.”
He said he wants the federal government to release documents related to UFOs.
Contra
Government agencies including the Department of Defense and NASA have denied Grusch’s claims about a non-human vehicle in government possession, saying there’s no evidence of that. NASA told the Guardian in June: “One of Nasa’s key priorities is the search for life elsewhere in the universe, but so far, NASA has not found any credible evidence of extraterrestrial life and there is no evidence that UAPs are extraterrestrial.” Additionally, the Department of Defense told Fox News Digital in June that there is no “verifiable information to substantiate the claims.”
Crucial Quote
“They either do exist or they don’t exist,” Burchett said of UFOs during the press conference where he announced the hearing. “They keep telling us they don’t exist, but they block every opportunity for us to get ahold of the information to prove that they do exist. And we’re going to get to the bottom of it, dadgummit, whatever the truth may be. We’re done with the cover-ups.”
Key Background
This bill comes amid a movement to take debates about UFOs seriously in Washington, D.C. Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Sen. Mike Rounds (R-S.D.) introduced an amendment last week to the National Defense Authorization Act aimed at declassifying UFO-related records. In May, NASA held a public meeting where NASA officials discussed unexplained sightings of aerial phenomena and said that the stigma surrounding claims of sightings has hampered efforts to study and understand them. In 2021, U.S. intelligence agencies released a report to Congress saying they were unable to explain hundreds of unexplained aerial phenomena sightings, but noted that they had no evidence any were extraterrestrial. They did offer a few alternative explanations, though, including that they were clutter like trash or birds, atmospheric phenomena such as ice crystals, advanced technology from a foreign military or secret U.S. government technology.
Big Number
144. That’s how many unidentified aerial phenomena have been reported by military pilots since 2004, according to a 2021 Pentagon report. All but one of them, the Pentagon said, remain unexplained.
Further Reading
House committee to hold hearing on UFOs next week (NBC News)
