US Congress to investigate controversial ‘alien’ mummies

Peru’s famous ‘alien mummies’ are set for the US, where Congress has pledged to crack the mysterious cases once and for all. 

Republican Tim Burchett, known for his outspoken criticism of the US government’s UFO secrecy, vowed to assemble ‘the most important people in the world’ to examine the bodies, which some scientists claim harbor ’30 percent unknown’ DNA.

The congressman said he would initiate this new analysis at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville in his home state.

The team at Tennessee have obtained half-a-million dollars from the Department of Justice late last year to better understand skeletal remains and ‘relic DNA.’

Though Rep. Burchett has not called the bodies ‘alien‘ yet, his plan is sure to spark furor akin to the firestorm that accompanied the mummies’ debut before Mexico’s Congress last September.

Legal experts also told DailyMail.com that, despite Rep. Burchett’s best efforts, US treaty agreements with Peru could delay transnational shipping of the eerie remains.

The Republican lawmaker made his pledge to veteran Mexican broadcast journalist and prolific UFO researcher Jaime Maussan in a new interview, which aired Monday. 

‘I will gladly help you,’ Rep. Burchett said during his appearance on Maussan’s ‘No Humano’ (‘Non-Human’), ‘help you find someone that would analyze them.’ 

‘I would also be interested in getting some people to analyze those bodies that are independent of the federal government,’ the congressman added, echoing myriad past comments in which he has accused federal officials of a UFO ‘cover up.’ 

‘We will look for the most important people in the world,’ Rep Burchett said, in the Spanish-translated interview, ‘right here in Tennessee.’

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville — the school that the congressman referenced as a likely candidate for this work — is home to an internationally recognized center for the forensic examination of human remains: the ‘Body Farm.’

Last December, the US Department of Justice’s R&D agency, the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), awarded two grants to the Farm, more formally known as UT’s Forensic Anthropology Center, totaling more than $580,000.

One of these grants, amounting to $229,000, will help forensic researchers better grasp (and one day correct for) the phenomena of so-called ‘relic DNA,’ which can linger on a site of forensic interest and thus contaminate dig sites and crime scenes.

A third project at the Body Farm connected to DOJ’s NIJ will spend $660,000 hoping to improve the genotyping of older and long-decomposed skeletal remains’ DNA.

‘There are well-established, validated, practices for SNP Genotyping from recently deceased, fully fleshed human remains,’ as one UT assistant anthropology professor, Dr. Amy Mundorff, put it to the local NBC affiliate. 

‘This project seeks to validate these procedures to achieve similar results from skeletonized remains,’ she explained.

Both projects could bring forensic anthropology’s latest tech and methodology to bear on the elusive origins of Maussan’s now seven-and-counting, ‘tridactyl’ mummies, which the UFO researcher maintains could be extraterrestrial. 

Maussan, whose research has courted controversy for nearly a decade, has floated the idea that the mummies might be alien-human ‘hybrids’ — and he’s now suing Peru’s government for the right to ship the bodies to more advanced labs in the US.

‘So far we have tomographies [CT scans] and fluoroscopy analysis,’ Maussan told DailyMail.com earlier this spring, describing the x-ray and ultrasound data on the mummies that he unveiled at a March 12, 2024 press event. 

And at the conference, he pushed for more analysis on the specimens in a plea for continued inquiry into the bodies’ true origins.

‘If I were faking this, I wouldn’t put it available to everyone,’ Maussan said at this March press conference. ‘It’s open to everyone.’

During his interview with the Tennessee lawmaker, Maussan called Rep. Burchett ‘a hero’ for his public advocacy on the declassification of America’s UFO files, adding that efforts to study his mummified tridactyl specimens also needed ‘a champion.’ 

For well over a year, Rep. Burchett has become a vocal and prominent member of what has been called the ‘House UAP Caucus‘ – a bipartisan effort to get to the truth behind what are now technically referred to as Unidentified Aerial Phenomena (UAP).

Undaunted by push back that led to the passage of a ‘disappointing,’ watered-down version of Congress’s 2023 UFO disclosure act, Rep. Burchett also said he will keep pressing for ‘complete declassification’ of the government’s UFO files.

He also confirmed that fellow Rep. Anna Paulina Luna plans to launch new open hearings on these otherworldly mysteries ‘before the end of the year.’

‘l’m not going to give into the pressure from any of the parties that say we have to do this hearing right now or the people who say we are not going to do it,’ he explained.

‘We are going to have one’ the congressman added in his translated interview. ‘That is what Luna and others have expressed.’ 

Rep. Burchett attributed the ongoing secrecy and the efforts to thwart public access to the government’s records on UFOs, UAP and ‘aliens’ as nothing more than ‘greed, power, and arrogance’ from career bureaucrats in the US national security sector. 

‘We are going to continue until we have complete declassification,’ Rep. Burchett said. ‘Nothing less, year after year.’

His words come amid a summer of quiet but diligent efforts on Capitol Hill to keep the pursuit of UFO secrets alive — including new efforts by Senators Mike Rounds and Chuck Schumer to pass a more robust version of their UFO disclosure act.

In mid-July, Senators Schumer and Rounds doubled-down on their proposed amendment from last year, reintroducing it as the ‘Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena Disclosure Act of 2024.’ 

The new proposal seeks to codify into law many of the robust oversight powers stripped from last year’s version, including the presidentially appointed, Senate-confirmed UAP Records Review Board, to be granted broad subpoena power and ’eminent domain’ authority to seize UAP evidence from private contractors.

The 2024 version of the amendment also includes much of the precisely defined new language that has become synonymous with wild allegations of a UFO cover-up in the past few years: terms like ‘non-human intelligence,’ and ‘legacy program.’

Such legal intricacies have increased in significance on the twin issues of UAP and alleged visitations by otherworldly ‘non-human’ beings — a direct consequence of these topics moving from the fringe into the mainstream.

Former Colorado prosecutor Josh McDowell, who led a team of US medical examiners to investigate the ‘alien’ mummies this April, told DailyMail.com that any effort to have these specimens studied stateside would face diplomatic hurdles.

‘The big question I get from people is ‘Why the hold up on tests?” McDowell explained. ‘And the reality is that there are federal laws and a Memorandum of Understanding between Peru and the US about the importation of archaeological artifacts that require State approval.’

For over 25 years, in fact, the US and Peruvian governments gave worked in concert to reduce the illicit trafficking of priceless Peruvian cultural and historical artifacts. 

As of 2017, according to the US State Department, over 2,000 ‘looted and stolen items’ have been returned to Peru under this ‘Memorandum of Understanding.’

‘Ideally you’d want to test the bodies with the best methods [and] modalities in a state of the art laboratory environment,’ McDowell elaborated. ‘And that means removing them from Peru, for an agreed upon time period, to a facility that can employ the best scientific methods.’

‘Any study of the bodies would need to be completed with the approval of Peru,’ he emphasized, ‘and the country in which further scientific studies were completed.’